Man who resisted fighting Gwangju protesters cited

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Man who resisted fighting Gwangju protesters cited

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Kim Dong-kwan, center, won “National Meritorious Person” status from a local court on Jan 23. Kim has been suffering severe mental illness since he was sent to crack down on demonstrators during the Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980. By Kim Kyung-bin

A court has ordered a veterans’ office to grant “National Meritorious Person” status to a 51-year-old man who has suffered from schizophrenia since he served as a paratrooper cracking down on demonstrators during the Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980.

Kim Dong-kwan was a student activist at Korea University’s College of Political Science and Economics in the late 1970s and was strongly opposed to then-President Park Chung Hee’s Yusin [“revitalizing reform”] policy. However, he was conscripted into the Third Special Airborne Force Brigade in 1979 and later sent to Gwangju, in a drive to suppress massive civil protests that broke out from May 18 to May 27, 1980. He was issued live ammunition to fire at protesters, and sometimes had to dig graves to bury the dead.

He was bullied and beaten up by his fellow soldiers when he resisted using his weapon, Kim insisted.

Friends say the experience changed Kim forever. Once known to friends as an “outgoing and friendly college student,” Kim was diagnosed with schizophrenia four months after he was discharged from the military in November 1981.

Friends say he has lived with deep guilt about his actions and has been in psychiatric treatment for 29 years. He was frequently haunted by hallucinations of neighbors berating him for gunning down innocent civilians.

His condition left him unable to sustain a normal life.

Things went from bad to worse in 2002 when his wife of 12 years divorced him. She had failed in her attempt to have him recognized as a National Meritorious Person and said she said she could no longer live with him, fearing the stigma that could be passed to the couple’s then-5-year-old son.

Feeling that they could not sit by and watch their friend’s life fall further into a black hole, Kim’s friends in 2007 filed a petition with the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs’ Suwon District Office to accept Kim as a National Meritorious Person.

The office, however, declined to grant Kim the status, stating that “there is no objective evidence that can prove Kim started suffering from psychiatric disorders while he was in military service.”

Led by Jeon Seong, Kim’s friends took this issue to court. Jeon had once been a student activist and participated in the same circle as Kim. He was arrested in October 1980 for organizing student demonstrations in Seoul to publicize the government’s actions in Gwangju. Jeon later was granted May 18 Movement Meritorious Person status in 2000 and won 40 million won ($29,048) in compensation. Jeon used the money to study for the national bar exam, which he successfully passed in 2004.

“Dong-kwan told me he was severely beaten by his higher-ups after he made critical remarks about military operations at the time,” Jeon said.

Kim’s 75 college mates also submitted written petitions to the court. They spent years helping Kim win the case by collecting documents and pictures and persuading eyewitness to testify. It was not easy, they said. When they inquired about Kim’s records at the Third Special Airborne Force Brigade they were told they didn’t exist.

A lawyer representing the district office said, “There is no clear proof that Kim was actually in Gwangju at that time.”

To win the case, the friends needed clear evidence proving Kim was actually at the scene. Finally, they found a senior soldier who was sent to Gwangju with him. However, when they asked him to testify, he was reluctant to get involved.

The three friends got down on their knees to plead with him. “Dong-kwan has a son. The boy thinks his father is a ruined man,” they reportedly said. “Please give the boy a chance to understand his father.”

They thought their pleas had gone unheard. But on Dec. 19 - the last day of witness testimony - the soldier surprised everybody by appearing in court as a witness. He presented to the judge a photograph of Kim and himself taken in front of South Jeolla Provincial Government Building.

On Jan. 23, the court ordered the district office to give Kim National Meritorious Person status.


By Kang In-sik JoongAng Ilbo [mijukim@joongang.co.kr]
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