My latest on Gwangju, posted in 2021 at The Nation. 

This story was the result of my 5-year collaboration with Injeong Kim, the longtime 5.18 reporter for MBC-Gwangju. We interviewed key US officials involved in US decision-making in 1980, including the US commander in Korea, Gen John A. Wickham, and a top aide to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown. The story of US involvement was even worse than we originally thought.

On May 18, South Koreans paused to mark the 40th anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, one of the most traumatic days in their history. The 10-day revolt was triggered when students and ordinary citizens protesting a military coup by a renegade general were attacked by airborne special forces with a viciousness and cruelty that Koreans had not experienced since the darkest days of the Korean War.

The armed resistance by Gwangju’s citizen militia liberated the city from the marauding troops. The townspeople, freed from decades of military rule, kept their city running, buried their dead, and transformed themselves into a self-organized system of mutual aid they now call the Gwangju Commune.

Those who died in Gwangju “believed that the survivors would manage to open up a better world” and “were convinced that the defeat of that day would become the victory of tomorrow,” President Moon Jae-in declared on May 18 in the city square where protesters were killed in 1980…

To read on, click here.