In early 1995, South Korea was a fragile democracy, still recovering from decades of dictatorship--and half the population was glued to the TV watching Sandglass. It was popular entertainment—third highest viewership ever, average ratings above 50%, peaking at 64.7%. It was also history lesson—incorporating the May 1980 Gwangju Uprising and Massacre into its plot, as well as other events from the Park and Chun dictatorships.
Six years before Sandglass aired, televised hearings in the National Assembly had exposed details of Chun Doo-hwan’s coup and his violent suppression of the Gwangju Uprising. It had also been the subject of two TV documentaries. However, Sandglass was the first time archival film of the military repression had been allowed to be shown on television. What’s more, it was in the accessible context of a melodrama. The effect was electrifying. Sandglass has been credited with helping create public demand for Chun Doo-hwan’s prosecution.
The peerless team of writer Song Ji-na and director Kim Jong-hak spent two years making Sandglass (Moraesigye, AKA Hourglass). Song Ji-na writes characters who represent different parts of society, and are also vivid individuals. Her script has a strong moral center, but also nuance and ambiguity. An outstanding cast brings it to life.
May 18th marks the 40th anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising (AKA Gwangju Democratization Movement, May 18 Pro-Democracy Movement). When I re-watched Sandglass recently, I thought about how someone unfamiliar with the history would view it. I tried explaining a bit here: Dong-il Textile and Y.H. Trading labor incidents, Samchung re-education camps, as well as a partial timeline of the Park-Chun eras, and a bit about the bribery system and false-name accounts.
Sorry, Sorry, Sorry--this is much too long. I should have broken it up into several parts—but I filled draft folders with a discarded mega-timeline and misc. detritus, and it’s still this bad. Skim freely, or escape now—this is just my OCD distraction from our ongoing doom.
Note: South Korea=ROK, North Korea=DPRK
First, a micro-refresher on 20th century Korean history
In 1910...Wait, cut to the crash, you say? What was Gwangju all about? A quick minute-and-a-half synopsis (with closed captioning):
Backing up a bit...
I use Revised Romanization of Hangul for Korean words and names, except for a few best known spelled differently. One big difference between romanizations is voiced /voiceless consonant pairs. In Korean, b/p, d/t, g/k, and j/ch are the same Hangul pronounced differently. Some romanizations use the same letter regardless; some spell it like you say it in context.
This toggles between present and past tense, which may grate on eyes. Sorry about that.
In 1910, the 500-year Joseon (AKA Yi) dynasty ended with Korea’s annexation by Japan. Japanese authorities ruthlessly eliminated all viable resistance leaders. After WWII, the USA and USSR handpicked leaders--Syngman Rhee and Kim Il Sung—for their familiarity and compliance (so they thought), not their ties to local politics. No clear local leaders had survived, anyway. The back-and-forth waves of devastation in the Korean conflict—called Six-Two-Five in South Korea for the date of the 1950 invasion—killed over a million South Koreans, and destroyed much of the landscape. After the July 1953 armistice, South Korea was left with a more urbanized population and a large influx of escaping Northerners (over a million people fled south across the 38th Parallel between 1945-53).
In 1960, after “winning” a rigged election, Rhee was forced to resign by the student led 4.19 movement. The new democratic government led by Chang Myon became mired in factional infighting, alas. Many people thought the May 16, 1961 coup, led by Park Chung-hee, would lead to fresh elections. Instead, Park formed a junta, dissolved the Assembly, banned political activity, and quickly consolidated power over all three branches of government. From this dominating position he got a new constitution passed by referendum and himself elected president.
1961 June 10: Park Chung-hee creates the KCIA. Far more than an intelligence agency, it quickly becomes a powerful instrument of control and repression, including of political dissidents and labor activists. Soon after, Park creates the Economic Planning Board (EPB), putting both the Bank of Korea and private commercial banks under EPB control, making lending decisions to benefit the regime’s goals. These two fists keep ROK political and economic life in an iron grip.
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Park Chung-hee was not personally corrupt. At the time of his 1961 military coup, he was on the verge of being forced into early retirement from the army for failure to participate in the kick-back system. Once in power, though, he surrounded himself with corrupt people.
Park’s coup was led by his nephew-in-law, Kim Jong-pil (who went on to head the KCIA), and his classmates from the Korea Military Academy. This army group was organized into the Hanahoe, a secretive parallel military power, headed by Chun Doo-hwan (who went on to seize power after Park’s assassination in 1979). Roh Tae-woo (who would be elected president in 1987) was also a founding member of the Hanahoe, and Chun’s protege. Hanahoe members enjoyed a life of complete impunity.
Traditionally, the “three connections” determine loyalty and advancement: Blood, school, and soil. Blood: About half of Koreans have one of three surnames: Kim, Lee, or Park. [Romanization variants: Kim/Gim, Lee/Li/Yi/I/Rhee/Ri, and Park/Pak/Bak—n.b. Baek is its own surname, not a spelling variant of Park.] Not all who share surnames are considered relatives, only those of the same clan (bon-gwan) —still a mighty big family to have.
Soil: The Taebaek mountain range runs along the east coast, from which the Sobaek splits off to cut southwest, dividing Jeolla and Gyeongsang provinces. In the Three Kingdoms era (57 BC--668 AD), Jeolla was part of Baekje; Gyeongsang was where Silla originated.
South Korean politics is still dominated by regional divisions. Political parties are centered around a boss, with little coherent ideology, and no institutional life; leaders frequently split and form new parties.
Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, and their inner circle hailed from the Daegu area of North Gyeongsang Province, and were known as the “T-K faction” (Taegu-Kyongsang).
Opposition politicians: Kim Young-sam was from Busan (formerly part of South Gyeongsang Province), and Kim Dae-jung from Mokpo, South Jeolla Province. Jeolla was a strong historical center of protest, and being the most prominent dissident’s power base gave the T-K faction even more reason to neglect and discriminate against the region.
(Note: “The three Kims” who dominated Korean politics for decades—Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung, and Kim Jong-pil-- are each a different bon-gwan.)
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Park Chung-hee’s 1971 reelection victory over Kim Dae-jung was by a narrow 53-45 margin. Less than a month later, Kim Dae-jung was seriously injured in a car accident (almost certainly an assassination attempt). He later survived two more attempts to kill him.
Yushin--the ‘Revitalizing Reforms’-- is where ‘Sandglass’ begins
- 1972 October 17: Park Chung-hee suspends the 1963 constitution, dissolves the National Assembly, and declares martial law—a constitutional coup. Park enacts the October Revitalizing Reforms, including the Yushin Constitutional amendments. Park has ruled as a virtual dictator (albeit with regular elections) since leading the 1961 May 16 coup. With his popularity (propped up by astounding economic growth) waning, he decides to dispense with the window-dressing.
- November 21: The Yushin Constitution approved by voters with bullshit 90% turnout and approval. Yushin ends direct presidential elections and gives Park sweeping new authoritarian powers, including rule by decree.
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Honor Friendship Betrayal Love Family Respect History
Sandglass is about 20 hours total, in 24 episodes. The first three episodes introduce the main characters—Park Tae-soo, Kang Woo-suk, and Yoon Hye-rin--with multiple flashbacks between 1976 and earlier years, circling around to show the same time and scene from the point of view of different characters. Starting with episode 4, the drama settles into a more linear timeline, but continues to alternate character viewpoints.
How to watch: I don’t know anything about streaming services. (I bought a used DVD set of Sandglass years ago.) I did find this place-- dramanice.movie/sandglass --which seems to work—all 24 episodes with English subtitles, no registration or payment required—but who knows...There is an abridged version (~½ length) of Sandglass—no subtitles--on Youtube here--where I got my screencaps.
This contains some spoilers for the first half of the drama, but no final spoilers. My historical notes are mostly in sand-colored boxes. This is miles long, and still leaves oodles out. I don’t mention the DPRK much because the drama doesn’t.
Sandglass contains only one reference to US/ROK relations, and I limit myself similarly—to stay within my framework, and also because it’s an oxygen-sucking monster—I won’t reduce Koreans to supporting characters in their own drama.
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Three friends: Gangster, prosecutor, and democracy activist.
Park Tae-soo and Kang Woo-suk are born in 1957, and grow up in South Jeolla—hicks from the rebellious sticks. Hye-rin is a year or two younger, and from Seoul, where all three end up. They are a little older than the 386 generation, but born post-war, wanting more from life than food and shelter. (Also, middle- and high-school entrance exams were abolished in 1969, giving kids like Tae-soo a chance.)
(Episode 1) Park Tae-soo (Choi Min-soo) is introduced in 1976, as part of a gang that has just broken up an opposition party meeting. His boss regrets taking the job; when a gangster gets involved in politics, it ends badly for the gangster. Fellow gangster and so-called friend Lee Jong-do (Jung Sung-mo) has no regrets; he’s eager to work for the junta. (Jong-do is a major asshole and plot driver in the drama).
Flashback to 1973: Tae-soo’s hard-drinking mother runs a gisaeng house. On his first day at a new school, Tae-soo impresses fellow student Lee Jong-do with his fighting skills. Tae-soo is impressed by another student, studious Kang Woo-suk, and asks him for tutoring. Woo-suk agrees, on condition Tae-soo give up fighting. Tae-soo keeps the bargain—not easy, when the local gang is trying to recruit him.
1975: Tae-soo applies to military college, but is rejected. The reason is news to Tae-soo: His father was a communist partisan--a guerrilla on Mount Jiri after the armistice—who was executed in 1957. Tae-soo, born months after his father’s death, is suspect. (Second generation hostile class? It sounds like DPRK’s still-active songbun system). Blocked by discrimination, then staggered when his mother suddenly dies, Tae-soo drifts into the gangster’s life.
The Sobaek’s southernmost and highest mountain, Jirisan, is where the last communist partisans fought until their final defeat in 1955. Choices were bleak for militant leftists after the 1953 armistice. Those who stayed in the South were ruthlessly exterminated. Most fled North, only to perish in Kim Il Sung’s purges. (The Southern communists lost their usefulness to Kim with the end of the war. In August 1953, Kim had them executed or sentenced to forced labor.)
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(Episode 2) Kang Woo-suk (Park Sang-won) is at law school, walking past lines of protesting students to study in near-empty classes. He is challenged by a group of activists—why doesn’t he join them? Woo-suk points out that democracy includes the right to say “no”. The activists dismiss him as a rich boy, too privileged to care.
Flashback to 1968: Woo-suk comes from a poor farming family. His father is forced off his farm by corrupt land developers in collusion with police. A false charge of theft is used to extort: sell land to drop charges. [Obscenely corrupt real estate speculation rapidly drove up land values (more than a thousandfold in parts of Seoul) between 1963 and 1990.] After this formative experience of injustice, Woo-suk resolves to become an upright prosecutor or judge who protects the downtrodden.
Focused on this goal, Woo-suk stays apart from the political upheaval around him, only bending his own rules when friends are in danger. (Current ROK President Moon Jae-in was imprisoned for his college activism, which made him ineligible for a career as a prosecutor or judge; he became a labor lawyer instead. The need to keep a squeaky-clean record was real.)
The Russian WWII song Zhuravli (Cranes), sung by Joseph Kobzon, was made familiar to Koreans by its use in Sandglass. It is paired with clips from episodes 1-2 here:
Viewers wouldn’t understand the Russian, but did feel the emotion of loss.
Yoon Hye-rin (Go Hyun-jung) is introduced in 1976 as a college freshman and budding pro-democracy activist, soon becoming an underground student newspaper editor. She does not tolerate male chauvinist pigs telling women how to behave: “That’s dictatorship!” She moves into Woo-suk’s student housing, and they work part-time jobs to pay rent and tuition--Woo-suk drives a taxi. The taxi is a Hyundai Pony—introduced in 1975, the first commercially successful Korean car. (Those iconic green Ponies later feature in the Gwangju Uprising.)
(Episode 3) Hye-rin is revealed to be the daughter of President Yoon (Park Geun-hyung), “Godfather of Casinos”. President Yoon is a semi-legitimate businessman with a ledger of bribed politicians and prosecutors. (Casinos, of course, move vast sums of money, with ample opportunity for money laundering and illegal currency transactions. Casinos were illegal in South Korea until 1967, when Park Chung-hee allowed them under tight restrictions, only to foreign tourists. In the drama, “domestic VIPs” run when the cops come.)
In a flashback to 1972, middle-school student Hye-rin is kidnapped by her father’s business rival, and she learns her father cares more about his business than her life. She gains a loyal bodyguard from this incident, Baek Jae-hee (Lee Jung-jae). As a college student, Hye-rin is trying to make it on her own, but shedding her family background proves difficult.
Universities were among the few places people could hold public gatherings. The student-led 4.19 movement was a glorious model, and students took their vanguard role seriously.
Student politics ranged from a broad pro-democracy minjung (people’s) movement to various strains of leftist thought--often dismissed by their elders as a transient fad—a “pink shower”—that they would abandon when they graduated (usually true).
Students were repressed less brutally than laborers, but persecution increased in the later Park years, and under Chun. The most serious student-activists ended up imprisoned as “North Korean spies”, or dead in a fake “suicide” or “accident”. The KCIA monitored dissidents, and sometimes detained and tortured them at Namyeong-dong. (Almost 400 activists were tortured there over 30 years.)
Many South Korean leftists were naïve about the (even more) repressive conditions in North Korea, but there was little contact or coordination with the North, and no basis to government charges that these people were “North Korean spies”.
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Dong-il Textile Company and Y.H. Trading labor conflicts
Two real-life labor conflicts—of women working in the textile industry--appear in Sandglass as a lightly fictionalized composite. (Episode 5) Hye-rin tells Woo-suk of her anguish seeing women laborers (from the Dong-il Textile Company) on hunger strike at the Christian Hall, where they have taken refuge. Hye-rin cries from guilt; she has rice while the workers go hungry.
(Episode 6) The striking workers flee to Kim Young-sam’s New Democratic Party headquarters. (Still called Dong-il in the drama, this part is actually Y. H. Trading.) The chilly relationship between students and politicians is clear in an exchange between Hye-rin and the head of the student association. --Will the NDP allow the women to stay? --They have to, or they will lose their little remaining support… (Disunity between students and politicians hindered opposition to the regime.)
Hye-rin is at NDP headquarters in solidarity with the women labor activists. Tae-soo bursts into the NDP offices with his gang and beats up the women laborers as he was hired to do. He spots Hye-rin in the crowd. She calls Tae-soo a jerk and a puppet. He says nothing, but his face reacts: How dare you...I didn’t want this job; Jong-do set it up behind my back...Damn, she has a point...
The corrupt Federation of Korean Trade Unions was put under the control of the KCIA by Park Chung-hee. One of its branches, the National Textile Worker Union, helped suppress the Dong-il and Y.H. women workers’ movements. The NTWU had ‘action squads’—thugs—to forcibly break up the women’s demonstrations.
- 1976-1978: Women laborers at the Dong-il Textile Company in Incheon fight back against gender discrimination: Lower wages, worse work, and harassment by company managers and male co-workers. In July 1976, their attempt to vote for union representation is met with violence and arrests—72 arrested, 14 hospitalized. In February 1978, the women hold a 15-day hunger strike at Myung Dong Catholic Cathedral. (Churches, which were exempt from censorship, were centers of social activism. The Korean Catholic Church under Cardinal Kim Su-hwan was a force for change, and Myeongdong Cathedral a safe haven.) On March 10, more than 100 women rush the stage at a televised event with the Prime Minister. The protesters are beaten and arrested on live television. 126 campaign leaders are fired and blacklisted. (Well worth reading the long version here. Those who have seen Sandglass will recognize some key details.)
- 1979 August: The owner of Y.H. Trading (a major export wig and garment manufacturer) flees to the United States with the company’s money. The mostly female workers, already suffering under sweatshop conditions, demonstrate in protest. Police raid the plants and brutally beat the workers. In desperation, nearly 200 workers flee to Kim Young-sam’s New Democratic Party headquarters and start a hunger strike. On the third day, 1,000 riot cops burst in, beat and arrest the women, killing one and wounding 100 workers and opposition party members. The public is outraged. The Y.H. Trading incident is widely regarded as a a key event turning the public against Park’s regime.
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Hye-rin’s student activism exposes her to more and more danger. When her father’s connections are used to get her out of jail, she objects: She hates to be safe when her friends are in danger. Meanwhile, Woo-suk interrupts his law studies for his mandatory military service.
- 1979 October: NDP leader (and future Korean president) Kim Young-sam is stripped of his Assembly seat while police block opposition lawmakers from the chamber. All 69 opposition assembly members resign in protest. Widespread university protests follow, joined by the general public.
- October 18: Martial law declared in Busan, Kim Young Sam’s hometown and center of protests. (Park had already sent in troops the day before.) Protests spread to Masan. The Bu-Ma Democratic Protests are treated as rioting, and Park plans a violent response. KCIA head Kim Jae-gyu objects, which leads to:
- October 26: Park Chung-hee assassinated by Kim Jae-gyu, head of his own KCIA. Kim and other KCIA men involved are quickly arrested and entire country put under martial law, but with promise of democratic elections.
- December 12: Chun Doo-hwan arrests the Martial Law Commander and carries out 12.12 Coup with help of the Hanahoe. Roh Tae-woo plays key role. Troops ostensibly under joint American-Korean Combined Forces Command (CFC) are moved unilaterally using the separate Hanahoe chain of command. Because news is censored, the public does not even know there has been a coup at first.
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Bad timing, Woo-suk! (Episode 7) He becomes a paratrooper—a ‘black beret’-- just as the new junta starts its crackdown. (Both paratroops and ordinary units learned tactics to suppress protests and arrest leaders during the Chun regime’s new “Chungjeong (loyalty) training.”) Woo-suk takes part in suppression operations.
- 1980 March: Universities reopen, students immediately make them centers of protest.
- April 14: Chun Do-hwan names himself director of the KCIA.
- May 14: Tens of thousands of university students protest against Chun and martial law, and for press freedoms and labor rights. Troops and armored vehicles deployed around Seoul.
- 1980 May 15: 100,000 students gather in Seoul, similarly in other cities. Kim Young-sam’s New Democratic Party submits a resolution to repeal martial law. The students, seeing that the general public will not join them, and hoping Chun will make concessions, retreat to their universities.
- 1980 May 17: Chun Doo-hwan declares nationwide martial law and completes his government takeover. Universities in Seoul and Gwangju are raided, and many student leaders put into military custody. Dissidents and major opposition politicians, including Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, as well as key allies of Park Chung-hee (like Kim Jong-pil), are rounded up. Those who escape detention go into hiding. With Iran on his mind, President Carter accepts the military junta’s tactics.
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Hye-rin joins the student protests against the regime, and narrowly escapes being rounded up in the government’s raid on universities. (Episodes 7-8) She hides out in a fishing village, where she meets one of the Dong-il Textile Company labor activists she idolized. The woman spent months in a mental institution, and is now a shattered wreck. Hye-rin is shocked—and looking at what could be her own future when the National Security Bureau catches her (Episode 9).
Meanwhile, President Yoon is at a loss. Yoon had been part of Kim Jae-gyu’s circle of influence; after Kim assassinates Park, Yoon’s years of bribes go down the drain. He has to start from scratch, getting to know (and bribe) the new Chun regime’s different (and even more corrupt) network.
Gwangju Uprising and Massacre
(Episodes 7-8) Tae-soo visits a friend in Gwangju just as the shit hits the fan. He tries to leave, but buses out of town are cancelled, phone lines are cut—Tae-soo is trapped.
Meanwhile, Woo-suk’s regiment is sent to Gwangju. Goody-two-shoes Woo-suk is one of the bad guys, violating human rights, while gangster Tae-soo falls in with the pro-democracy forces. The line between righteous and damned blurs and shifts.
National leaders are shown debating how harshly to crack down on the uprising. One says: We should be careful...U.S. President Carter cares about human rights. Another scoffs: The U.S. cares about strong leaders. That’s what’s important. We mustn’t look weak. This is the only reference in Sandglass to U.S.-ROK relations.
Kim Dae-jung’s arrest triggered major demonstrations in his home base of South Jeolla.
- 1980 May 18: In Gwangju, troops under command of General Chong Ho-yong (Hanahoe and T-K faction member) violently clash with demonstrators, beating students bloody with clubs and hauling them away in military vehicles. Bystanders are outraged, and more civilians join the demonstrators.
- May 19: The crowds continue to grow, as witnesses to the previous day’s violence join the protests. Hundreds of bus and taxi drivers form a blockade with their vehicles in solidarity. Protesters upset with news disinformation set fire to the offices of KBS and MBC. Paratroopers respond with brutal force. Many university students are taken out of action; ordinary citizens replace them.
- May 20: Troops withdraw as civilian “democracy fighters” seize control of Gwangju. South Korean Supreme Court confirms the death sentences of Park assassin Kim Jae-gyu and his accomplices; press attention to this event distracts from Gwangju.
- May 21: 100,000 citizens surround the provincial government building. Paratroopers fire on the demonstrators. In response, the citizens seize weapons from local armories, occupy the provincial government building, and declare Gwangju liberated from Chun’s military dictatorship. That evening, martial law troops seal off the perimeter of Gwangju, trapping and isolating the inhabitants.
- May 23: U.S. State Department affirms support for “the restoration of security and order in South Korea while deferring pressure for political liberalization.”
- May 24: Kim Jae-gyu, Park assassin, serial human rights violator as head of KCIA, and possibly secret pro-democracy ally (some say...) is executed by hanging.
- May 27: Troops return to Gwangju with tanks and armored personnel carriers. They carry out a bloodbath, including indiscriminate firing on civilians by helicopter gunships.
Troops wildly attacked demonstrators with club, bayonet, and boot. It was far beyond the usual harsh suppression; so extreme, witnesses struggled for words to describe it.
Official death toll: Less than 200. Eyewitness accounts: Over 800. Unofficial estimates range as high as 2,000 (hundreds are registered missing.) Many more suffered abuse and torture, including rape. Troops under joint US command were used, making the United States visibly complicit in the massacre.
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Tae-soo is once again convinced there is no justice to rely on, only loyalty to friends. Woo-suk questions whether he is fit to pass judgement on others after participating in unforgivable crimes. (Episode 9) Hye-rin is left traumatized, depressed, and cut off from the democracy movement after her ordeal in Namyeong-dong.
Samchung re-education camps
Tae-soo is soon swept up in Chun Doo-hwan’s “purification program,” and sent to the Samchung re-education camps. (Episodes 11-12) Many sent there had done nothing wrong; Sandglass focuses on actual “hooligans,” making clear that no one deserves this:
- 1980 August: Military Junta establishes Samchung re-education camps. Almost 60,000 so-called “hooligans” are rounded up between August and January in a "gangster mop-up plan," and around 40,000 sent without trial to brutal “training camps” for ''purification''--a sadistic parody of military training, with hard labor and vicious beatings. Those caught up in the sweeps include petty criminals and political activists, and about 40% have no criminal record. Almost a thousand are students. At least 54 were fatally beaten or otherwise killed.
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Faced with a corrupt system, Tae-soo tries to become too strong to be crushed. Woo-suk tries to reform the system. Hye-rin tries to change the system entirely. In the second half of the drama, Woo-suk is mentored by an older, savvier prosecutor, and that prosecutor’s niece--an intrepid newspaper reporter--fights against censorship.
- 1987 January 14: Pak Jong-chul, a student activist, dies under torture. Initial cover-up is thwarted by courageous medical examiner and prosecutor. Student protests are joined by workers and supported by the general public.
- June 9: Student protestor Lee Han-yeol seriously injured by teargas canister; he dies a month later. Protests increase.
- June 10: Chun Doo-hwan announces his successor—Roh Tae-woo. This is the last straw which triggers:
- June 10-29: June Uprising: AKA June Struggle or 6.10 people's struggle. Nationwide outbreak of demonstrations and protests by a wide swath of society.
- June 29: Roh Tae-woo accepts direct election of president and other reforms.
- November 29: DPRK operatives bomb ROK passenger jet; 115 dead.
- December 16: Dissident leaders Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung split the opposition vote; Roh Tae-woo wins the presidential election with a narrow plurality.
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In 1987, the June Uprising --the flowering of the seed planted in Gwangju 7 years before--forces Chun Doo-hwan to allow democratic elections. The disappointing aftermath: A split opposition allows Chun’s protege Roh Tae-woo to win the presidency. This is where the drama ends.
Postscript: Bribery and false-name accounts
There was a breathtaking level of corruption under Park—doing business routinely involved enormous bribes. The bribes, and the true face of companies’ ownership, were concealed in false name accounts—as shown in Sandglass. The limits on moving money abroad were widely subverted (in Sandglass with President Yoon’s use of Swiss bank accounts).
Under Chun the corruption and bribery got even worse, and business leaders started objecting. In Sandglass, President Yoon balks at the outright theft. His secret account book—in which he kept a record of every bribe paid, with date and recipient—comes out of its safe deposit box. Its contents are explosive—if only the press or the law dared touch it.
In December 1992, Kim Young-sam was elected president to succeed Roh-Tae-woo, in the first peaceful transfer of power by popular vote to a civilian government. President Kim cracked down on corruption and banned false-name accounts:
- 1993 August 12: Kim Young-sam suddenly decrees that financial transactions must be under real names. Any advance notice would have given opportunity to hide money, or quash the change (as previous efforts had failed). Almost all false-name accounts are transferred to real-name accounts. The new rules make it possible for prosecutors to start tracing financial shenanigans.
Sandglass aired in January-February 1995. Months later, the full extent of the kick-back system was exposed:
- 1995 October 19: Opposition lawmaker Park Kye-dong—on the floor of the National Assembly--reveals that Roh Tae-woo has a secret $500 million slush fund. He has receipts: copies of Roh’s false-name accounts.
- October 27: Roh Tae-woo confesses to $650 million in slush funds, and massive self-enrichment during his time in office. (For scale: median ROK income in 1995 is ~$10,000/yr.) Investigators find dramatic evidence—like millions in cash packed in apple boxes--and nine prominent CEOs are indicted for bribery (they receive suspended sentences).
- November 25: Some kind of justice at last: Roh is arrested. Kim Young-sam bows to public opinion, announces special legislation to allow prosecution of Chun and Roh for the 12.12 coup and Gwangju massacre.
- December 3: Chun Doo-hwan is arrested, remains defiant.
- 1996 August: Roh Tae-woo sentenced to 22 ½ years, Chun Doo-hwan sentenced to death for his role in the Gwangju massacre and other crimes.
- 1997: Court rulings reduce Chun’s sentence to life in prison, Roh’s to seventeen years.
- 1997 December 18: Kim Dae-jung elected president.
- December 20: Incumbent Kim and president-elect Kim jointly agree to pardon Chun, Roh, and twenty-three others for “grand national reconciliation.” At least the precedent of prosecution remains.
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As monstrously long as this is, I had to leave out most of the drama characters. The opening credits show the extended main cast:
Extended credits: Starring Choi Min-soo as Park Tae-soo, Go Hyun-jung as Yoon Hye-rin, Park Sang-won as Kang Woo-suk, and Lee Jung-jae as Baek Jae-hee. A strong extended supporting cast includes Jung Sung-mo as Lee Jong-do (evil high school friend/gangster), and Park Geun-hyung as President Yoon. Also Lee Hee-do as Park Sung-bum (Tae-soo’s first gang boss), Jo Min-soo as Jung Sun-young (Woo-suk’s landlady, and later wife), Lee Seung-yun as Reporter Shin, Park Young-ji as (righteous) chief prosecutor, Kim Jong-gyul as Lawyer Min (works for Yoon), Nam Sung-hoon as Jang Do-shik (shadowy government fixer, Yoon family “friend”/business associate/betrayer). Action director: Hwang Jang-lee (he also has a small role, as President Yoon’s security chief). Hwang is a taekwondo master perhaps best known for his work in Hong Kong film (e.g. as "Thunderleg" with Jackie Chan in Drunken Master).
Selected references:
Buzo, Adrian. The Making of Modern Korea. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Choi, Jungwoon, transl. by Yu Young-nan. The Gwangju Uprising: The Pivotal Democratic Movement That Changed the History of Modern Korea. Paramus, NJ: Homa & Sekey Books, 2006.
Lankov, Andrei. The Dawn of Modern Korea. Seoul: EunHaeng NaMu, 2007.
Lankov, Andrei. The Real North Korea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Oh, John Kie-Chiang. Korean Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Shin, Gi-Wook, Hwang, Kyung Moon. Contentious Kwangju: The May 18th Uprising in Korea's Past and Present. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003.
Stokes, H. S., Lee, L. X. H. The Kwangju Uprising: Eyewitness Press Accounts of Korea’s Tiananmen. Armonk, NY: M.E.Sharpe, 2000.
Stueck, William. Rethinking the Korean War: a New Diplomatic and Strategic History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
A few additional online resources:
Ahn Jong-cheol looks back at the May 18 Gwangju uprising and reckoning in ekoreajounal.
Se Young Jang looks at the contested history of the Gwangju uprising here.
I learned how to insert links to full-sized images from Krotor’s diary here.