One page response #1 (13th option) PDF

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Kumar 1 Dr. Elizabeth Lublin HIS 1710 12/7/16 One Page Response Option #13: Days and Nights on the Street From May 18th to 27th, 1980, about a quarter millions of people participated in a rebellion, called the Kwangju Uprising, in South Korea. This rebellion was meant to bring a democratic reform in South Korea, but was unsuccessful (Han). Kim Chung Keun, who wrote Days and Nights on the Street, said “I encountered situations that boggled the mind and left me numb, left me without the faculty of cognition, over the other side of the mind”. It was hard for him to write about the event because it was so surprising how one-sided it was (Keun, 8). The military showed up to the uprising and tried to eliminate the crowd. Keun saw many things that made him unable to think and describe what had happen through those series of events because of how brutal everything was. After the soldiers showed up on Gumnam-ro, the boundary that existed between the crowd and soldiers vanished. The soldiers attacked the protestors regardless of age and sex (9). The even shot them during Buddha’s birthday (16).Women and young girls were stripped of clothing, leaving them naked to public eye (9). Keun was confused and frustrated that without reason the soldiers did all this and describes this as “Human hunting”. Keun was unable to write during these events. The only thing he could do was keep a record of what was going on (10). He witnessed many deaths, some of which protesters were killed and some of starvation. An innocent high school boy sacrificed himself for the sake of Keun and other observers. Keun describes Kwangju as different and a never seen before protest. It was the first time the martiallaw army showed up in the city and was ordered to attack demonstrators (15). The uprising was very violent. Because of that, we can see why Keun was unable to write about it. It left him shocked and still does by how many people were injured, killed, and

Kumar 2 harassed. It was surprising to him how the government acted on this event because before the government did not do anything as brutal as this. To attack their own people for expressing what they wanted was cruel. The protestors lost this battle, but they won the war seeing how later the government later passed a democratic reform, which was what the people wanted.

Kumar 3 Works Cited Han, Chong-suk. "Kwangju Uprising." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 Aug. 2014. Web. 07 Dec. 2016. Scott-Stokes, Henry, Jai-eui Lee, and Dae Jung Kim. "Days and Nights on the Street." The Kwangju Uprising: Eyewitness Press Accounts of Korea's Tiananmen. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000. 5-17. Print....