Word: kwangju
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...bonding South Koreans together -- Roh will face a host of political problems. His most serious challenge: complete removal of the legacy of the Chun era. In the coming months, the National Assembly will be preoccupied with investigations of corruption under the Chun administration and of the circumstances surrounding the Kwangju massacre, an attack in 1980 by army troops in that southern city during which at least 198 people were killed. "There's no way we can win," says D.J.P. Assemblyman Suh Sang Mok. "It's only a matter of how much we lose...
Every year South Korean demonstrators take to the streets on the anniversary of the 1980 uprising in Kwangju, which was violently crushed by security forces in clashes that left at least 191 dead. Thus it came as no surprise when mobs of student protesters sparred with policemen in Seoul last week and tossed homemade bombs at the U.S. embassy. The demonstrations were fueled by a grisly incident: the ritual suicide of a 24-year-old chemistry student, Cho Sung Man, who stabbed himself in the stomach and jumped off a four-story building to protest the detention of political prisoners...
...whole, however, this year's Kwangju protests were far less threatening than those in the past. In the city of Kwangju itself, observances were remarkably peaceful. Rather than trying to prevent mourners from visiting the graves of Kwangju victims, authorities paved the road to the cemetery where many of them are buried...
From smoggy Seoul to the bustling port of Pusan, usually industrious South Koreans last week simply refused to do any more work. Strikers shut down the country's showcase automobile industry as well as textile factories and chemical plants. Taxi drivers and bus operators in Seoul and Kwangju declined to accept passengers. In all, some 200,000 workers were idled by job actions. A striker in Pusan expressed the pent-up frustrations of many: "It is our turn to receive humane treatment. We have the right to a decent living...
Disturbances also broke out in Kwangju, but the most touching confrontation there involved not protesters but Lee's mourners. The victim's family had planned to bury him in a family plot in the city's main cemetery. His fellow students, however, insisted that he should be interred at another part of the cemetery, near the graves of many of the 180 people who had been killed in the bloody Kwangju riots in 1980. Although Lee's mother and sister struggled hysterically with student marshals, the youths eventually prevailed. The lone victim from this year's street struggles was buried...