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The last time South Korea imposed martial law, Gwangju endured a deadly crackdown. Han Kang, the Nobel Prize-winning author, told its story in “Human Acts.”
Dec. 6, 2024Updated 6:06 a.m. ET
The wound from where the soldier struck her is long gone, but Jang Sang-nam, 88, can still trace its outlines on her head.
“Here, with the butt of a rifle,” she says when asked where she was hurt while she was out looking for her son, reflexively taking her trembling, sinewy fingers to her right temple. “This eardrum was burst. I still can’t hear.”
Her injury was inflicted 44 years ago, when this ginkgo-tree-lined midsize city in the southwest of South Korea erupted in a student-led uprising for democracy, a day after the military ruler declared nationwide martial law. Paratroopers stormed the city, Gwangju, and brutally beat, stabbed and indiscriminately fired upon throngs of citizens young and old. Hundreds were left dead or missing.
This week, when President Yoon Suk Yeol stood in front of the South Korean people and declared martial law for the first time since then, the outrage was deepest in Gwangju, where memories are still raw of resistance paid for in blood.
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In the intervening decades, in a country whose modern history has been defined by rapid change and swift adaptation, Gwangju has sought to remember and be remembered for the bloodshed that marked a foundational moment in South Korea’s path to democracy.
