'Gwangju Uprising records fabricated in 1980s'

Lee Geon-ri, the head of a special investigative team at the Ministry of National Defense, announces the interim results of the team’s investigation into the military junta’s deadly crackdown on protesters during the 1980 Gwangju pro-democracy movement at the ministry’s headquarters in Seoul, Monday. / Yonhap

By Jun Ji-hye

The former Chun Doo-hwan government is believed to have systematically fabricated records related to the 1980 pro-democracy movement in Gwangju in an apparent attempt to cover up the military junta’s deadly crackdown on citizens, the defense ministry’s special investigative team said Monday.

After a 40-day investigation, the team said the Chun government established a committee in 1985, comprised of officials from the presidential office, the justice and defense ministries, Army headquarters and the country’s spy agency, to gather information on the “Gwangju Uprising” and create a white paper.

“We suspect the historical facts about the Gwangju Uprising were distorted through the activities of the committee,” said Lee Geon-ri who leads the team. “We will keep working to find the truth behind the incident.”

The special investigative team was set up last month after President Moon Jae-in ordered Defense Minister Song Young-moo to carry out a special investigation into two allegations involving the uprising. The allegations are that the military led by Chun Doo-hwan, then an Army general, ordered machine-gun fire on citizens from helicopters and that the military even considered ordering fighter jets to bomb the city.

Chun seized power through a military coup Dec. 12, 1979, after the assassination of former President Park Chung-hee, the father of ousted President Park Geun-hye. Gwangju citizens rose up against Chun’s rule May 18, 1980, but were violently suppressed only a few days later by the military. Chun later became president in September that year.

Lee noted his team found some military material believed to have been modified by the activities of the committee under the Chun government.

Memoirs written by military officials in 1981 contained testimony that the troops of the time fired at the protesters from a kneeling position, but such testimony disappeared in reports created in 1988, Lee said.

“We found various changes occurred in the records of the incident,” Lee said.

He added that the Chun government gave the committee a name totally unrelated to the uprising in an apparent effort to hide its manipulation of the records.

“We are currently waging a war against the false information,” he said.

The team has yet to confirm whether the Chun government actually created a white paper on the incident, so it asked the National Intelligence Service to confirm if it has such a paper, Lee added.

So far, the team has questioned 19 people including witnesses involving the alleged helicopter gunfire, and 29 people including pilots at the time who were allegedly ordered on standby with their fighter jets loaded with MK-82 bombs three to four days after the start of the uprising.