One of the largest political protests in contemporary Korean history, the May 1980 Kwangju Uprising still exerts a profound, often contested, influence in Korean society. Through a deft combination of personal reflections and academic analysis, Contentious Kwangju offers a comprehensive examination of the multiple, shifting meanings of this seminal event and explains how the memory of Kwangju has affected Korean life from politics to culture. In keeping with the book's title, the essays offer competing interpretations of the Kwangju Uprising, yet together provide the most thorough English-language treatment to date of the multifaceted, sweeping significance of this seminal event.

The essential account of the South Korean 1980 pro-democracy rebellion On May 18, 1980, student activists gathered in the South Korean city of Gwangju to protest the coup d’état and the martial law government of General Chun Doo-hwan. The security forces responded with unmitigated violence. Over the next ten days hundreds of students, activists, and citizens were arrested, tortured, and murdered. The events of the uprising shaped over a decade of resistance to the repressive South Korean regime and paved the way for the country’s democratization. This fresh translation by Slin Jung of a text compiled from eyewitness testimonies presents a gripping and comprehensive account of both the events of the uprising and the political situation that preceded and followed the violence of that period. Included is a preface by acclaimed Korean novelist Hwang Sok-yong. Gwangju Uprising is a vital resource for those interested in East Asian contemporary history and the global struggle for democracy.

The Kwangju Uprising that occurred in May 1980 is burned into the minds of South Koreans in much the same way that Tiananmen is burned into the minds of contemporary Chinese. As the world watched in horror following the assassination of President Park Chung Hee, student protesters were brutally suppressed by the military and police led by strongman Chun Doo Hwan. Kim Dae Jung, the current president of South Korea, was imprisoned and sentenced to death during this period. This book recreates those earth-shaking events through eyewitness reports of leading Western correspondents on the scene as well as Korean participants and observers. Photographs, detailed street maps, and dramatic woodblock prints further illuminate the day-to-day drama to keep this atrocity alive in the conscience of the world.

Using extensive documentation, this book examines how President Jimmy Carter's troop withdrawal and human rights policies—conceived in abstraction from East Asian realities—contributed to the demise of Korean President Park Chung Hee. The author suggests that some lessons are relevant beyond Korea, for example, in our treatment of human rights problems in China today.

"Progressive and revolutionary movements of the 70s, which took place across the globe, provide an inspiring and useful guide for contemporary radical political thought and action, even more than those of the 60s. The 60s were a crucial historical turning point and we can certainly learn from those movements, both the victorious and the vanquished, but, fundamentally, they marked the end of an era. The 1970s, in contrast, herald the beginning of our time. In response to the insurgencies of the 60s, new structures of power, many of which are now grouped under the name neoliberalism, were tested and institutionalized, and are essentially the same ones that rule over us today. The progressive and revolutionary struggles of the 70s, then, constituted an initial set of experiments for confronting our current conjuncture, a first test of the terrain. Feminist and gay liberation movements, worker and anticolonial struggles, antinuclear and antiracist projects, along with many others liberation efforts developed in the 70s offer us not only initial analyses of today's structures of economic and political domination, but also forms of critique and resistance most effective against them"--

This new book offers a retrospective appraisal of the Gwangju Uprising by academics, activists and artists from Gwangju, Korea. It analyzes the events of the Gwangju uprising, and traces the birth of South Korean democracy in Gwangju’s stubborn refusal to accept life without freedom.