Progress Report 21.1

Annyongh hasseyo,

How's you? Yeah? Excellent.

Here, listen, right – are you sitting down? If you're not, I think you should. Why? Well, I'm about to do something shocking. If you're wearing a tie, then loosen it a shade, and it might be wise to take your shoes off too. If you're prone to fitting, then bite down on something appropriately yielding. If you're heavily pregnant, then sit on a couple of old towels. Okay?

Ready? Here we go...

I would like to issue an apology to the nation of Canada.

Okay, breathe! Breathe with me, now! Easy... That's it – nice and slow. Calm down and let me explain myself.

I know that in previous reports, I've been unequivocal and reassuring in the certitude of my judgment on the world's limpest nation and its citizens, but now I find my staunchness softened. I'm not sure if there's been a fundamental change in my psychological profile or if it's down to my new fabric conditioner or what, but I can no longer say with any level of honesty that I hate everything and everyone that has come out of Canada.

Don't get me wrong: This is in no way a complete volte-face; not by any means - you won't find '180' in the Stevie Bee dictionary. But I have to concede that whilst the vast majority of Canadians in Korea may be worth nothing beyond their organ donor card, there are some of them that are perfectly decent human beings. It's never easy to admit your mistakes but I have to accept that there are a precious handful of Canucks that have been admitted to grassy green fold of my affection; it is with them in mind that I offer this humble apology for my strident absolutism. I'm truly sorry, and whilst as a nation and a culture, Canada may be still be sadly lacking, as a people, I accept that it's not all bad news. Now let's put the whole nasty business behind us, shall we?

I'm glad that's out of the way as there is a much meatier topic that I wish to address: Massacres.
Yes, massacres. We've all got a favourite massacre, haven't we? Some of us have even got a top ten. Ask around a sample of your friends and it's almost inevitable that the same few names will come up: The Jonestown Massacre (where cultists were culled in the jungle); the Sharpeville Massacre (in which police picked off peaceful protesters in South Africa); the Tiananmen Square Massacre (when China disciplined unarmed students in their own inimitable fashion) – these are all classics of the genre. Some connoisseurs rate the Massacre of Berwick from 1291, when Edward I's army slaughtered the entire population of the luckless Scotch border town; whilst others favour the Sack of Antwerp from 1576, when Spanish troops showed their dissatisfaction at a delay in being paid by killing 8,000 people. It's a subject that gets people talking round dinner tables and in nightclubs up and down the country, but in amongst the argument and counter-argument, there's one massacre whose name is often overlooked: Korea's Kwangju Massacre of 1980.

I have to admit that up until a few weeks ago, I would have missed out this particular slaughter myself. Until I noticed it mentioned in passing in an article in a Korean newspaper, I knew nothing at all about it. My interest piqued by the aside, I looked further into it, did some proper research and then used it as a topic for discussion in a couple of my conversation classes. Responses to the subject varied – older students had much to say, but the younger ones didn't really care (which is either a sad indictment or a telling truth). The Kwangju Massacre is very recent history and a particularly dark chapter in the founding of the South Korea of today - dark but pivotal and, I would venture, essential to understanding the mindset of the modern Korean, should you ever want to achieve such a task.

Let me first give you some background. After the Korean War (1950-53), the newly re-proportioned nation of the Republic of Korea found itself in something of a spot. The Americans, who'd been so instrumental in causing the war and securing an armistice, left the government to get on with governing, sparing a few thousand GIs just a phone call away should things get out of hand. The nation was impoverished, underpopulated and starving half-to-death. Most infrastructure and a half of all housing had been destroyed. Things were unmistakably bleak, although for the uneducated farming peasantry that formed the primary social profile, life had been various shades of shitty for quite some time prior.

As a newly-acquired protégé of the United States, South Korea set about establishing a free-market economy in the mould of many a developing nation at that time. They really were starting from the ground up, so the first thing that was needed was an educated class that could order about the rabble. With this in mind, the Korean First Republic's first President Syngman Rhee (who ruled with the robustly autocratic leanings that would set the trend for this office for the next few decades) introduced a programme of investment in education, and legislation that would make participation compulsory. Although this was the first step on the road to economic success and stability, it also created a generation of literate workers who would come to challenge the means in which this stability was being achieved.

The first of such challenges came in 1960, when students publicly voiced their displeasure about an election that led to Rhee's chosen candidate being named Vice President by an audaciously comfortable and obviously fraudulent margin. The resulting uprising, its heavy-handed suppression and subsequent scandal eventually led to Rhee resigning from office in a surprisingly docile fashion, though this climbdown must have been made easier for him by the knowledge that he was taking $20 million of embezzled funds with him (another motif of the Korean presidency). A parliamentary election was called and the opposition Democratic Party won hands-down. Demonstrations and union activities burst into flower in the new atmosphere of post-Rhee freedom, though amidst the celebration of worker solidarity, the economy (already suffering from the corruption endemic during Rhee's premiership) went distinctly sour. Five year plans were hastily drawn up, but before they could be put into action, the military declared the party over and Major General Park Chung Hee took the helm.

Here he would remain until 1979, and from the moment he came to power, it was all about the economy. During the 18 years of his rule, Park transformed the economy by focusing on export-led industrialization, dragging Korea up from the mire that swamped its Third World Asiatic contemporaries. This success was paid for by working Koreans with old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness elbow grease. Throughout the Sixties and Seventies, if you weren't at work then you'd better be dying or dead. You lived next to your factory (hence the branded apartment blocks here), and a curfew siren sounded nightly at midnight, so there was no excuse for arriving to work late or partied out. Opportunities for rebellion or dissent were limited – Park established the KCIA (Korean Central Intelligence Agency) to deal effectively with opponents of his plan for the nation, and his treatment of opposition rankled even the highest ranks of his government. His single-minded devotion to his self-imposed duty is well illustrated by the fact that when his wife was killed by a North Korean assassin's bullet intended for himself, he still finished the speech that the act interrupted.

This was one of several North Korean attempts on his life, but in the end, it was the director of his own KCIA that managed to complete the task successfully. Although a close friend, Kim Jae Gyu shot President Park over dinner, along with his bodyguard, whilst his agents dispensed with four more guards. Confusion surrounds the incident itself, which was initially claimed by Kim to be an accident, but speculation on the matter ranges from it being a spontaneous act of passion to a cold and calculated coup by the KCIA, with the latter being by far more in step with what we have come to expect from Korea's upper echelons. Whatever the motivation, widespread calls for democracy in the wake of the dictator's assassination were quickly answered in the negative by a military coup d'etat led by Major General Chun Doo Hwan.

And this brings us to the time of the massacre at hand. The students and labour unions protesting against authoritarian rule weren't quite ready to take no for an answer, especially when fortune had seemed to present such a perfect opportunity for government by popular decree. Its economy at the end of the 70's was shaky but generally healthy and quotidian Korea looked and acted to the greater extent like any other modern nation of the period. It had over the previous two decades become a nation transformed. Now the people whose tireless hard work had brought about this transformation decided they wanted the democratic rights that befitted their developed status. Amidst generalised and widespread public fractiousness, thousands of demonstrators - mainly students - took to the streets of the southern city of Kwangju in pursuit of these rights. General Chun declared martial law in response. The local university was closed and a resulting protest was dealt with with lustful violence by paratroopers. Seeing students stripped, brutally beaten and bayoneted in the streets led the general citizenry to revolt in sympathy. Civilian militias, well co-ordinated and strikingly numerous, eventually managed to chase out the army and took control of the city, declaring a people's government independent of the military junta in Seoul. You can maybe guess what came next...

The 'commune' of Kwangju lasted for six days, until paratroopers, special forces and riot police rolled into the city, shooting on sight. The following day, Kwangju was back under military control. Quoted casualty numbers vary wildly but it is generally accepted that between 500 and 2,000 people died. Most bodies were dumped in mass graves or lakes so accuracy in the matter is difficult. One of my students was 12 years old when this happened and lived in Kwangju. He told me he how he ventured out the following day to see dozens of bodies lying in the main square, all with bullet wounds to the head. The policy of the military, he says, was clearly to systematically execute the protesters.

This all took place at the command of Major General Chun Doo Hwan and with the approval of the United States. The people of Korea had thought of the American presence as a protective force against the excesses of their own government, but the US were fearful of an ally against communist North Korea unraveling, and thus was the justification cited by President Chun. Whilst the Korean government have apologised for the slaughter, the United States has never even investigated the incident, and their tacit acceptance and alleged green-lighting of massacre meant that the movement for democracy in Korea became coupled with a movement against the American presence on the peninsular. Anti-US sentiment aside, the Kwangju Massacre marked a watershed in Korea's progress towards democracy by redoubling the determination of the people to end military dictatorship through peaceful means. This they finally achieved in 1987. Ever since, they have enjoyed a rule of government marked by continual ineffectualness and corruption, of the sort enjoyed by other modern democratic states.

So what effect did this cruel and brutal slaughter of its citizens by their own army have upon the Korea of today? As I said, the younger of my students were aware that it happened but uninterested in discussing it too far. They seemed to be of the opinion that it happened a long time ago and was of little relevance today. By coincidence, I saw an article in the Korea Times last week reporting that a right wing think-tank were going to recommend to the government that the incident be taught in history lessons from a less 'socialist' viewpoint, but I doubt that this means that it is currently drilled into high school students with fiery Stalinist rhetoric. This does however reflect the ambivalent view with which the incident appears to be generally regarded. Whilst none of my students have admitted to holding such an opinion themselves (and indeed, some have fervently disavowed it), there is a feeling in some quarters that the Kwangju Massacre was a regrettable but necessary evil to assure the economic success and security enjoyed by Korea today. They perceive the protesters in the South as little more than North Korean sympathizers who were eager to undermine the economic progress of the Korean Republic and reduce the nation to a cripped socialist state.

This right-wing revisionism is not yet the norm though, but those long years under the jackboot have had an equally ambivalent effect on the Korean character. On the one hand, even without the staunch autocracy of a military dictatorship hanging over their heads, Koreans remain unimpeachably industrious. They will work longer and harder than any one of us sluggardly Western cream-puffs would ever dream of. If their boss requires it, they will work as late as is needed, and if they must, they will work the whole weekend without a tut or a whimper. They will also be expected to socialise with their co-workers until the boss says they can go home - the colleague bond is far greater than the tempered hatred that we Westies take to the office. You have to respect your co-workers even if you dislike them, for you spend much more time with them than you do with your family.

However, whilst they may take it from 'the man' in such a seemingly obsequious fashion, if the man should try and tinker with their rights or their unions, then by God, do the workers come out fighting! We Western types usually react to an unfair change in working practices by standing outside our workplace with a simpering protest scrawled on a piece of cardboard. In Korea, the standard currency of labour negotiations is the Molotov cocktail. They agitate with a passion. In the past few weeks, both teachers and truckers have taken to the streets in aggravated displays of worker solidarity, despite doom-laden warnings against it from those in power. The only time one is really at risk in a public place in Korea is when there's a demo on, for just as the workers love them, the authorities dislike them intensely and deal with them in a most forthright manner.

The conflicting parts of the Korean worker's personality seem to be in part formed by anger at their previous abuse and in part happy with the comfortable lifestyle that that abuse has created. This is what leads some to forgive the events in Kwangju - or at least accept their necessity - whilst others are still understandably bitter in their anger and condemnation. But what is disappointing and a little alarming is the younger generation's complacency towards the sacrifices of their forebears. Perhaps their lack of connection with their recent history is an educational issue, or maybe they feel past wrongs should be forgotten. Maybe it is due to the pro-actively ignorant American influence upon their thinking that creates their lack of interest. The character of the Koreans of tomorrow we shall leave, however, for another report, for they stand to inherit a world that will be as strikingly different as it was for their parents. It is interesting to note though that even brutal, repressive military dictatorships can look rosy in the warm glow of nostalgia – the prime candidate for the right-wing opposition party in next year's Presidential elections is none other than Park Chung Hee's daughter.

Oof. Well, I'm sorry if that turned into a bit of a history lecture, but it can't all be fun and games. If it helps lighten the mood, I've got a bucketful of gratitude here and I'm about to empty it into Brendan 'I Hate Lincoln City' Maverick's lap. Why? Because as soon as he'd finished launching yet another anti-Imps tirade on the Lincoln City website's message board, he logged off the interweb, went to the post office and mailed me the following: The Long Firm, by Jake Arnott; Killing Ground, by Gerald Seymour; I'm Not Scared, by Niccolo Ammaniti; Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain and Mystic River, by Dennis Lehaine. It was a sterling effort from the lad and it's this kind of passion and commitment that's seen him banned from football grounds the length and breadth of the country. Thanks again, Bren.

Well that's me for now. Michelle and I are going on holiday to Vietnam for Christmas (which she's agreed to presumably because she's unaware of the non-stop torrent of 'Nam film references that I shall be treating her to), but before we go I shall make time to drop you all a special Seoul-ful yuletide message.

Until then,

Annyonghi hasseyo,

S