The Prisoner

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  At 10:20 a.m. on the morning of the 20th, right in front of the Catholic Center on Geumnamro 3-ga, thirty men and women were stripped down to their underwear, lined up, and put through discipline drills. Almost all were young people in their twenties with a few who looked to be in their thirties. Many of the women wore high heels. Ten or so soldiers surrounded them with batons, while someone who looked like a sergeant shouted commands in the middle. “Make an arch. Lie on your back, lie on your side, roll five times, crouch, jump with your hands on your ears, crawl forward, stand on one leg.” Anyone who couldn’t keep up was immediately beaten with batons. The humiliation of the women was especially hard to see. I would rather have suffered it myself than have to watch it. Think of a young woman in her panties and brassiere forced to do such things in the middle of the street. This was witnessed by many citizens. From the sixth floor of the Catholic Center, Archbishop Yoon Gong-hee and Father Cho Bi-oh were looking down, and from the diocese offices, nuns and administrators. Father Cho later stated at a military law tribunal: “I may be a man of God, but if I had a gun next to me then, I would have shot them all.” Archbishop Yoon later stated: “I happened to notice a young man being beaten in a nearby alley while that was going on. I don’t know what they beat him with, but he was bleeding profusely from the head. It made me think he would die if no one helped him. But I was too afraid to go down and try to stop them. I do wonder if he survived or not, but I also wonder why I didn’t go down there myself. As a man of God, it is a sight that haunts me to this day and stops my heart. Since then, I have begged God again and again to forgive me.”

  —Kim Young-taek, loilganui chwijae sucheop (Notes from

  Ten Days of Coverage), Sakyejul Publishing, 1988

  On the afternoon of the 20th, three brigades and ten battalions’ worth of soldiers were called into the city with orders to suppress the rebellion. Clashes between protesters and soldiers broke out all over the city. Around 3 p.m., the citizens started to converge on Geumnamro Street in the city center. Tear gas canisters would go off and they would briefly retreat only to surge forward again, over and over, while the crowd swelled to tens of thousands until there were seas and mountains of people. But the soldiers swarmed on them like bees, swinging their batons mercilessly. The peaceful sit-ins turned to bloodshed, and yet more and more people poured into the street. Students started a sit-in protest at the intersection of Geumnamro and Jungangno Streets, near the construction site for the new underground shopping center. When a citizen stood up and suggested purchasing a microphone and speaker, the crowd instantly took up a collection and it was bought. One person held the speaker, another the battery, and a third shouted into the microphone: “We are ready to die here and join those who have gone before us!” The protesters’ morale soared, and the throwing of rocks reached fever pitch. Waves of citizens surged down the six roads that led from the plaza in front of the Provincial Hall. The protesters at the front tipped oil drums and large planters on their sides and rolled them toward the soldiers’ line of defense as they advanced step by step. Each road was blocked by rows of soldiers and police officers, and amid the tension the soldiers started to move against the protesters with their bayonets.

  Around 7 p.m., bus and taxi drivers, incensed at the deaths of their colleagues and the massacres occurring all over the city, drove their vehicles to Geumnamro Street in the hundreds, buses and large trucks leading the way, their blaring horns and flashing headlights breathing new life into the protest. The sense of defeat in the face of ruthless state repression transformed to strong feelings of solidarity and confidence; it was an important turning point in the citizens’ defense of their city against martial forces. The protests continued all night, and the buildings of broadcasters MBC and KBS—which kept reporting falsehoods throughout the events—were set on fire, as well as other buildings, including the Labor Administration and the National Tax Service. Gwangju became a war zone: protesters fought fiercely hand-to-hand near the Provincial Hall and Gwangju Station, and cars fitted with loudspeakers spouted propaganda all over the city. The entire region, but for Provincial Hall and Gwangju Station, was in the hands of the enraged citizenry. The authorities fired into the crowd at Gwangju Station, killing about thirty, but elsewhere the citizens managed to take back their city (except for the Provincial Hall and Gwangju Station). That night, all the phone lines going in and out of the city were disconnected. The martial forces’ line of defense started to break down, prompting them to open fire, and around 11 p.m. they began firing at the crowd of 20,000 to 30,000 people demonstrating in front of the Provincial Hall. Citizens staunchly continued the protest into the night.

  The morning of the 21st dawned. Geumnamro overflowed with protesters who had moved on from Gwangju Station. More conscious than ever of the need to arm themselves after the many casualties of the previous day, the citizens had rushed to the Asia Motors factory and driven off with numerous vehicles, including armored cars and military trucks. They drove around the outskirts and transported citizens to the center, and also ventured beyond the city to spread news of what was happening. This was the beginning of what became known as the “blockade of the cars,” as drivers tried to use their vehicles to keep protesters safe. The news spread ever faster, and there was strong solidarity among the citizens as everywhere people were provided with rice balls, kimbap, and soft drinks. The protesters in front of the Provincial Hall had elected their own leader and were negotiating the retreat of the martial forces. But even as the military used the provincial governor to pretend to consider the protesters’ demands, they were at the same time flying ammunition in by helicopter while ferrying out dead bodies and secret documents. The military began to fire upon the crowd at Chonnam National University, a little off from the center of town. Shortly after twelve o’clock, in front of the Provincial Hall, they shot a young man who was driving toward them in an armored vehicle, unleashing a massacre as the soldiers then let rip into the crowd, protesters bleeding where they fell. Snipers on rooftops even took aim at citizens who crawled into the streets to try to rescue the wounded.

  That afternoon, when the martial forces started firing at civilians all over Gwangju, protesters who had fanned out to Hwasun, Haenam, Naju, and other outlying regions were spreading the word of the horrors taking place in Gwangju, before returning to the city center with guns raided from police stations and armories. These weapons were distributed around 3 p.m. to Gwangju citizens, creating the militia we know as the “citizen army,” equipped with guns and live ammunition. They fought to the death to guard Gwangju. It was a fight between an ill-prepared civilian army and an elite unit armed to the teeth. It was on this day and in this battle, in front of the Provincial Hall, that the largest number of deaths occurred during the Gwangju Democracy Movement. Citizens lined up in front of the hospital downtown to give blood, while others continued raiding weapons in order to resist the indiscriminate slaughter by martial forces. At the same time, a voluntary combat leadership team was formed to regulate the weapons and vehicles circulating haphazardly around the city, while also imparting basic weapons and military training on the fly before assembling a commando unit of veterans and reservists who knew how to handle a gun. With the appearance of this armed militia, and the power of the light machine gun on the roof of Chonnam National University Hospital, the martial forces hastened to withdraw.

  Around 5 p.m. the same day, the forces occupying Chonnam National University and Chosun University retreated to the outskirts of the city and began closing Gwangju off from the outside. The “Liberation of Gwangju” lasted all of seven days, from the evening of May 21, when the citizens took back the city, until the 27th, when the martial forces retook Provincial Hall. But on the outskirts, intermittent clashes between the martial forces and the citizen army continued. A committee was convened to discuss next steps, with one side arguing that the weapons should be returned and the other saying they needed to fight on until martial law was lifted and an apology was issued. The p
rotesters occupying the Provincial Hall formed a leadership committee under the name of “Committee for Democratic Struggle.” On the plaza in front of the Provincial Hall, a propaganda arm of this committee held daily morale-boosting rallies while a mobile strike team patrolled the city. At dawn on May 27, the martial forces went on the offensive again, overpowering the citizen armies that had been posted to Gwangju Park, the YWCA, and the YMCA, and finally killing or arresting the remaining men who’d guarded the Provincial Hall with their lives, thus putting an end to the uprising.

  All throughout this, I was unable to get to Gwangju and was stuck in Seoul, receiving calls and trying to hide the young men and women who had managed to escape from there. Yoon Han Bong stayed with Lee Cheol-yong for a while before going elsewhere, the women were hidden at a convent, and some were taken to the homes of relatives. I was finally able to contact my wife, Hee-yun, through a friend who lived nearby, as we did not have a telephone at home. Hee-yun had experienced much of it firsthand, including giving a speech at one of the rallies to urge our fellow citizens to rise up, and cooking for the citizen army as they occupied the Provincial Hall. She sobbed over the phone as she informed me of the deaths of friends and colleagues. A team of detectives had come to the house on the 17th to arrest me. Mother had shouted at them to take off their shoes, but they had searched the entire house before leaving. Hee-yun also bade me not to come to Gwangju for at least a month, until things had settled down.

  For a while, I kept in contact with and managed the living arrangements of Yoon Han Bong, Park Hyo-sun, and other fugitives. When I returned to Gwangju in mid-June, many people I knew had either been killed, were on the run, or were in jail. It was like the aftermath of a war. Mother went out that winter, slipped and fell, and never got out of bed again.

  One day, a high school friend of mine paid an unexpected visit to our house. He was a military judicial officer and had come down to investigate the “Gwangju incident,” quite pleased with himself for having gotten rid of a thick file of reports involving me. He said it would take three months to finish his investigation. At first he advised me to leave, and wondered aloud why a Seoul man would come all the way down here in the first place. When I told him my mother was too sick to be moved, he said I, at least, should leave the city for the time being. He also said martial law would be partly lifted and that the tourist zone of Jeju Island would be safer. After discussing it with Hee-yun, I headed to Jeju to restart the Jang Gil-san serialization that I’d put on hold during the events in Gwangju.

  There I established another cultural activism group, Sunurum, and founded the Jeju Issues Research Center. With some Jeju National University students and teachers, we created the Sunurum Troupe and moved the lighting and sound equipment from Gwangju to put together a small theater.

  Mother died while I was in Jeju. A typhoon prevented me from visiting her on her deathbed, a failure that haunts me to this day.

  ~

  Two years passed since the massacre at Gwangju, during which the government did everything it could to represent the uprising as a riot instigated by North Korean spies and to suppress the facts of the massacre. Chun Doo-hwan became president in 1981, and when Kim Dae-jung and other prisoners of the Gwangju Democracy Movement were released during the annual Liberation Day pardons, some of the Gwangju cultural activists were freed as well. I saw to my mother’s funeral, went back to Jeju, and returned to Gwangju in the fall of 1981. By then, films and videos made by foreign correspondents who had witnessed the events of May 1980 were circulating throughout the country via religious channels. As soon as the movement had been suppressed, we felt a need to amass documentation to publicize the truth of what had happened, and various teams had already started on this work. I got my younger friends together to help and also looked for ways to use cultural activism to spread the word of the Gwangju Democracy Movement.

  Most of the people who died during the incident were buried in a cemetery in Mangwol-dong, and the government prohibited any gatherings there, let alone any event of any kind. With permission from the relatives of Yoon Sang-won, who was killed as part of the militia leadership at the Provincial Hall, and Park Gi-soon, a female factory-laborer activist who had died before the incident, we decided to hold a symbolic “wedding of the souls,” thus allowing the bereaved families to come together in a kind of protest. I wrote a musical titled Neokpuri for the occasion. I knew we couldn’t perform it in front of an assembled audience, but I thought we could at least distribute cassette tape recordings.

  Our house in Gwangju’s Unam-dong was at the end of a hilly path and surrounded by woods. We recorded the group performance in the second-floor living room, with curtains drawn and windows locked. I insisted on making the production as collaborative as possible, like a madanggeuk, to make it feel that many people had a hand in putting it together. The lyrics were written by committee and, as befitting a collaboration of this nature, I edited, erased, and corrected as I saw fit. I inserted a Moon Byeong-lan poem as a recitation interlude, and also used part of a Kim Jun-tae poem. The theme song of the production, “March for the beloved,” was fleshed out from a section of a Paek Ki-wan poem. Neokpuri’s narrative dealt with the beauty of youth, the death of youth, the healing of the survivors, the mothers of Gwangju, the coming together of a community; it culminated in a march for freedom.

  We learned our songs first with Kim Jong-ryul’s accompaniment and rehearsed in the afternoon. We recorded the work three times and chose the best version, which was still flawed because there was some barking coming from our yard. Someone also said they could hear a train whistle. But it had the bestsung version of the finale, “March for the beloved,” so I insisted it had to be that one. The ambient noise would only help to convey the urgency and passion of a nonprofessional group. Jeon Yong-ho and I made three tapes. One we stored, and two we sent off to a Christian organization in Seoul, who made 500 copies and spread them around universities, factories, and the countryside. “March for the beloved” became not just a resistance song for Gwangju but also for laborers and college students. For a long time after, the song served as an anthem of freedom for the people of Asia, and was adapted and translated for labor activist organizations in Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

  One night in the late fall of 1982, Hee-yun was suddenly wanted for interrogation by the police. She told me to contact Seoul as she was being taken away, and it was only when I did so that I realized the gravity of the situation. Our contact Choi Kwonheng had been taken to Lee Geun-an’s infamous Namyeong-dong police interrogation facility, along with Yoon Han Bong, the painter Hong Jeong-gyung, who hid him, and Lee Cheol-yong, who had hidden so many others in the slums.

  I didn’t ask for details, but I assumed that Hee-yun was involved in arranging the exile of Yoon Han Bong, the last man still at large concerning the incident in Gwangju. Hee-yun was the director of Songbaekhoe, a women’s organization in Gwangju, and it was an unspoken rule between us that we shouldn’t know too much about each other’s activist work.

  I couldn’t sleep a wink that night, as I racked my brain for a solution. I left the children with the painter Hong Seong-dam and, with the help of a long-time reader employed at the American Cultural Center in Gwangju, I met the head of the center. She was a middle-aged woman with a vivacious spirit, who had reputedly helped Archbishop Yoon Gong-hee to communicate the truth of what happened in Gwangju to the American government.

  With the lifting of martial law in January 1981, Chun Doo-hwan, under pressure from the US, commuted Kim Dae-jung’s sentence from execution to life in prison, and US president Ronald Reagan authorized Chun’s visit to America as a reward, de facto recognizing him as Korea’s head of state. Still, the Americans knew that the arson incidents against the American Cultural Centers in Busan and Gwangju were in protest against US government policies that either condoned or blatantly supported the massacre in Gwangju, and they were probably discomfited by the rise in anti-Amer
ican sentiment among the student activist community and the citizenry. This led to the illegitimate administration’s continued existence with the political help of the United States.

  I kept these points in mind when I met with the American Center director. I told her about Yoon Han Bong’s exile to America assisted by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization, that several people had been arrested for aiding him, and that, if nothing was done about it, I would write to as many media companies as possible to disseminate the truth. She understood that this would be a tricky political situation for her. She asked for another meeting that evening. On arrival, I found her with two men in sleek suits. Their business cards declared they were from the political section of the American Embassy. I explained the situation to them once more. They said it was a politically sensitive matter, gave each other a look, and said they would take care of it. Around midnight, I was called up by the authorities to collect my wife. Hee-yun looked exhausted. We were told over the telephone that Choi Kwonheng and all the others who had been arrested in Seoul had been released as well. But the teachers of Gunsan and Jeonju, who had been detained before them, were still being interrogated, and the newspapers soon trumpeted the fictitious story of a captured leftist cell of revolutionaries called Osonghwe.

  The Osonghwe incident began when five teachers from Gunsan Jeil High School went up to the hill behind their school, to hold a service in memory of the April Revolution and Gwangju Democracy Movement and to read aloud a political declaration. They were subsequently accused of being an anti-governmental organization and given heavy sentences. Among them was the poet Lee Gwang-ung, a close friend of mine and of my wife, who had helped Yoon Han Bong when he was in hiding. The police had woken up to his part in Yoon’s hiding and were cooperating with Namyeong-dong to link it to another fabricated spy incident that covered Gunsan, Jeonju, and Gwangju. But now that the Gwangju inmates had been freed and they had only the five teachers left, the Chun Doo-hwan administration had no choice but to name it Osonghwe—“meeting of the five under the pine tree.” It remains the most infamous fabricated incident of its kind during the Chun era. As absurd as it sounds, I had saved my friends and the mother of my children by asking for help from the Americans.