Follow the latest news on South Korea and President Yoon Suk Yeol.
The wound from where the soldier struck her is long gone, but Jang Sang-nam, 88, can still trace its outlines on her head.
“Here, with the butt of a rifle,” she says when asked where she was hurt while she was out looking for her son, reflexively taking her trembling, sinewy fingers to her right temple. “This eardrum was burst. I still can’t hear.”
Her injury was inflicted 44 years ago, when this ginkgo-tree-lined midsize city in the southwest of South Korea erupted in a student-led uprising for democracy, a day after the military ruler declared nationwide martial law. Paratroopers stormed the city, Gwangju, and brutally beat, stabbed and indiscriminately fired upon throngs of citizens young and old. Hundreds were left dead or missing.
This week, when President Yoon Suk Yeol stood in front of the South Korean people and declared martial law for the first time since then, the outrage was deepest in Gwangju, where memories are still raw of resistance paid for in blood.
ImageFamilies and relatives gathering around the coffins of dead protesters at provincial headquarters in Gwangju, in May 1980.Credit...Kim Chon Kil/Associated PressIn the intervening decades, in a country whose modern history has been defined by rapid change and swift adaptation, Gwangju has sought to remember and be remembered for the bloodshed that marked a foundational moment in South Korea’s path to democracy.
The map locates the city of Gwangju in southwestern South Korea. It also locates the capital, Seoul, in the northwest.
50 miles
North
Korea
Sea of
Japan
Seoul
South
Korea
Yellow
Sea
Gwangju
By The New York Times
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.udbet