Right now on MBC there’s a special report on the Aramhoe Incident, in which 10 civilians who had discussed the events of Gwangju in a private meeting were framed as North Korean spies by the NSA. This was 1981. 
They were tortured for a month endlessly. They were accused of forming a suspicious “organization.” The name “Aram” (of “Aramhoe,” meaning the Aram group), was because the friends had met at one of their daughter’s birthday party. Aram was the daughter’s name.
One of the members, Kim Hyun-chil, had disseminated a flyer about the truth of what had happened in Gwangju. He recalls that the kind of torture he endured was beyond what he could have imagined.
Another victim was made to practice a false confession for 20 days before being sat in front of a prosecutor. A third victim recalled that he tried to tell the prosecutor that he was being forced to confess, and was beaten by the prosecutor with his shoe.
Me: I’ve never even heard of this one.
My mom: There were so, so many cases like this. More than we can count. It was the world we lived in.
My mom: There were so, so many cases like this. More than we can count. It was the world we lived in.
The father of Aram, Kim Nan-su, had to change his own daughter’s name, as “Aram” had become the name of a (fabricated) “treasonous organization.”
Another victim, Yi Jae-kwon, died in 1998, after suffering long-term after effects of the torture he endured. His friends still visit and take care of his grave.
Mom: Any person who had a normal thought process in that time, in the 1980s, you had to learn what you could about what happened in Gwangju. The massacre. And once you knew, you couldn’t sit and do nothing. If you had any soul. These folks were just normal people.
My mom once staged a lie-in at a police station to make them tell her where my dad was once (he’d been arrested but they wouldn’t say where they took him) so I do think she overestimates how brave people can be just bc of what she had the gumption to do
The daughter, Aram, had her life completely upended by these events. Her father was labeled a treasonous communist, her family was ostracized. Her father has never been able to have a normal relationship with Aram, and still apologizes for what she lived through.
I once even asked my mom, “were any of your activist friends in touch with a single North Korean? Ever?”
I thought it was possible.
She couldn’t even speak a response; she breathed in sharply and shook her head vehemently. The very question was a point of trauma.
I thought it was possible.
She couldn’t even speak a response; she breathed in sharply and shook her head vehemently. The very question was a point of trauma.
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