BuMa Uprising October 1979
Chronology
August 11 Police arrest 170 workers during YH Company labor strike; worker Kim Kyung-suk is killed.
October 4 Kim Young-sam expelled from National Assembly
October 16 Busan University students march downtown; Army called out: 50,000 protest; 400 arrests, 600 injured; 11 police boxes destroyed.
October 18 Martial Law declared in Busan; Masan protests break out: 10,000+ in streets as workers join.
October 20 Martial Law declared in Masan
October 26 Park Chun-hee assassinated by his own KCIA chief
At the beginning of 1979, Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship appeared as strong as ever. A cycle of protest and repression led to an outburst of anti-Yushin actions in Busan beginning on October 16, and the events there profoundly affected the country. After the army was called out, the protests spread to Masan and both cities were soon under martial law. Less than a week later, Park Chung-hee was shot and killed by his own intelligence chief. Many people hoped democracy had arrived.
In August 1979, 4000 young women textile workers lost their jobs at Y-H Company, and the drama that ensued led directly to the BuMa uprising. Seeking help, about 170 workers sat-in at the headquarters of the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), but the government sent it hundreds of riot police who assaulted them. In the melee, dozens of people, including opposition politicians and journalists, were injured, and one young woman, Kim Kyung-sook, was killed. To protest the police violence, NDP leader Kim Yong-sam and other party members conducted an 18-day sit-in at their own headquarters. In the unfolding democratization movement, women’s labor activism in the 1970s made substantial contributions. They promoted an opposition consciousness with expanded notions of human rights and democracy, and they helped consolidate opposition groups. The minjung identity that was at the heart of the movement originated in great part in the suffering of female factory workers and the rallying of scores of groups that came to their assistance.
Women’s activism resonated with other dissident streams in a process of mutual amplification in the case of BuMa uprising. Cries for an end to Yushin were everywhere to be heard, all over Korea, small groups resisted by many different means, including the formation of book clubs. In 1978, a “good books union” was founded in Busan and soon had 200 members. Like the “jazz clubs” in Czechoslovakia under Soviet rule, informal small group venues provided occasions to freely express opinions and perspectives as well as an opportunity to meet like-minded people. The Busan club would produce activists who would lead the city for more than a decade of struggles. Reading about the Catholic Medellin conference of 1968, Song Gi-in was so impressed by liberation theology that he became a Catholic priest/activist. Arrested more then 48 times by the KCIA, he nonetheless continued to use the safe haven afforded the inner sanctum of the church to lead discussions and hold meetings.
Unwittingly, the Y-H struggle escalated into the final crisis of Yushin and the end of Park Chung-hee. For his public support of Y-H workers, Kim Young-sam was expelled from parliament, as were all elected NDP representatives. Kim Dae Jung’s Democratic Unification Party also resigned in solidarity. On September 4, dozens of students protesting yushin were arrested in Taegu, and by the end of the month, thousands of students in Seoul were in the streets demanding greater freedom. It would be in Busan, however, where the movement’s final blow against yushin would be struck.
BuMa Uprising
In Busan, Kim Young-sam’s home region, when people demonstrated against the NDP’s expulsion, the army was called out and martial law declared. The protests’ sudden popularity surprised everyone—especially the students who initiated them. On October 15, Lee Chin-gol wrote an anonymous anti-Yushin leaflet. Since it meant certain prison if he were seen handing it out, he and a few friends surreptitiously scattered about 90 copies in rest rooms, corridors, and empty lecture rooms at Busan National University. The handbill called on people to gather at 10 a.m. the next day at the campus library to protest Yushin. Unbeknownst to him, Chung Kwan-min also produced a similar hand-printed leaflet. The next morning, Chung rose from his seat in an economics seminar and called on his fellow students to join him: “Classmates, let’s go out and fight for democracy!”
As he strode out the door, a few students followed him, and they all shouted for others to come along. By the time they reached front of the library, 100 students had joined. They sang the national anthem and minjung songs, and within a few minutes, 200 or more students were gathered. Chung rose and read his leaflet verbatim. Conservative professors and undercover police tried to stop them, but people moved to another part of campus. A long line of students was in motion. As the group passed a building—any building at that explosive moment—their ranks swelled. Within an hour, there were 1,000, then 2,000—until finally about 4,000 students gathered, out of a student body of less than 10,000.
Chung tried to lead part of the group off campus through a gate near the high school, but police pushed them back. Spontaneously, people retreated and then divided to break out of campus by one of the three gates. Police again dispersed Chung’s group—this time with tear gas. Hundreds gathered at the library to discuss what to do. At another gate, several thousand were almost able to break through, but police erected barriers to keep them on campus, and they retreated to a soccer field. When the police stepped onto campus, students responded with stones and erected a barricade with basketball backboards. They then pushed through police lines and headed downtown—nearly 10 miles away. Some took buses, while the majority kept together and marched. As they proceeded to walk several miles downtown, citizens they happened to encounter applauded the students, plying them with soft drinks, snacks, and money. Thousands more people swelled their ranks, and the local populace protected them. Activist Kim Ha-gi told me that a friend of his ducked into a supermarket while being pursued by police. The owner quickly lowered the shutters and stepped outside. When police arrived, he simply said, “No cousin, no one is inside,” and the police moved on to search elsewhere.
At 3 p.m., the procession reached downtown Nampodong (site of the 1960 protests that began the uprising to overthrow Syngman Rhee). At least 30,000 people gathered. The police divided the crowd into small groups, but by 5 p.m. people were able to regroup as the national anthem was played and the flag was lowered. “Normally we students disliked the Korean national anthem, but that day we sang it with gusto,” explained Kim Jong-ho.
As soon as the ritual concluded, people surged ahead, but police attacked. By then it was too late for the police to have their way. People overturned police cars and burnt out substations, and the crowd commanded the streets until dawn. “All over the city, small groups huddled together, traded information, planned, dreamed, and for the first time in years, spoke openly about their dreams.” Prostitutes applauded them, as did people in hotels, giving the youth a feeling of being the heroes of a “ticket-tape parade” as they shouted, “Destroy Yushin!”; “End the Dictatorship!”; and “Reinstate Kim Young Sam!” Shopkeepers shared apples and bread. The poor and lumpen joined the street actions, and at one point, they led people to the tax office and set it on fire. More than a dozen police vans were attacked. Despite a midnight curfew and the presence of the army, many students stayed downtown. By 1 a.m. 11 police boxes had been destroyed. When dawn rose, 400 people had been arrested and 600 wounded.
At 10 a.m. the next day, Donga University students organized a new protest. Close to downtown, they led a peaceful assembly from their campus to the downtown area. Once again, local people overwhelmingly supported the students, giving them money, food and water. Sustained by their supporters, the protesters continued into the night. More militant members of the group set upon buildings symbolizing Park’s ruled and set them to the torch. By 9 p.m., two television stations (KBS and MBC), a district revenue office, and other government offices had been destroyed—including 21 police substations. Altogether in the two days of protests, 1,058 arrests, and probably an equal number of wounded. US embassy reports claimed 12,000 people had attacked two television stations and repeated newspaper figures of 800 arrests and 79 police injured.
By the early morning hours of October 18, martial law had been declared in Busan, and army units were in position around City Hall and broadcast stations. Classes were cancelled at all major universities. As one activist related, “Anyone who looked like a student was arrested and beaten, so we all went home.” A small demonstration was easily broken up.
Busan may have been pacified, but the protests spread to neighboring Masan, where once again student demonstrators drew widespread support. Assembling at Masan’s April 19 memorial, over 1000 students from Kyongnam University marched downtown around 5 p.m. and fought their way to the ruling Democratic Republican headquarters. With support from many working class citizens employed in the Export Processing Zone, thousands of people attacked Park Chung-hee’s party office and 18 other public buildings. The government extended martial law to Masan, and the army arrested 238 citizens. To keep the city quiet, 1,500 armed soldiers patrolled the streets.
In four days of the BuMa uprising, at least 1,563 arrests were made, around a third of whom were students. While only a 4-day event, the BuMa uprising was a life-altering experience for many young people who tasted the freedom of the streets for the first time. That struggle generated men and women who went to lead movements in the future. Several, like, Park Kae-dong, went on to become elected members of the National Assembly. Another activist, Noh Moo Hyun, went on to become president of the country. Writer Kim Ha–gi went onto a life of activism. Arrested and tortured during the Gwangju Uprising for throwing leaflets supporting the insurgents from a Busan rooftop on May 19, 1980, he wrote about the June Uprising in 1987 while imprisoned. As he told me, BuMa was the turning point in his life. For him, it was “like the French Revolution, where the people supported the movement. We had always been disappointed before, but this time, the civil revolution really happened. It was as if the dead returned to help the living.” He helped Chung distribute the seminal leaflet that began the October 16 beginning. Like Kim, Chung was also sent on a trajectory of years of activism by his BuMa experiences. After helping run a social science bookstore for years, he became a labor activist.
The main outcome of BuMa was the assassination on October 26 of Park Chung-hee by his own chief of intelligence, Kim Jae-kyu. While sadness and shock were the media reactions, many people celebrated. Thousands of political prisoners were released, suspended student governments were reinstated, and 793 students expelled for BuMa activities, in the words of a US official, “returned to campus as heroes.” Park had ruled with an iron fist for almost two decades, and the country palpably breathed more easily once his grip was gone. Even before his passing, Korea had changed enormously. When he seized power, Korea was overwhelmingly an agrarian, rural based land, but within twenty years, it became an urban industrial society.
On October 15, no one could have guessed how profoundly BuMa would change Korea. Today, thirty years later, people are discussing the uprising’s role in the great democratic victory won by Koreans through years of blood and struggle.
Footnotes:
Interviews with Ko Ho-sok, Chung Kwan-min, Song Gi-in, Kim Jae-kyu, Kim Jong-ho May 30-31, 2001, Busan.
GDMM VII 405.
Gi-wook Shin puts the number at 50,000. See Gi-wook Shin and Kyung Moon Hwang (editors), Contentious Gwangju: The May 18th Uprising in Korea’s Past and Present (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003) p. 117. A Yushin spokesperson described the demonstrations as involving only 3000 students and “hoodlums” by which he meant young men who hang around the port.”
Interviews with Kim Ha-gi, May 30, 2001, Busan.
The May 18th History Compilation Committee of Gwangju, The May 18th Gwangju Democratic Uprising (Gwangju: May 18th Memorial Foundation, 2001) p. 73.
Shin and Hwang, p. xiii.
Democratization Movement and the Christian Church in Korea during the 1970s, p. 109.
May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement Materials, hereafter GDMM, Gwangju City May 18 Historical Materials Compilation Committee 광주광역시 5-18사료 편찬위원회, 5-18 광주 민주화운동자료총서), December 17,1997, Volume VII, pp. 395, 407.
The May 18th Gwangju Democratic Uprising, p. 75; The US Embassy reported a slightly higher figure of arrests at 1568 arrests reported on 29 November. GDMM VII:69. Although the protests occurred in October, Cumings curiously states they occurred in August and September of 1979.” Cumings, “Civil Society in West and East,” in Charles Armstrong, (editor), Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy and the State (London: Routledge, 2002) p. 23.
Chung Kwan-Min mentioned Noh’s involvement to me in 2001---long before Noh became president.
GDMM VIII:495. Ominously the US Secretary of State’s office twice requested the names of these students for indexing. VIII 680.