Why We Were Called Rioters
Twenty eight years ago, when I was two years old, many people died in my home town and nobody knew what happened there. President Park Chung-Hee, who was a dictator ruling for eighteen years, was assassinated on October 26, 1978. After that, army general Chun Doo-Hwan took control of the government through the revolt of December twelfth. As a result of the nation’s democratization movement, which had been pressed down during Park’s political power, exploded into nationwide demonstrations. Nevertheless, the government declared martial law which means that the army controlled the country, so democratization movement culminated at Seoul station on May 15, 1980, in which 200,000 students and citizens participated. In response, the government decided to expand martial law to the whole nation on May 18, 1980. They prohibited political gatherings and demonstrations, closure of universities and inspected the media, such as TV and newspapers. May 18, 1980, this day has special meaning to me and during those days lots of incidents happened, after that they were called rioters by military government even though they were peaceful protestors.
At that time my uncle was a university student in my home town. On the morning of May 18, my uncle went to school; he saw that the students against airborne units were blocking the university gate. Suddenly airborne units suppressed them by beating them with clubs and some of them were wounded, so my uncle ran away to downtown same as others and continued to protest against the military government and martial law. In spite of repression, the number of protesters rapidly increased and became a crowd by May 20, because airborne units hit normal citizens who never even participated in the protest and they pierced citizens by using bayonets. My father and uncle said that most people were mad because of violence suppression, but they just ran away from soldiers. However, on May 21 about one o’clock, what...