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아래 영문은 최근글 14180호의 '5.18브리핑' 내용을 번역한 것입니다. 외국인들에게 널리 알려주시면 감사하겠습니다.  

 

Subject: Brief Summary of the May 18th Gwangju Riot

 

Dear sirs.

The following material represents a brief summary extracted from the research contents on the so-called May 18 Gwangju Riot that occurred in the Gwangju city of Jollanam-do (province), South Korea from May 18 to 27, 1980, for which the researcher, I, Jee, man-won have studied and researched for 22 years since the late 1990s.

 

I sincerely hope that this summary will greatly contribute to the correct understanding of the distorted modern history of South Korea by everyone at home and abroad. Thank you.

 

 

Jee, man-won

Researcher

 

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A Brief Historical Summary of the May18 Gwangju Riot

With regard to the above, I would like to take the liberty to explain as follows:

 

General Characteristics of the May 5.18 Gwangju Riot:

An armed standoff and riots committed in Gwangju from May 18 to 27, 1980

 

A sequential history occurred before, during, and after the May 18 Gwangju Riot:

 

October 26 Incident:

On October 26, 1979, President Park Chung-hee was assassinated by the Director, Kim Jae-gyu of Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). As a result, local martial law was immediately declared, and Army Chief of Staff, Jeong Seung-hwa became the martial law commander, and Major General Chun Doo-hwan, then the commander of the National Security Command, held the position of the head of the martial law investigation headquarters.

 

December 12,1979 Incident:

It was an incident that on December 12, 1979, Major General Chun Doo-hwan, the chief of the martial law investigation headquarters, arrested Jeong Seung-hwa, the martial law commander who allegedly sympathized with Kim Jae-gyu and took political actions, on charges of aiding and abetting rebellion.

 

5.17 Kim Dae-jung's internal rebellion conspiracy incident:

Starting from Seoul National University on April 3, 1980, nationwide student protests abetted by Kim Dae-jung intensified and became violent. Kim Dae-jung who instigated university student protests to go into a state of anarchy and take power formed a secret revolutionary cabinet that consisted of 24 people having meetings four times at the Bukhak Park Hotel in Seoul.

The 100,000-student rally carried near Seoul Station on May 15, 1980 was a horribly violent protest in which a bus crushed a police officer to death, and the entire country was gripped by an atmosphere of deadly fear. Kim Dae-jung, who had set an example of what a nationwide riot would look like with the Seoul Station protest, was bold to declare war on the Choi Kyu-hah administration on May 16, 1980 by notifying "If you do not notify Kim Dae-jung that the cabinet should be dissolved and martial law lifted, we will launch a nationwide uprising at noon on May 22, 1980."

Therefore, on May 17, 1980, in an effort to block such an imminent political turmoil, the military rapidly took an action and held a meeting of all military commanders. The participating military heads unanimously decided to expand the local martial law to a nationwide martial law and suggested this to then, interim President Choi Kyu-hah. A cabinet meeting was held under the Prime Minister's leadership, and the cabinet unanimously accepted the military commanders' suggestions. At midnight, 24 Shadow Cabinet members, including Kim Dae-jung, were arrested and martial law was declared to a nationwide martial law.

Accordingly, 25,000 martial law troops were urgently deployed to major national facilities. The nationwide protests, originally planned for May 22, were brought forward by four days and broke out in Gwangju on May 18, 1980.

The entire country was frozen solid, but an unusual situation occurred in Gwangju, where the martial law troops were only attacked.

 

May18 Gwangju Riot was a special operation by guerrillas:

May18 Gwangju Riot was not a pure demonstration, but a military guerrilla operation that included psychological warfare, destruction, and murder.

 

1.At midnight on May 17, one battalion each from the 7th Airborne Brigade stationed in Geumma, Jeolla Province was dispatched to Chonnam National University and Chosun University in Gwangju. Gwangju was not classified as a less risky area than the other regions. So relatively few troops were dispatched, and 40% of the soldiers from the two battalions dispatched were from Jeolla Province.

 

2.On May 18, while most of young people were hiding in every region of the country to avoid being noticed by the police, in Gwangju, those who were believed to be around 300 highly trained bullies pretended to be students made a fuss about going to the library started provoking airborne troops and attacking with stones and rocks. They ran down Geumnam-ro, setting fire to buildings and vehicles to create smoke to gather people, and spreading prepared rumors. It was a totally organized action.

 

3.The rumors contained Chun Doo-hwan's order to kill. The order was, "Select only soldiers from Gyeongsang-Province and make them drink hallucinogenic drugs, and then kill 70% of the people from Jeolla-Province. Kill everyone you come across, whether they are babies or old people." This was a direct copy of the 'General Walker's Order to Kill' carved on the main gate of the Sinchon Museum in Sinchon County, South Hwanghae Province, North Korea, built in 1960. The Shinchon Museum is filled with paintings depicting the atrocities as if it were committed by the US military as they advanced north in 1950. Among them are paintings depicting various atrocities imagined by the US military, such as tying up beautiful women, harassing them, and cutting off their breasts, driving nails into the crown of a woman's head, sawing off a man's head with a saw, and cutting a man's arms with his arms spread out. The contents of the paintings were turned into rumors in Gwangju 20 years later in 1980, and they spread from May 18. The rumors inflamed regional sentiments between Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces, angering the entire Jeolla province. It was a highly planned conspiracy.

 

4.On May 18, the airborne troops dispatched to Gwangju consisted of only two battalions, and the command over the airborne troops was assigned to the commander of the 31st Homeland Division located in the Gwangju area. The commander of the 31st Division was Major General Jeong Woong, and the commander of the Combat Training Command, the martial law command in charge of the Jeolla-do region, Lieutenant General Yoon Heung-jung, was also from Jeolla-Province. Because of his suspicious ideology, he was replaced during the demonstration. In the afternoon of May 18, Division Commander Jeong Woong gave the unreasonable order to the commanders of the two battalions to arrest all the young guys who filled Geumnam-ro street. The number of airborne troops was at best 400, while there were tens of thousands of citizens. So they had no choice but to use clubs to do so because they could not withstand the attacks by the young rioters. Photographers who had predicted the scene in advance and occupied numerous rooftops took pictures to plot the airborne troops. The pictures of the club strikes were all taken from the rooftops looking down. Rumors were a psychological war, and taking pictures was a conspiracy. It seemed that the 31st Division commander had attempted this conspiracy. The situation on May 20th and 21st was a highly schemed plan and an unpredictable military operation. The airborne troops could not withstand the guerrilla warfare led by the so-called citizen's army (volunteer army by NK terms)). When the airborne troops were surrounded and psychologically devastated by vehicle charging attacks, the brigade commanders appealed to change the mission. The martial law authorities decided to deploy the ROK's 20th Infantry Division and dispatched it at dawn on May 21st. The citizen's army, which had obtained this information in advance, carried out an operation to block the 20th Division's entry into Gwangju using two teams of 300 people. Team A, which had 300 members, centered around Gwangju Park, and Team B, which had 300 members, set up at the Yudong Intersection (near Jeungsimsa Temple) and carried out guerrilla warfare. On May 20, Team A surrounded all five battalions under the 3rd Airborne Brigade that was guarding Gwangju Station to prevent the main force of the 20th Division from entering Gwangju Station by train. The citizen's army have large trucks run in a zigzag path toward the assembled airborne troops, which exhausted the airborne troops by making them tremble in fear all day long. It was like a game between cat and mouse. In the end, the 20th Division was unable to reach Gwangju Station and got off at Songjeong Station, failing to enter Gwangju City. Another B team that had already obtained top secret information that the 20th Division Command Vehicle Unit would enter the Gwangju Tollgate at 8:00 on May 21st, they mobilized numerous heavy equipment starting in the afternoon of the 20th and set up a trap by stacking large vehicles and concrete structures near a small river bridge called ‘Gunbun Bridge' to attack the 20th Division Command Vehicle Unit at 8:00 on the 21st and waited in ambush. Then, at around 8:00 AM on May 21st, they attacked the 20th Division Command Vehicle Unit that was entering exactly as planned, and captured 14 jeeps including the division commander's and rushed into a nearby defense industry company. It was the Asia Motors factory that was producing military vehicles such as armored personnel carrier(APC) and military trucks. On the 21st, at 9:00, 300 members of Team A and 300 members of Team B, a total of 600 people, gathered at the factory and seized 4 brand-new APCs and 400 military trucks that had never been released before. They rode and drove them straight toward 44 armories secretly hidden in 17 cities and counties in the vast Jeollanam-do( southern province) region as if they had practiced a lot without trial and error, and seized 5,400 firearms, grenades, live ammunition, and dynamite in just 4 hours. The purpose of the 600 special forces seizing 5,400 firearms was to distribute them to the citizens of Gwangju and arm the civilians. The provincial government building, which the airborne troops had defended until the end, fell into the hands of the citizens' army at 5:00 PM, and was later used as the citizen army's operational command center. There were 2,100 dynamite explosives assembled in the basement of the city hall. In particular, there were several nighttime attacks on the prison at night of May 21. The airborne troops were given live ammunition right after they were driven out to the outskirts of the city, and they had not been given live ammunition before they retreated. The martial law forces used approximately 545,400 live ammunition at that night to defend the prison from the nighttime attacks by the militia. Though It is presumed that many guerrillas were killed during the night operation, it has been a realistic circumstantial evidence that all the dead bodies had been moved to the city hall during the night and later taken to the North in 2014. The North Korean commandos, which had lost its main force due to the prison attack, disappeared like fog by noon on May 24, and the empty city hall was filled with young people who had no organization or concept. These young bullies at last surrendered and were arrested by a secret operation.

 

The process by which the nature of the May 18 Gwangju Riot was snatched:

 

Judgment dated January 23, 1981: The May 18 Gwangju Uprising was Kim Dae-jung's internal rebellion.

Judgment dated April 17, 1997: The May 18 Gwngju Uprising was Chun Doo-hwan's internal rebellion

 

The facts of the investigation records were the same in the court decisions made in1981 and 1997, but the judges' interpretations were completely reversed. Since there was no reason for a retrial, a special law was hastily enacted without a retrial procedure, violating the principle of double jeopardy, and turning yesterday's loyalists and traitors into reversed characters. This was a tyranny of power that it was impossible to be materialized unless the national political system was altered.

 

Research contents

 

Even in the 1980s, and even at the time of the Supreme Court ruling in 1997, no one could have imagined that North Korea would have led the May 18 Gwangju Riot. The initial research material that I began to study in earnest in 2003 was the [Investigation Records of the Chun Doo-hwan Rebellion], which amounted to 180,000 pages. When I converted the numerical information in the investigation records into statistical data, I was able to reach a confirmation that the May 18th Gwangju Riot was a military operation that the citizens of Gwangju could in noway carry out by themselves. After researching it, I discovered that not only was the May 18th riot led by North Korea, but that North Korea dispatched 600 commandos and another civilian supporting group of the same size. Of these 600, 475 were killed in the sequential attack on the prison on the night of May 21st, and 430 bodies out of these 475 were buried in a mountain in Cheongju and then taken on October 4, 2014, by the Kim Jong-il's personal plane that carried Hwang Pyong-so, Choe Ryong-hae, and Kim Yang-gon to the closing ceremony of the Incheon Asian Games. this is a logical circumstantial evidence that supports the above presumptions. The number of 600 commandos is indicated in both South Korean situational records and North Korean documents, and the expression that 475 people were massacred at the same time is expressed in three North Korean documents and a documentary film produced by North Korea in 1980. There is a song called [Mt. Mudeung's Azalea] that says that the North Korean soldiers were massacred in Gwangju and bloomed like azaleas on Mt. Mudeung. In North Korea, every year 28 cities have held May 18 commemoration ceremonies.

 

Key testimonies exposed by prominent figures

 

1. Testimony of former director and deputy director of the National Intelligence Service(NIS):

On June 13 and July 3, 2024, former director of the National Intelligence Service Kwon Young-hae and the first deputy director Choi Myung-joo testified to Sky Daily newspaper twice. “May 18 Gwangju Riot was a military operation carried out by the North Korean regime aiming for the unification of the Korean Peninsula. During the operation, 490 North Korean commando unit composed of junior officers were killed in Gwangju, and the date of death is recorded uniformly as June 19, 1980. The list of the commandos killed has been filed in the order of name, rank, date of birth, place of birth, and unit name. The list was published under the name of a NK defector group.”

 

2. Testimony exposed by the former Democratic Party member, Kim Kyung-jae:

May 10, 2023. K-news includes the testimony of former lawmaker Kim Kyung-jae.

Under the pretext of secret contact for the inter-Korean summit that was scheduled to be held in June 2000, Kim Dae-jung sent his confidant, then Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Kyung-jae, to Pyongyang as a secret envoy for 8 nights and 9 days from December 6 to 14, 1999. The secret envoy's partner of North Korea was Mr. Kim Kyung-rak. He was a big shot who had served as NK ambassador to European countries and as the North Korean head of the inter-Korean Red Cross talks. Kim Kyung-rak told Kim Kyung-jae, “May 18 was a special operation for the unification and led by North Korea, and a lot of patriotic martyrs died during the operation,” and showed him a graveyard where the so-called patriotic martyrs were buried. North Korea emphasized to Kim Kyung-jae that they desperately needed US dollars. Kim Kyung-jae returned and reported these two facts to Kim Dae-jung, and after that, Kim Dae-jung secretly provided 450 million dollars as a back door deal for the summit, and since then, the act of ladling monies out to North Korea continued under the pretext of being an act of presidential rule.

 

3. Testimony revealed by both NK defectors of Hwang Jang-yeop and Kim Deok-hong in 1998:

While being persecuted by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) during the Kim Dae-jung era, these two men testified to the editor-in-chief of Monthly Chosun as follows: “The North carried out the May 18 Gwangju Riot and then passed the buck to the South. Many NK executives worked in the South Korea Affairs Department were enthusiastically honored with medals and banquets after the secret operation in Gwangju was over.” This testimony was made public by a Monthly Chosun reporter in May 2013, taking advantage of the atmosphere of Channel A and TV Chosun broadcasting that the North led the May 18 Gwangju Riot.

 

My research contents and the contents of the testimonies are exactly corresponding:

The testimonies of the above figures, which cannot be carelessly ignored, clearly confirm that Jee man-won’s research contents are true and correct. The only difference is the number of the North Korean commandos killed in Gwangju. While North Korean literature and documentary film narrations announce that 475 commandos in total died in Gwangju as of May 23, however, the former spy chief, Kwon Young-hae says that 490 died as of June 19. The difference of 15  dead numbers between 475 and 490 perhaps means that the 15 commandos who might have returned alive to NK with heavy injury and died in North Korea by June 19.

 

Aftereffects

 

1.As the May18 Gwangju Riot became a sort of sanctuary, the Jeolla Province also became to reign over entire South Korea.

The research results show that when all 42 evidences are collected and comprehensively evaluated by the researcher, the researcher can simply reach a conclusion that the May18 Gwangju Riot was a military guerrilla operation led by North Korea> In addition, the joint testimony of the former head and deputy head of the KCIA also strongly suoorts the fact that the May 18 Gwangju Riot was a military operation led by North Korea as primming water for an invasion of the South. The title of the 5.18 song that North Koreans are singing with a desperate heart is [Azaleas of Mt. Mudeung], and the lyrics contain the story of North Korea's beloved young men who fought fiercely in Gwangju to reunify their torn country and dyed in massacres, to blossom on Mt.

May18 Gwangju Riot is an inexorable pass and a vested absolute power wielded by the political power of Jeolla Province (Democratic Party), and Jeolla Province claims that 5.18 is the second Magna Carta that achieved democratization in the Republic of Korea and reigns over the people. In order to further fortify the sanctuary of democratization, those who wield the absolute power needed a scapegoat as an evil force that had trampled on democracy. The evil force they decided was Chun Doo-hwan and the Airborne Corps. In any country, the military is highly respected as a sacred entity that protects the country and its people. Nonetheless, people from Jeolla Province in particular hate and curse the ROK military as murderers and a group that commits sexual assault. This is the reality happening in South Korea.

Article 11 of the ROK's Constitution guarantees the right to equality. However, Jeolla Province, which exploits May 18 for political and economic gain, is ignoring the right to equality and reigning as a special class. One example of this is the special treatment of national men of merit in connection with the May18 Gwangju Riot. There are numerous types of national men of merits in the country. Except for May 18th case, all the men of merits are evaluated for their qualifications by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, and are managed according to a unified merit system regardless of their type. However, May 18th men of merits are selected exclusively and separately by the mayor of Gwangju City. Nevertheless, a separate May 18th merits' special treatment law was enacted, and they are given a lump sum payment of hundreds of millions of won that other national honorees do not have, and they are specially treated much better than other national merits. Many citizens have filed lawsuits and pleaded to disclose the list of May 18th activists and the details of their achievements, but the leftist judges who have taken over the judiciary are ignoring them and continuing to make May 18th activists the people of a secret sanctuary. The citizens pay enormous taxes to them, but they do not know whether there are 6,000 or 10,000 May 18th activists. It has even been reported that people from Jeolla Province born in 1992 are treated as activists and receive bonus points on job exams given to the activists. Surprisingly, in an effort to gain such benefits, people in Jolla Province even use a system of adoption to make their adopted sons and daughters receive the same benefits. The more the number of activists increases, the stronger the power becomes. Because of this expanded special status, key positions in the country have been occupied by leftists.

 

2.To block the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution, they enacted a law so-called “Citizens’ Gagging Act” by punishing citizens who express the truth about May 18th with up to 5 years in prison. Therefore, citizens can in no way tell the truth about the May 18 Gwangju Riot towards Jeolla Province.

 

3.The Jeolla-Province forces are enjoying economic and political benefits using so-called May 18 special pass. The people in other regions are living as slaves under Jolla Province influences even though they are still paying a lot of taxes.

4. The May 18 organizations are ideological anti-state groups that deny the ROK's foundation. The leftist forces are those who claim that the Republic of Korea should not have been born, and the holy place of the leftist forces are May 18 and Jeolla-Province. Jeolla-Province is the very Democratic Party.

 

Additional Reference:

Further facts are described in detail in the two books indicated below.

 

1.42 decisive evidences of the May 18 special operation committed by North Korean commands.

This book will be perhaps going out of print soon depending on the decisions from the high and Supreme court as the the May 18 organizations applied an injunction.

 

2.Documentary novel Chun Doo-hwan

The history before and after 1980 is the history of Chun Doo-hwan. Chun Doo-hwan's history is the core of the modern history. Going to war with leftists without knowing this fact can be referred to a fighting with a stick only with no weapons. The truth of Chun Doo-hwan's history lies only in the investigation records. In South Korea, only one person, Jee, man-won, has studied the investigation records. That is the very reason why this book is important.

 

 

 

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