The Kwangju Uprising: A Miracle of Asian Democracy as Seen by the Western and the Korean Press

Published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Kwangju "incident".

In Kwangju, South Korea, in 1980 a student uprising ended in the brutal suppression and massacre of protestors, an event burned into the minds of all South Koreans. This text presents original South Korean accounts of the incident, along with the reports of Western journalists who witnessed events.

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.