New Political Science

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Collective Action and Organization in the Gwangju

Uprising*

Na Kahn-chae

To cite this article: Na Kahn-chae (2003) Collective Action and Organization in the Gwangju
Uprising*, New Political Science, 25:2, 177-192, DOI: 10.1080/07393140307196

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New Political Science, Volume 25, Number 2, June 2003

Collective Action and Organization in the

Gwangju Uprising*

Na Kahn-chae
Chonnam National University

Abstract This paper attempts to explain the developmental process of the Gwangju
Uprising, which lasted for 10 days in May 1980. The early stage of the Uprising is
described based on collective behavior theory. After that, groups of movement organiza-
tions appeared with complex relationships among themselves. The relationships finally
reduced into two kinds of solidarities: settlement versus struggle. Struggle solidarity
finally kicked settlement solidarity out and grasped the hegemony of the Uprising. This
paper is a description of the life histories of these groups of movement organizations.

Introduction
From May 18 to 27 in 1980, a large-scale people’s uprising took place in
Gwangju, a city located in the southwestern part of the Korean peninsula. The
Uprising was a civil resistance against the new military authorities, which had
declared martial law. At that time, one of the military factions under General
Jeon Doo-hwan was believed to be in control in the vacuum of political power
created after the military dictator of the time, Bak Jeong-hee who was assassi-
nated by his own security chief. The direct cause of the Uprising was the brutal
crack-down on the demonstrating university students on the streets by the
soldiers. The soldiers’ brutalities were so vicious that it enraged the local citizens
and led to a large-scale uprising involving hundreds of thousands of people. The
special forces of the Martial Law Army employed the indiscriminate violence
upon the unarmed citizens with the rifles, flamethrowers, helicopters and
armored vehicles. It caused the local citizens to arm themselves. After the
repeated clashes, the armed civilian militia finally defeated the Martial Law
Army and was able to control several districts of the city. It was called the
liberated zone. And they kept on driving the soldiers out of the city. The
Uprising, however, came to an end after a week, despite the desperate resistance
of the civilian militia as the reinforced regular army moved in and conducted an
extensive military operation.1

* This paper was made possible by the financial support of the May 18 Memorial
Foundation and North District Office of Gwangju City government.
1
As the result of this uprising, the Martial Law Enforcement Headquarters announced
170 dead (114 civilians, 22 soldiers, and 4 policemen), 380 injured (127 civilians, 109 soldiers,
and 144 policemen), and 1740 arrested and investigated at the moment of May 31, 1980. May
18 Supporting Office of Gwangju City Government, 2000, May 18 Document Collections
(unpublished).

ISSN 0739-3148 print/ISSN 1469-9931 online/03/020177–16  2003 Caucus for a New Political Science
DOI: 10.1080/0739314032000081559
178 Na Kahn-chae

One of the major characteristics of this Uprising that has been stressed by
previous discussions is that it was a spontaneous and unorganized uprising.
And it was collective behavior in an accidental situation, rather than planned
action by organized groups. This perspective can be understood through the
citizens’ anger with the brutalities of the Martial Law Army and the distortion
of facts created by rumors and their snowball effect. Rumors spread rapidly and
created an atmosphere that was the result of an emotional, circular reaction
becoming the generalization of beliefs, a perspective based on Blumer’s theory
of collective behavior.2
Although the Gwangju People’s Uprising showed collective behavioral char-
acteristics at its early stage, it is difficult to conclude that it remained to be
non-organizational throughout the entire process of the Uprising. The various
activities of the civic organizations in town were detected in the process of the
Uprising. Hence, if the organizational perspective is excluded or overlooked in
the study of the Uprising due to its initial development being non-organizational
and spontaneous, it would be difficult to understand the entire process of the
Uprising. It is no exaggeration to say that the movement’s organizations have
been one of the most important issues of research on social movements since the
1970s.3
This, however, doesn’t mean that the collective behavioral perspective and
the organizational perspective for social movements should be understood as
exclusive to each other. It would be more realistic to understand that an uprising
is a process of reciprocal actions and reactions amongst the individual people,
informal groups and organizations and is composed of the collective behavioral
aspects and the organizational aspects at the same time.4 An uprising is dialec-
tical in the sense of a dynamic process that is formed and developed socially
through contradiction and interaction among complex elements.5 Based on this
perspective, this article understands the Gwangju People’s Uprising as a process
of the formation and development of diverse organizations from unorganized
collective actions. This interpretation may answer the questions such as the
following: “How was the driving force of the Uprising formed?” and “By whom
and to where was the Uprising led?”

Unorganized Collective Action

The first stage of the Uprising was the clash between students and the Martial
Law Army soldiers in front of the Front Gate of Chonnam National University.
On their way to the university main campus on the morning of the 18th,

2
H. Blumer, “Collective Behavior”, in J. B. Gitter (ed.), Review of Sociology: Analysis of
a Decade (New York, 1957)
N. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (London: RKP Ltd., 1976).
3
Movement organization is one of the core subjects in the perspective of the resource
mobilization theory or the theory of new social movement. The resource mobilization
theory, especially, focuses on movement organization.
4
Oliver, P. E., “Bringing the Crowd Back In: the Non-organizational Elements of Social
Movement,” in L. Kriesberg (ed.), Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change: A
Research Annual, Vol. 11. (Greenwich: JAI Press INC., 1989), p. 26.
5
Benson, J. Kenneth, “Organizations: A Dialectical View,” Administrative Science
Quarterly, 22, pp. 1–21 (1977).
 Collective Action in the Gwangju Uprising 179

students got into a confrontation with the soldiers blocking the Front Gate.
Around midnight on the previous night, the army had already entered several
universities, including Chonnam University and arrested a number of students
who had remained inside. As the number of students at the Front Gate increased
gradually, the army repeatedly broadcast the warning that: “If you do not return
home immediately, you will be dismissed by force.” In response to this the
students yelled and threw stones at the soldiers and the police, who then
violently attacked the students. The students began to report this brutal incident
to the communities and it drew more students from the other universities
around the town. Eventually, the students’ protest spread rapidly throughout
the entire city.
During the morning, the police had contained the students’ demonstrations
in the city. In the afternoon, however, heavily armed airborne troops were
deployed to the scene of demonstrating students. These soldiers made no
distinction between the demonstrators and the ordinary citizens who happened
to be on the scene and began to beat them and strip them. A large number of
citizens were struck by batons and fell on the streets with blood. Those victims
were taken away by army trucks. The soldiers’ ruthless actions shocked and
angered the citizens and it caused them to become more aggressive. In
consequence, from the late afternoon, Gwangju citizens began to attack
the police stations to occupy them as well as encircling and capturing numer-
ous groups of riot police. While the demonstrations intensified and
spread rapidly, the sense of unity between students and citizens grew
stronger.
By the next day, the number of demonstrators had increased remarkably and
even some high school students started demonstrations in their schools. Traffic
in the central part of the city was blocked completely and more soldiers
were sent into the downtown area. As the Martial Law Army’s response
became increasingly more violent, using armored cars, tanks, and
flamethrowers, more citizens were fatally injured. The rumors began saying
that someone actually saw dead bodies on the streets. Ever-increasing groups
of demonstrators began to fight against the army with Molotov cocktails
and oil drums. With the participation of the citizens who had simply been
observing the demonstrations and even middle and high school students, the
number of demonstrators increased to several thousand. Some of these demon-
strators surrounded the soldiers and took their weapons away from them. On
the 20th, the army was reinforced once again. In the meantime, hundreds of
thousands of citizens joined the Uprising, except for some of those of the
wealthier classes, governmental officials and other employees of the state
apparatus. The struggles continued throughout the night. As the demonstrators’
actions grew stronger, a number of police boxes and governmental offices were
taken over by the citizens and set on fire and destroyed. The army’s defensive
lines were attacked and pushed back. It was at this moment that the citizens’
spirits soared.
The Gwangju Uprising, at this stage, could be defined as a spontaneous,
non-organizational, resistant collective action. At this stage of the Uprising, the
following facts can be seen: first, regarding the demonstrations, the size of crowd
and the change in their participants are noteworthy. As was shown above, on
the morning of the 18th, the number of demonstrators was rather small, perhaps
180 Na Kahn-chae

a few dozen or hundreds, but their numbers increased rapidly. By the next day,
crowds of thousands gathered together and on the 20th, hundreds of thousands
of citizens joined them. As for the participants of the demonstrations, most of
them were university students in the beginning but later on, people of diverse
social status began to participate. From the afternoon of the 19th, lower class
laborers, the poor, the homeless, middle and high school students, and other
citizens were active. Consequently, the leadership of the Uprising shifted from
the students to ordinary people and the activists from various organizations of
the civic movement during the armed struggle after the 21st. It has been
previously noted that teenagers, vagabonds and lower class people took the
most active role at the front line during the armed struggle.6
Second, this rapid increase of the participants can be explained by two
factors. One is an instinctive emotional explosion based on humanity against the
inhuman actions by the Martial Law army. The citizens’ anger reached a peak
when the soldiers began to strip and beat women, including high school girls.
This led citizens to participate in the Uprising as an expression of basic,
communal emotion related to the values of human dignity, justice and peace.
The other factor is closely related to the objective background of the local
society. Gwangju has, to an extent, a peculiar background in Korean history and
society. At the end of the 19th century, a large-scale peasant uprising took place
in the region. Later, anti-imperialist movements led to the independence move-
ments during the Japanese occupation at the beginning of the 20th century. In
more recent times, the region had been at the forefront of democratization
movements against the military dictatorship since the 1970s. In the socioeco-
nomic realm, the Gwangju region had been the object of regional discrimination
and virtually isolated from the central government during the period of rapid
economic development which had begun in the 1960s. Due to these experiences
of relative economic underdevelopment and a sentiment of alienation, the
people in the area had deep feelings against the dominant power of the central
government.7 This historical background gave the local society a relatively
strong sense of unity and communal property, which seems to have affected the
occurrence and characteristics of the Uprising.8
Third, Gwangju’s characteristics as a community, formed in the early stage of
the Uprising, should be noted. This community was based on the remarkable
sense of unity exhibited by all the citizens living in the city. This sense of unity
drew out a common feeling of outrage from the people and brought about an
atmosphere where the distinction between oneself and others became null and

6
Tape No.1 (Yun Young-gyu’s testimony): this witness, a middle school teacher taking
part in the YMCA at the time of the uprising, was one of the youngest members of the
Settlement Committee. He’s searching for the members of the Mudeung Rehabilitation
Center who disappeared as a group.
7
Kim Jin-gyun, Jeong Geun-sik, “The Socio-economic Background of the Gwangju May
People’s Uprising,” in Institute of Korean Modern History (ed.), Gwangju People’s Uprising
(Seoul: Poolbit, 1990).
8
D. McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency 1930–1970
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 43–48. C. Y. H. Lo, “Communities of
Challengers in Social Movement Theory,” in A. Morris and C. Mueller (eds.), Frontiers in
Social Movement Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
 Collective Action in the Gwangju Uprising 181

void. Citizens shared their belongings such as cigarettes, towels, rolled rice,
socks and gloves. Even storekeepers put out necessities, such as bread and
beverages on the street so that the demonstrators could take them freely without
any charge. Women got together and prepared meals to pass out to the
demonstrators. The ideas of personal possessions and discrimination disap-
peared. A number of witnesses, including people from the lowest classes,
beggars, and those living on the streets, have given impressive testimonies about
this atmosphere in the city. As individual identities were overcome, whoever
resisted against the Martial Law Army now became comrades and brothers.
They had transcended the idea that one’s life belongs to oneself and they fought
desperately at the risk of their own lives. As witness to the high standard of this
sense of communal unity, there were no reports of plundering or criminal
activities in this so-called “liberated zone” without law and order. Even the
members of local organized crime are said to have participated in the Uprising.
One researcher, Choi Jeong-hoon, noted that this “liberated zone” was an
“absolute community,” as distinguished from a usual community.9 This com-
munity reached its climax right before the 21st, when the citizens began to arm
themselves. According to Choi, the sense of unity of this community became
weakened after the demonstrators armed themselves when they sensed the
hierarchy and orders appeared inside the organized group of demonstrators,
along with internal disputes and infighting between the radicals and moderates
within the groups.

Development of Small Groups and Organizations

The phase of unorganized collective action was over and diverse small groups
began to organize and move their own agendas after the 20th. They arose as the
participants of the uprising grasped the situation more and the problems facing
the citizens were taking on more concrete shapes. These groups and organiza-
tions made their appearance as the representatives that tried to solve various
problems that appeared in the process of the Uprising. The organizations at this
stage can be categorized as two types: one that had existed before the Uprising
played a more active role at this point of time and the other that was established
on the scene and developed during the process of the Uprising (see Table 2).
First, we need to examine the organizations that already were in operation
before the Uprising. As shown above, activists of already existing social organi-
zations or student leaders were arrested by the police and most of those who
were not arrested decided not to appear on the scene of the Uprising to avoid
arrest. So it was difficult for the existing organizations to move things around.
The student organizations that had led the large-scale demonstrations of stu-
dents from local universities in downtown Gwangju from May 14 to 16 couldn’t
maintain systematic operation.10 It was not until the 20th that some organ-
izational activities came into the picture. The organizations that showed rela-

9
Choi Jeong-hoon, Social Science of the May (Seoul: Poolbit, 1999).
10
With the police’s search for the student leaders of each university in Gwangju at 23
on May 16, 8 out of 22 suspects were hauled in, and the rest of them took refuge. Institute
of Korean Modern Historical Material (ed.), The Collections of the Testimonies on Gwangju
People’s Uprising (Seoul: Poolbit, 1990), p. 21.
182 Na Kahn-chae

Table 1. The organizational conditions of the small groups that led the Uprising

Founding Number of Main activities

Name Year members Characteristics in the Uprising Note

Deulbul 1978 Teachers: 7–12 Night School for Produced Labor

Night Students: 20–50 Laborers Fighter’s Movement
School Bulletin
Theater 1980 University Performed Plays Managed the Cultural
Gwangdae Students: 15 Citizen’s Rally Movement
Songbaekhoe 1978 Women: Women’s group Made contacts, Women’s
approx. 40 that helped made posters, Movement
imprisoned did cooking,
activists
Young 1960(?) Men and Labor union Men joined Labor
Christian women movement inside demonstrations, Movement
Workers laborers: about the Christian women did
(JOC, 200 society cooking
Gwangju)
YWCA 1922 Women Social activities Offered room, Religious
activists for women inside made posters Social
the Christian and ribbons, Activity
society cooking, etc.
Students’ During University Students’ Propelled Not
Settlement the students: 10–30 organization to neglotiations, a
Committee Uprising settle the dealt with dead Movement
Uprising bodies, and
other general
affairs
Citizens During Social Discussed Carried Not
Settlement the personages, settlement negotiations a
Committee Uprising professionals, measures, with the Martial Movement
(1) religious propelled Law Army
figures, etc.: negotiations
15–30
Citizens During Critical Sought Examined the Democratic
Settlement the intellectuals: settlement plans for Movement
Committee Uprising 15 measures negotiations,
(2) carried out the
“March of
Death”

Besides these groups, a number of local defense parties and special task forces existed as
dispersed units of the Citizen’s Militia.11

tively distinct activities at this time included the team of Deulbul (Wild-fire)
Night School, the Gwangdae (Clown) Theater, the Songbaekhoe, the YWCA, and
the Young Christian Workers. Except for the YWCA, a religious group which led
diverse social activities, all these organizations had been resisted against the
ruling junta for some time before the Uprising. Actually, they were more or less
the underground organizations under the junta.
Next, unlike those above, some groups and organizations were newly formed
during the process of the Uprising, including the two Citizens’ Settlement
11
The Citizens’ Army is excluded here, because of its distinctive characteristics in a
specific area.
 Collective Action in the Gwangju Uprising 183

Committees (CSC) and the same type of student committee. Among these, the
Students’ Settlement Committee (SSC) should be noted, as it took the lead in
organizing the Uprising from the Provincial Municipal Building after the 22nd.
The SSC was formed at a citizens’ rally at 5 p.m. on the 21st, when the CSC at
the Provincial Municipal Building reported the results of their negotiations with
the Martial Law Command. As the committee members’ report did not meet
their initial demand at the rally, the students got furious and demanded that the
commanding post be replaced by university students. At this point, the scene
inside the Provincial Municipal Building was chaotic at best and no systematic
leadership was in sight.
Inside the general affairs office was a scene of confusion. More that a hundred
people were rushing around in total confusion. A group of people was shouting
at a person in the front in a corner, which seemed to be a kind of criminal
investigation. They were bawling at the person whom they suspected to be a
proxy of the government agency … On the other side was stacked rolled-rice, and
here and there shots were heard. They were either fired by accident or just for fun.
What was more startling was that they were wearing grenades at their sides, on
strings running through the rings of the safety pins, in a row. They had no idea
what would happen if the pins were pulled out. I broke into a cold sweat at the
sight of the people swinging rifles they didn’t know how to handle. (Institute of
Korean Modern Historical Material, ibid., p. 161., Song Gi-sook’s testimony).

At this juncture, a professor, aware of an ongoing serious situation, selected

ten university students and brought them into the Provincial Municipal Build-
ing. Trying to establish the SSC inside the Provincial Municipal Building, they
were met by strong resistance. Some of civilian militia opposed the idea that the
students, who had disappeared from the frontline at the time of the armed
struggle, should take the lead again and insisted that the Commanding Post of
Militia should have a major role in prior to the SSC. The professor, however,
made the people understand that students were the only objectively reliable
group in the situation and finally managed to form a provisional SSC. With the
professor’s guidance, the committee organized diverse divisions and appointed
leaders of each division, including a chairperson, a vice-chairperson and chief of
the funeral division, a chief of the general affairs, and a spokesperson. This
committee carried on negotiations with the Martial Law Command, collected
weapons, and exchanged them for the arrested students. The funeral division
undertook identifying, transporting, and preparing bodies, and searching for
secretly buried bodies, while the security division organized patrol parties and
controlled vehicles. Inside this settlement committee arose discord, which later
deepened between the hardliners and the moderates, leading to the hardliners’
integration into the struggle committee on the 25th and causing the moderates
to withdraw from the Provincial Municipal Building.12
Different organizations’ characteristics and major activities, which were in
action since the beginning of the Uprising until the 24th, have been presented
above. Through this examination, the following factors can be emphasized
as general tendencies of the organizations. First, the spontaneity of their partici-
pation can be noted. It was not by an external pressure, but by their own
12
Institute of Korean Modern Historical Material (ed.), The Collections of the Testimonies
on Gwangju People’s Uprising (Seoul: Poolbit, 1990), pp. 125–126.
184 Na Kahn-chae

Table 2. Comparison of the Members of the Organizations

With movement experience Without movement experience

Youth Groups Deulbul, Gwangdae, Students Settlement Committee

Songbakhoe, JOC
Diverse Age CSC (2) in Namdong Catholic CSC(1) in Provincial Municipal
Groups Church, YWCA Building

free will that people took part in the various activities of the organizations
examined above. Second, the participants showed an enormous dedication and
a spirit of self-sacrifice. Their activities were carried out during a period of great
danger of violence by the Martial Law Army and consisted of a series of urgent
activities that did not allow the participants time to rest or sleep. People from the
lowest classes, including vagrants, prostitutes and gangsters also exhibited an
impressively high spirit of community.13 This demonstrates the limits to the
hypothesis of rational selection theory.14 Third, the educational levels of the
participants in the Uprising were relatively high in general, except for the
members of the JOC who were mostly laborers in the manufacturing industry.
Most of the participants were either college students or graduates who had
taken part in student movements during their college days. As for the women,
they had a relatively enlightened tendency, even if they were not students at the
time. Fourth, the activities of the organizations were specialized and divided.
For example, Deulbul Night School took charge of producing and distributing
the Fighter’s Bulletin, the theater group Gwangdae took charge of managing
citizens’ rallies and the CSC for Mediating Crisis was involved in handling
negotiations with the Martial Law Command. The SSC and the YWCA carried
out more complex activities, as they started their operation during the middle
stage of the Uprising. This functional specialization of activities formed interde-
pendent and complicated relations among the groups as the Uprising developed.
One of the more concrete characteristics noted in the materials of the
organizations was the differences in the members’ properties. As implied above,
the members of the six organizations, including Deulbul Night School, the
Theatre Gwangdae, the JOC, the YWCA, the CSC(2) already had some social
experience or at least had shown interest in social movements. Unlike these, the
major members of the CSC(1) and the SSC hadn’t experienced any social
movements and had begun to participate in the Uprising through rather an
emotional motivation than with the serious thoughts at the critical time. The
members of the CSC(1) included a number of conservative personages who had
earlier stood against social movements, including a former governmental official
and an entrepreneur. Also, the SSC had few members with any experience in
social movements. In terms of their members’ ages, Deulbul, Gwangdae, Song-
bakhoe, the JOC, and the SSC were mainly comprised of youths in their twenties
or thirties, while the CSC and the YWCA were comprised of people from
various age groups, including the elderly. When compared with one another
13
During the uprising, prostitutes donated blood actively, and the organized gangsters
in the city pledged themselves to cooperate with the uprising participants.
14
Gamson, W., The Strategy of Social Protest, second edition (Belmont: Wadsworth
Publishing Company, 1990), p. 58.
 Collective Action in the Gwangju Uprising 185

(see Table 2), four organizations, including Deulbul, could be categorized as

youth groups with social movement experiences.
The CSC(2) and the YWCA could be seen as diverse age groups with social
movement experience, while the SSC was a youth group without movement
experience and, CSC(1) was a diverse age group without movement experience.
Among these, the youth groups with social movement experience are notewor-
thy.
The difference of the composition of each organization was revealed through
their pattern of Uprising activities. Those with abundant movement experiences
showed their ability to cope with changing situations spontaneously and
promptly. From the afternoon of May 18, the groups started publicizing activi-
ties individually, producing and distributing leaflets and posters. They made the
black ribbons and distributed them on a large scale as the corpses began to
appear. The CSC(2) visited hospitals where the dead and wounded were. On the
other hand, those without social movement experiences hardly showed any
resistance or voluntary actions except some necessary activities in preparing for
negotiations or dealing with the corpses. While the members of the youth
groups with experience opposed the idea of collecting weapons instead of
making and throwing Molotov cocktails, the latter group was in favor of
collecting weapons and carried out relatively moderate and institutional activi-
ties.

The Dynamics of Organizational Development during the Uprising

Though the city realized a high-degree of unity, described as an “absolute
community” at the beginning of the Uprising, as the Uprising progressed and
various groups appeared, each group naturally started exhibiting differences
due to their socio-economic conditions and consciousness. Thus, among the
organizations introduced above, relationships of solidarity and cooperation or of
tension and discord, were formed and developed. This section will briefly
examine the relationships of tension and discord first, then take a closer look at
the relationships of solidarity and cooperation. The interactions between these
organizations will show the developmental process of the Citizen–Student
Struggle Committee (CSSC), which became the integrated leading organization
of the Uprising.
There were three patterns of cases that reveal the tension and discord
between the groups mentioned above. The first case was the relationship that
developed between the CSC(1) and the CSC(2); the second was between the SSC
and the CSSC; and the third was the relationship between the Citizens’ Militia
and the SSC. First, we will examine the relationship between the CSC(1) and the
CMC(2). These two committees shared members and the common goal of a
peaceful settlement of the situation and a common standpoint concerning
weapons collection. They were generally, however, of different natures. The
CSC(1) was an organization that consisted of heterogeneous factors and was
formed by the local government, while the CSC(2) was formed by democratic
and reform-minded activists who had been participating in social movements.
Because of differences in their composition, the CSC(2) seems not to have had
confidence with some members of the CSC(1), who were former bureaucrats,
186 Na Kahn-chae

especially when the CSC(1) blamed the social activists who were members of the
CSC(2).
Despite their differences, the CSC(2) visited the CSC(1) and agreed to its
negotiation plan on the morning of the 22nd, though the cooperation between
the two committees was not complete. On the 23rd, the CSC(2) attended a
meeting at the Provincial Municipal Building at the request of the CSC(1). At this
meeting, the CSC(2) strongly criticized the CSC(1), saying “this situation was
brought out due to the citizens’ fault.” Thus, the conflict between the two
became evident. On the 25th afternoon, however, the Namdong Committee (a
small group of respected older activists, including priests) joined the CSC(1) to
unify the dialogue channel with the Martial Law Command and to control the
committee’s activities. Consequently, many members of the CSC(1) left the
Provincial Municipal Building.15 The CSC(2) finished its activities after taking
their last decisive action of the so-called “March of Death.” They marched
without any weapons toward the heavily armed Martial Law Army and stopped
its advance toward the liberated zone.
Second, between the SSC and the Citizens’ Militia subtle tension was devel-
oping and it got into the open hostilities later on. On night of the 22nd, the same
day when the SSC was organized, the Citizens’ Militia independently estab-
lished their Commanding Post. However, the person in charge of this Com-
manding Post refused to be controlled by the SSC. The members of the Citizens’
Militia might have been opposed to the idea that the students, who had left the
struggle at the time of armed conflict, would come back and assume the
leadership of the uprising again. They may also have been critical of the SSC’s
idea of searching for a compromise. This tense and intransigent relationship
between the SSC and the Citizens’ Militia did not help to strengthen the
collective leadership of the Uprising at all; rather it had several adverse effects.
This situation lasted until the 25th when the CSSC merged into the Citizens’
Militia. At the last meeting, on the night of the 26th, an armed group of the
Citizens’ Militia blocked the moderate faction of the SSC, which had insisted on
surrendering to the Martial Law Army and drove them out of the Provincial
Municipal Building.16
Third, the relationship between the CSSC and the SSC should be noted after
examining the formation and development of their solidarity. This solidarity was
possible because the CSSC, which was established as the integrated leadership
of the Uprising, was the outcome of the solidarity of many small groups and
organizations.
The structure of their solidarity can be explained with two circles: one would
contain the existing social activists and groups such as the Deulbul Night School,
the Gwangdae Theater, the Songbaekhoe, the YWCA, and the JOC, and the other
circle would contain the CSC(1) and the SSC. These two circles are very
important to understand the Uprising comprehensively, as they reflect the two
factions that influenced the characteristics and the direction of the Uprising. In

15
Institute of Korean Modern Historical Material (ed.), The Collections of the Testimonies
on Gwangju People’s Uprising (Seoul: Poolbit, 1990), p. 138.
16
Ibid., p. 125.
 Collective Action in the Gwangju Uprising 187

this article, the former is referred to as the “Struggle Solidarity,” and the latter
as the “Settlement Solidarity.”
First, the formation of the Struggle Solidarity was as follows: The four groups
mentioned above and the leading social activists had already worked in soli-
darity to a great extent before the Uprising. Members of the Deulbul Night
School and those of the Gwangdae Theater, especially, developed a close bond
before the Uprising. When the Uprising took place, they came together to print
and distribute the leaflets. One of the distinctive features was that this solidarity
between the two groups had a base in the bookstore as its spacial center.17 This
was because the leader of the Deulbul Night School resided at this bookstore
and the proprietress of the bookstore was an executive member of Songbaekhoe
and a teacher at the Deulbul Night School occasionally. So, in fact, these three
groups had already maintained a close relationship before the Uprising. On May
20, the principal members of the three groups held regular meetings to plan out
their activities along with other leading social activists who were taken under-
ground to avoid the arrests. Since the bookstore was too small to harbor them
all, the activists moved their base to the YWCA building from May 24. From
there, the young activists formed a wider solidarity.18 Those who joined this
solidarity had relatively high educational levels and were well-armed with rich
experiences in social movements that bonded them together. However, the
relationship between them and the JOC was not as close as it appeared. It is
suggested that this gap was due not only to the differences of its members’
educational levels and the area of activities but also their socio-
economic backgrounds. The JOC members were not professional activists; rather
they were mainly simple laborers in manufacturing plants. Even though the JOC
members preferred to have actions like a demonstration and to fight rather than
plan and lead the Uprising, they were, however, an important element in the
composition of the leadership at the Provincial Municipal Building.19
Contrasting with the Struggle Solidarity, the CSC(1) and the SSC also had
their difficulties in achieving a strong solidarity. They were newly emerging
groups with rather a small number of members, who were less conscious of, and
less experienced in social movements. And they had a wide age gap between
them. As a matter of fact, their solidarity activities were limited to foster the
negotiation with the Martial Law Command, despite the fact that the SSC did
not agree with the CSC(1) on all matters. In terms of ideology, the Struggle
Solidarity was inclined toward radical progressivism while the Settlement Soli-
darity had a tendency toward conservatism. In terms of their behavioral pattern,
the former was aggressive and positive while the latter was relatively defensive
and passive.
The relationship between the two solidarity circles was tense at first and later

17
The Nogdu Bookstore was the center for student movement and social movement in
the area in the 1970s, and many activists gathered to the bookstore when the uprising broke
out.
18
May 18 Institute at Chonnam National University, Activists’ Testimony Materials, Jeong
Hyeon-ae’s testimony (not published), pp. 338–340.
19
Recorded tape No.2 (Jeong Hyang-ja’s testimony). The witness, a core activist of the
JOC from its beginning stage. She also took active part in the early union movement in the
field of woman labor movement of the Gwangju region.
188 Na Kahn-chae

Table 3. The Organization Process of the Citizen–Student Struggle Committee

Date 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Note

Unorganized
Collective
Behavioral Process of development of
Division Stage organization

Struggle Deulbul • • • • • • • Citizen–

Solidarity Gwangdae • • • • • • • Student
Songbaekhoe • • • • • • • Committee
YWCA • • • •
JOC • • •
Settlement SSC Hardliners • • •
Solidarity Moderates • • • •
CSC • • • •

developed into a more openly antagonistic relationship. They had their first
direct contact with each other at the citizens’ grand rally at 5 p.m. on May 22,
where the results of the negotiation with the Martial Law Command were
reported by the CSC(1). During the report, citizens jeered the speaker and took
the microphone away, protesting against the agreement that all the weapons
should be turned over to the authority. An activist of the Struggle Solidarity
calmed down this disturbance and carried on the rally. After this, the Struggle
Solidarity took charge of the subsequent citizens’ rally.
After the Martial Law Army retreated from the Provincial Municipal Build-
ing on May 21, the radical activists entered. Inside the building, however, they
found some strangers who had no personal acquaintance with the members of
the Struggle Solidarity, the concentrated body of the existing social activists.
Those strangers were members of the SSC.20 The Struggle Solidarity opposed the
ideas of the SSC and the CSC to turn over the weapons, a move which had
gained many people’s support at a citizens’ rally. In the meantime, the SSC did
not support the idea that the Struggle Solidarity should lead the citizens’ rallies
and objected to their way of agitating the citizens. Inside the SSC, the tension
and conflict between the hard-liners and the moderates grew more serious.
The activists of the Struggle Solidarity met and discussed forming the
Citizen–Student Struggle Committee on the 24th at the YWCA. The Struggle
Solidarity also reinforced itself, rallying the university students in sympathy
with their radical approach. The leading activists of the Struggle Solidarity
visited the Provincial Municipal Building from time to time to check on the
situation and intensify their solidarity with the hard-liners of the SSC. On the
evening of the 25th, with the cooperation of the hard-liners of the SSC, the
members of the Struggle Solidarity were able to enter the Provincial Municipal
Building along with around 100 university students. After a heated argument
20
The activists in the Struggle Solidarity were not included in the composition of the
Students’ Settlement Committee, because they came late to the meeting and missed the
opportunity to participate, though they received the communication form beforehand
(Recorded tape No. 7, Kim Sang-jip’s testimony). Many of the student movement leaders
were not able to participate in the SSC, as they were not present in the site of the uprising
in flight to avoid getting arrested by the police.
 Collective Action in the Gwangju Uprising 189

that night, the moderates of the SSC withdrew from the Provincial Municipal
Building and the Citizen–Student Struggle Committee (CSSC) was born as a new
leading group.21 The formation of this leadership was as follows: (see Figure 1).
The newly founded CSSC consisted of a chairperson, two vice chairpersons,
a spokesman, a chief of the Planning Board (with three members), a chief of the
Commanding Post, a chief of the Public Service Department, and a commander
of the Strike Forces. The activists from the Deulbul Night School served as a
spokesman and the chief of the Planning Board, another activist from the
Gwangdae Theater served as the chief of the Public Relations Department,
activists from the SSC-hard liner served as the chairperson and the Chief of the
Internal Affairs, and the Leader of the Citizens’ Militia as the chief of the
Commanding Post and the commander of the Strike Forces. The activists from
the YWCA and the JOC played active roles in the Information Department, the
Funeral Department, and the Cooking Division, while many other individual
activists took the other roles such as the head of External Affairs or member of
the Planning Board. These individual activists participated and played leading
roles in the student movements during their time in university and were still
actively involved in social movements after graduation. Women’s participation
was active throughout the entire process of the Uprising, though it is to be noted
that none of the women activists were called to fill any of the twelve leading
positions in the Citizen–Students Struggle Committee.
Soon after the Struggle Committee was formed, it began its preparation for
the coming fight. With the whole department under its control, it laid out a
concrete plan to mobilize all the reserve forces to be ready for the fight. Each
department undertook their own tasks. They opened an office for public ser-
vices, resumed local administrative activities and restored law and order in
security and traffic. The Head of External Affairs had met with the provincial
governor on the 26th to discuss the matters concerning funerals. They reached
an agreement to hold a common funeral for the victims on the 28th. According
to a witness, they actually tried to delay the Martial Law Army’s Attack deadline
with this funeral and buy time to further their preparations for the fight.
They needed to revive the spirit for the fight first, which had subsided when
the weapons were collected. These plans of the Struggle Committee were
announced at the citizens’ rally. But the Martial Law Command informed them
that the Martial Law Army would attact unless the citizens were disarmed by
5 p.m. that afternoon.22 The CSSC refused to do this and its last meeting was
held with some members of the SSC.
As the consensus reached the idea of surrendering proposed by the SSC
leader at this last meeting, the hard-liners of the CSSC, including the chief of the
Commanding Post, got angry and drove the moderates out of the Provincial
Municipal Building by firing rifles. Then, they prepared to face the final battle

21
Institute of Korean Modern Historical Material (ed.), The Collections of the Testimonies
on Gwangju People’s Uprising (Seoul: Poolbit, 1990), p. 126.
22
Recorded tape No.2 (Jeong Sang-yong’s testimony). Jeong Sang-yong, the Head of
External Affairs at the CSSC, was an active student activist during his high school and
university time, and engaged in peasant movement at the time of the uprising.
190 Na Kahn-chae

Figure 1

with the heavily armed Martial Law Forces. All the forces of the Citizens’ Militia
were positioned at important points of the Provincial Municipal Building and
throughout the city, while loudspeakers began to inform the citizens that the
Martial Law Army was coming and appealed for the citizens’ participation.
Around 2 a.m. when this announcement was broadcast, the gunshots were
heard. The loose defense of the Citizens’ Militia was helpless against the attack
of the heavily armed Martial Law Army. A large number of armed troops
entered from the rear and took the Provincial Municipal Building in a short time.
At around 4 a.m. the Provincial Municipal Building was littered with dead
members of the Citizens’ Militia. The Provincial Municipal Building was quickly
occupied by the government troops. Though the fight did last for only a day
after the CSSC was formed, the death of the Citizens’ Militia became the main
symbol to the movements of democracy and freedom in Korea over the follow-
ing two decades.

Conclusion
The above descriptions and analytical explanations of the Gwangju Uprising
can be summarized as follows: First, throughout the Uprising, functionally
 Collective Action in the Gwangju Uprising 191

specialized small groups and organizations developed from the large-scale

collective behavior. Second, out of interactions between these groups the Citizen–
Student Struggle Committee became established as the leadership of the Upris-
ing. These understandings imply that the process of the Uprising itself was a
significant production process of social organization, in addition to its historical
and political-social significance. The local society of Gwangju had passed
through a distinctive historical experience unlike other regions in the country.
The formation and development of the “absolute community” in the collec-
tive behavioral stage of the Uprising should be highlighted. Here, there are two
aspects to be considered. One is the people’s unconditional participation and the
strength of their power; and the other is the high morality of the community.
The former demonstrated that people’s power based on grass-roots can defeat
heavily armed regular army forces and intensified the social importance and
influence of democratic forces, as well as enhancing the possibility of a society
where people become the subject. The other is that Gwangju May Uprising made
a distinctive case concerning the tendency of other urban societies toward
looting or other criminal activities in the time of chaotic situations. As these
types of criminal behaviors did not occur during the period of the Uprising, it
might be possible to suggest an original model of community for humanity from
Gwangju’s experience.
Next, the following features can be considered, concerning the process of the
Uprising from a collective behavior to organized resistance. First, the growth of
the Uprising forces was a consistent process of a social construction through
interactions between various factors and a dialectic process where the moderates
and the hard-liners became antagonistic to each other, as solidarity activities
were being developed. The concrete process, wherein diverse groups and
organizations gathered together to form the Citizen–Student Struggle Committee
exhibits a typical pattern of the development of a movement organization. And
it seems to imply significant suggestions concerning directions and developmen-
tal strategies of movements from a practical perspective. Concerning the direc-
tion of the Uprising, if the moderates had gained control of the Uprising forces,
the weapons would have been turned over to the authorities and the Uprising
would have been ended right there. If it had ended like that, there would have
been no People’s Uprising and there would be only rioters during civil disturb-
ance in history books. The struggle faction’s victory over the moderates led to
their desperate resistance and their heroic death became a factor to make the
Uprising a victorious one 20 years later.23 One of the other basic features of the
Uprising was the members of the Struggle Solidarity. The core of this group was
well-educated activists who had been participating at the forefront of social
movements before the Uprising.
Concerning the developmental strategies of movement organizations, the
solidarity strategy of the Uprising forces should be emphasized. Today, a
process of rapid globalization provides better conditions with which to build
international solidarity with social movement forces and solidarity seems to a
crucial factor for their development and success.
On the other hand, it is also to be noted that women were excluded from the

23
S. Kebir, Antonio Gramsci’s Zivilgesellschaft: Alltag, Oekonomie, Kultur, Politik, Lee
Chulgyu (trans.) (Seoul: Baekeun, 1994), p. 28.
192 Na Kahn-chae

organization of the leadership of the Uprising. Women activists took an active

part in the Uprising, especially in its early stages. This was partially because the
existing activists were either arrested or in hiding, but it is true that women
played active roles in the Uprising through numerous activities including
contacting demonstrators, arbitrating disputes, cooking, producing leaflets and
broadcasting. The composition of the leadership in Figure 1, however, reveals a
tendency toward the exclusion of women. This can be considered as a shortcom-
ing and problem that the Uprising did not overcome.
Nevertheless, the Gwangju May Uprising can be seen as one of the more
impressive cases in the history of uprisings in the countries that were or are in
the process of democratization against anti-democratic military authorities.24 It is
not only because the citizens of Gwangju realized an “absolute community”, or
because the power of the Citizens’ Militia momentarily defeated the Martial Law
Army, but also this Uprising did not end on May 27, 1980 when the government
forces took over the Provincial Municipal Building but continued its long
struggle over the next 20 years and became a very successful uprising. This is a
perfect case of losing the battles but winning the war in the end. As a
consequence the victorious history of the Gwangju struggle has become a model
for uprisings in many Asian countries where people share a similar history of
struggling toward freedom and democracy.

24
G. Katsiaficas, “Remembering the Gwangju Uprising,” Socialism and Democracy 14:1,
(2000), pp. 85–108.