I’m typically not big into jumping on trends, which is probably a potato-brained thing for a creator to say, but I did notice the “Personal Curriculum” trend while doom scrolling and thought it was right up my alley. Naturally, my first thought was to write about it here instead of making a video about it (maybe content creation isn’t for me).
While I was watching these videos, I realized I was in the grips of yet another rabbit hole/media immersion plan with a book I randomly picked up to sample and got sucked into super quick. It’s a nonfiction, academic work about the Gwangju Uprising, creatively titled Gwangju Uprising. It’s written by three South Korean authors who all have a personal connection to the events.
Some quick background… The period from late 1979 to 1980 in South Korea was a wild time, marked by political assassinations, mass protests, violent suppressions, all of which reshaped the country’s trajectory toward democracy. For decades they’d been suffering under authoritarian rule. Opposition came from students, intellectuals and labor groups who wanted the end of the dictatorship and the restoration of the democratic processes.
The first major event was the assassination of the nation’s long-standing President Park in the fall of 1979. Which is detailed in Gwangju Uprising with this bonkers (if romanticized but based on real testimony) passage:
Kim Jae-gyu remains a complicated and heavily debated figure in all this and there are all types of theories about what actually drove him to this fateful act, but setting that aside, Park being dead af created a power vacuum and even more unrest as street demonstrations became more frequent and bold. Civil society groups began to organize, opposition parties gained momentum, and citizens were more hopeful than ever that democracy was within reach.
This is where the military steps in to squash all that. In December 1979 and May 1980, Chun Doo-hwan, a balding general who formed a secret military clique, staged two coups d'état, grabbed ultimate power, and extended martial law to the whole nation. Student protests were already sweeping through Gwangju, but now they were super duper pissed. Citizens there called for an end to martial law, greater freedoms, and the release of arrested opposition figures.
What began as a demonstration quickly escalated into a mass uprising, known as the Gwangju Uprising (see I got there eventually). Students, workers, and ordinary residents joined together, seizing control of parts of the city. For several days, Gwangju functioned as a self-organized, liberated zone. As the oppression and brutality of the military response escalated, the resistance gained followers from every walk of life to meet the challenge.
I’m becoming a Wikipedia article at this point so I’m going to shut up and say it was brutal mixed with tales of extreme bravery. I’ve become fascinated by this period of history. In honor of that, I’m going to devise a curriculum that you can use to educate yourself on this stuff.
NONFICTION BOOK
Gwangju Uprising: The Rebellion for Democracy in South Korea by Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Jae-Eui and Jeon Yong-Ho
On May 18, 1980, student activists gathered in the South Korean city of Gwangju to protest the coup d’état and the martial law government of General Chun Doo-hwan. The security forces responded with unmitigated violence. Over the next ten days hundreds of students, activists, and citizens were arrested, tortured, and murdered. The events of the uprising shaped over a decade of resistance to the repressive South Korean regime and paved the way for the country’s democratization…
FICTION BOOK
Human Acts by Han Kang
Amid a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed. The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend who meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.
MOVIES (in chronological order)
The Man Standing Next: The Assassination of a President (2020, IMDb 7.0)
In the 1970s, Korea is under the absolute control of President Park who controls the KCIA, the organization with an edge over any branch of government. The director of the KCIA, Kim Gyu-pyeong, is a shoo-in for second-in-command. In the midst of a reign of fear, a former KCIA director, Park Yong-gak, who knows all about the government's obscure and illegal operations, is exiled to the U.S., where he opens the floodgates to the investigation of Koreagate. As tension escalates, stifling political maneuvers by those desiring power collide explosively.
12:12: The Day (2023, IMDb 7.6)
In December 1979, after the assassination of President Park, martial law was declared. A coup d'etat bursts out by Defense Security Commander Chun Doo-kwang and a private band of officers following him. Capital Defense Commander Lee Tae-shin, an obstinate soldier who believes the military should not take political action, fights against Chun to stop him.
A Taxi Driver (2017, IMDb 7.9)
In this powerful drama based on a true story, a down-on-his-luck taxi driver hired by a foreign journalist finds himself in a life-or-death struggle in the midst of the Gwanju Uprising.
I agree with the IMDb ratings in terms of how I’d rank these, and A Taxi Driver was a re-watch for me. It’s f’n brilliant and features one of my favorite actors as the lead (Kang-ho Song) in one of his best roles (which is saying a lot considering he was terrific in Parasite, The Host, Snowpiercer, Joint Secruity Area, Memories of Murder etc). That said, these were all good-to-great and for the most part I was shocked by how close they stick to actual events.
For instance, this passage in Gwangju Uprising about the taxi drivers rallying to join the cause is pretty wild and it only gets crazier from there:
As a side note, they do sometimes slightly tweak names so I'd look those up for differences if you watch them.
So.. yeah. That's what I've been doing lately. Once I'm done with that I'll get back to my French history kick and maybe that will require a similar post (or I'll be a good little creator and make a video about it, we'll see).
Sicko, out!
