The Shorrock Files is now a membership site at Patreon. Welcome!
For 20 years I’ve maintained timshorrock.com as an archive of my nearly 50 years of journalism and two collections of documents: my “Cherokee Files” on the Gwangju Uprising of 1980 and the research I’m doing for my upcoming book DMZ Empire on the hidden history of US intervention in Japan and South Korea after World War II.
That free arrangement is getting difficult for me. To help me to continue this site so you can continue to use it, please donate at the PayPal button wherever you find it. You can also support my work by become a Patron of DMZ Empire here or at the link below.
Sign up at my Patreon.
Please note that The Shorrock Files are AI-free. We humans must think for ourselves. If you want to follow me at my other sites, find me on Twitter/X, BlueSky, and Empire Blues/Substack.
Click here to go to the home page and start reading.
Meanwhile, here’s an explanation and history of the Cherokee Files on Gwangju.
Explanation and history of the Cherokee Files
Over the years, many of you have come back time after time to read my stories and download my documents, free of charge. I can tell from my user statistics and records that some of you are teachers or professors who bring along students to your searches on the site as you share and explain the context of the documents you are reading. Others are journalists. Some are from research institutes and corporations and government agencies I may have written about. Most are individuals doing specific research on the many topics I’ve covered here since 2006.
Without almost zero publicity, I receive 21,900 page views a year, 17,300 unique (individual) visits, and 15,700 first time visits. On a daily basis, that comes to 60 page views, 47 unique visits, and 43 first time visits – not bad for zero marketing. Obviously, my site means something to a lot of people, from everywhere. Here’s how usage has risen and fallen over the last 15 years.
The strongest year was 2016, when I spent a lot of time in South Korea and my page views reached nearly 40,000. In 2023 and 2024 readership shot up again because I redesigned the website and began posting a lot more stories here and on my Patreon. Traffic is growing this year with the launch of my new Substack, Empire Blues.
The Cherokee Documents
As many regulars here know, my full collection of FOIA documents on the Gwangju Uprising was translated into Korean by the Gwangju 5.18 Archives and published in 3 volumes in 2024. For the first time, Koreans could read the entire collection of these documents in their language.
The book was covered extensively in the Korean press, particularly in the Hankyoreh, which has followed my work for years. “US intelligence records obtained by an American journalist — and now out in Korean translation — show how meticulously the US watched as a junta massacred those protesting for democracy,” the newspaper wrote in its coverage of the collection.
Starting soon, I will start posting that entire FOIA collection in the order they appear in the book. They will be in PDF form and accompanied by essays exploring the circumstances and context for each set of documents and cables. This will greatly expand the archives already on this site, and make The Shorrock Files the only place besides the 5.18 Archives in Gwangju that people around the world can access, read, and download the original documents from this important event in 20th century history.
Another benefit: If you sign up for The Shorrock Files through Patreon, I will send you a free one-year subscription to Empire Blues with Tim Shorrock at Substack, where I’m doing most of my narrative writing these days. If you sign up as an institutional subscribers, you’ll get a free lifetime subscription to Empire Blues. Just send me an email, let me know of your Patronage choice, and I’ll make the arrangements myself.
Thank you for your support!
