Ex-Peace Corps volunteer Dolinger recalls horrors of 1980 massacre in Gwangju

David Lee Dolinger, right, and Matt VanVolkenburg, co-authors of Dolinger's Gwangju Uprising memoir, "Called by Another Name: A Memoir of the Gwangju Uprising" / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

By Arlo Matisz

"Called by Another Name," the title of David Lee Dolinger's memoir released this month, refers to Im Dae-oon, the Korean name the author was given when the Peace Corps sent him to South Korea in 1978, where he was stationed in Yeongam, South Jeolla Province, on tuberculosis control duty.

"While I lived in Korea, I was always called by that other name. Really it sort of symbolizes that also, I started almost a new chapter in my life because of 5.18," Dolinger said in an interview with The Korea Times at GFN Radio's studio in Gwangju.

He uses the name "5.18" to refer to the May 18 Gwangju Democratic Movement in 1980, when citizens protested against a coup d'etat led by army general Chun Doo-hwan and were met with violence, a nine-day siege followed by a massacre, in which anywhere between 600 and 2,300 were killed.

After four decades, Dolinger finally decided to get his words down on paper starting in 2019.

The cover of "Called by Another Name: A Memoir of the Gwangju Uprising" by David Lee Dolinger and Matt Vanvolkenburg / Courtesy of Goggas

"Really what started to push me was, one, Tim Warnberg hadn't really been recognized for what he did," Dolinger said.

He dedicated the book to Warnberg, another Peace Corps volunteer who helped protect injured people from being beaten by soldiers and saved lives. Warnberg died in 1993, leaving his story untold. But in a section of this book, Dolinger and cowriter Matt VanVolkenburg tried to put together Warnberg's story, including interviews with his family.

"And the other reason," Dolinger continued, "is seeing people trying to rewrite the history, the false history that's out there, that this was North Korean infiltrators. It really got me upset."

The incident has been misrepresented, even to today by some, as rioting stirred up by North Korean agitators. Now it is protected by the May 18 Special Act which criminalizes and penalizes false claims against 5.18. The politically divisive interpretations of the event come partially because of lingering support for Chun, who died recently, and under whom 5.18 became associated with another name, the Gwangju Massacre.

After reports of violence broke out, Dolinger went directly to Gwangju, where he met with other Peace Corps volunteers in the city.

A taxi carrying a government agent drives away from Gwangju toward Naju, ahead of a military truck carrying student activists, as seen by Dolinger on his walk to Gwangju in May 1980. / Courtesy of David Lee Dolinger

One day, an old man came up to him and Tim Warnberg. "Did you see what happened?" the old man asked them.

When Warnberg answered yes, the old man continued, "We cannot allow this to happen to us. As Gwangju citizens, we cannot allow them to be this brutal to us."

The book starts off with a preface set in the provincial government building of Gwangju, as everyone was waiting for the military to invade the city and their likely deaths.

People wounded in the first four days of the uprising receive medical treatment at Chonnam University Hospital. / Courtesy of David Lee Dolinger

But then the book flashes back earlier to introduce Dolinger's story, and how it led him into the very center of the uprising. His description of his time in Korea starts off simple but satisfying. Despite being labeled as "culturally insensitive" by the Peace Corps, he learned a bit of the language and made every effort to be helpful and friendly to those around him. His determination to observe and react to what was around him was connected to his future career as well. He still describes his first experiences with a tone of incredulousness.

"Korea in general, it was a shock. We were just sort of dumped in Seoul before we went to Cheongju for our training. We had no understanding of the language, no understanding of the culture. We really were just dumped in Seoul and told 'don't get into trouble,'" he said.

"You have to react to the situations you're in. If you don't pay attention and react and become part of what's going on, then in some ways I look at it, are you really being part of the human race? It's observing, that's my whole science side. I'd rather spend my time watching and looking and seeing what's going on than talking to people, but you have to learn from all of it, even when you're talking to people, you have to listen to what they're saying."

After his time in Korea, Dolinger earned a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology, choices influenced by his Peace Corps work.

"I was doing TB control work. I worked in the health center in Yeongam, and my job was to go out and find people that had TB, make sure they were taking their drugs once we prescribed them and hopefully follow up to make sure they were cured. I always had a bent toward science and medicine, but it showed me that good diagnostics, being able to go out and test people and determine that they are sick, is actually the foundation of good medicine. It's not the drugs, it's actually knowing that people are sick, what is wrong with them."

His career developing diagnostic tests for human diseases may explain the somewhat clinical descriptions in parts of his memoir. Portions of the book feel like a research paper, with explanation and justification of choices as they came along, and reasons for decisions made based on observation and theory.

As Korea marks the 42nd anniversary of 5.18, the book leaves readers with a nervous dread but some feeling of awe at Dolinger's involvement. The narrative doesn't strain to be humble, but manages it passively, eschewing heroics to instead present the choices he made as natural, the kind of decisions anyone might make in those situations, rather than boasting of bravery or compassion.

Several times in the narrative, Dolinger mentions his Quaker roots and beliefs as being formative in his decision-making and values. When asked about their role in his actions during that period, he explains that he doesn't believe in violence, and would hope that, if confronting someone who was being beaten and not fighting back, a soldier would begin to question their own orders.

Importantly, Dolinger summarizes the truths of what he witnessed in Gwangju during that time. Along with the voluntary disarmament by the citizens and a lack of rioting or theft, he describes the commission of atrocities by the military, including shooting civilians from helicopters. This was the topic of a recent court case which ended only due to the death of the defendant, the former dictator Chun, whose own memoir defamed the late activist priest Cho Chul-hyun, who had witnessed the same incident. Dolinger was invited to testify at this trial, and was willing to despite the dangers of traveling during the pandemic. But the prosecutors had concerns for his health and he provided written testimony instead. Chun's first trial ended with a guilty verdict for defamation, and his appeal trial was dropped due to his death.

Bodies are being prepared in the Chonnam University Hospital Morgue in May 1980. / Courtesy of David Lee Dolinger

Dolinger still tears up when describing his experience inside the provincial building before the military returned.

"There were people that had already made the decision that they were willing to sacrifice themselves. So it was tough talking to people. You immediately made connections with them because of their stance and their vision of what the future could be, and they truly believed that by sacrificing, it would help push Korea towards democracy."

Peace Corps Korea was not pleased with David's activities in Gwangju.

"We went to a payphone and called the Peace Corps office, and were transferred to the embassy. They said 'You need to leave,' and when asked why, we were told, 'There's rioting in the street, it's unsafe for you.' We're standing there in the streets saying 'There's no rioting. The citizens are organizing, they're cleaning the streets up, there's been no rioting, no looting. We are more afraid of the Korean military, to go through the lines to get out of the city, than we are to stay in the city.' They told us, 'We don't really need to hear from you. We know what's happening in Gwangju.' That to us was a big rub because what they were telling us they knew was the opposite of what we were seeing."

On May 28, the Peace Corps transported Dolinger, and the other Peace Corps volunteers who'd been in Gwangju through the uprising, back to Seoul. Dolinger was singled out and forced to resign, due to his presence in the provincial office building at night.

"I don't think I ever did anything wrong, or even against the oath of the Peace Corps," Dolinger said. "I don't believe making sure people are OK is being political. I don't believe anything we did was political."

But the uprising was not the end of his time in Korea. After being forced out of the Peace Corps for getting too close to the doomed student revolutionary government in Gwangju, he worked as a language instructor, and during this time participated in the dissident pipeline.

"We needed to figure out how to get out the truth about Gwangju, and that was one of the biggest things I did, but also get a lot of information back into the country because of how much was censored," he said.

"This [book] is something that's been written for 42 years. Immediately after leaving Gwangju, I started writing everything down. One, because we tried to get one copy to the U.S. ambassador, which was refused. But also to make sure, because of my scientific background, I wanted to have the facts as I knew them, and not have the problem of now, 42 years later, saying well this is what I think happened."

He was assisted by VanVolkenburg, a historian who runs the blog "Gusts of Popular Feeling" and also contributes a column to The Korea Times.

The book came out in English and has also been released in a Korean translation. Both are available through several book dealers online as well as offline bookstores. Visit goggasworld.com/calledbyanothername for more information.

Looking back, Dolinger said Koreans "need to be proud of what happened in May 1980. It really was the fact that you had the students who acted as the conscience. The government said 'this was wrong,' but then the citizens came together with the students and said 'yes, this is not wrong!' That's how you effect change, when people stop worrying about whether 'I have to go to work or will I have a job because I got involved in the protests,' and they stand up and say 'no, oppression is not right, brutality is not right. We deserve freedom. We deserve democracy.'"

Arlo Matisz is an economics professor at Chosun University and the host of GFN's talk show "face2face," which broadcasts from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday evenings.