What is fact and what is distortion? The "Spring and Autumn Annals," a history traditionally attributed to Confucius, is not simply a chronological record of events. The Spring and Autumn period was an age of turmoil, rife with insubordination and the law of the jungle. Ritual propriety and order had collapsed, and each person was losing sight of his proper role. Confronting that chaos head-on, Confucius sought to make clear the greater cause by recording right and wrong in every single character he wrote. Later historians called this the Spring and Autumn method — the principle of drawing a strict line between good and evil and correcting what is wrong.
The core of that method is unmistakable: history is not a record to be rewritten to suit the powerful. The moment confirmed facts are erased, or the positions of perpetrator and victim are reversed, history is reduced to an instrument of political agitation. That is why, before history, nothing matters more than calling things by their precise names. What was illegal must be recorded as illegal, and state violence as state violence.
The same is true of the May 18 Democratization Movement. From May 18 to 27, 1980, citizens in Gwangju and across Jeollanam-do resisted the new military group's expansion of martial law and its violent crackdown, seeking to defend democracy and the constitutional order. Martial law troops beat and opened fire on unarmed civilians, and Gwangju was cut off from the outside world. Even so, citizens donated blood for the wounded, shared rice balls with the civilian militia and maintained order on their own.
In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that the Dec. 12 military insurrection by Chun Doo-hwan and the new military group, along with the actions that followed the May 17 expansion of martial law, constituted crimes of destroying the constitutional order. The resistance of Gwangju's citizens was assessed as an act in which the people, as sovereign, came together to defend the Constitution against a subversion of the national charter. In 2011, related records were inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World register. May 18 is not an event belonging to any single region or political force. It is living history that shows the sacrifices on which South Korea's democracy today was built.
Yet an event running counter to these historical achievements was held in the National Assembly, the hall of the people's will. On Aug. 13, Rep. Lee Jin-sook of the People Power Party hosted a forum at the National Assembly Library, together with a group called the New History National Movement, under the title "Reexamining the May 18 Democratization Movement." Speakers at the forum characterized May 18 as "the chief culprit behind the contamination and corruption of the 1987 system," and argued that holding Chun Doo-hwan responsible for the state violence in Gwangju is unwarranted.
Reviewing existing interpretations on the basis of new materials and evidence is, of course, the role of scholarship. But denying facts already established judicially and historically without clear grounds, diluting responsibility for state violence and damaging the honor of victims can hardly be called scholarly reexamination. Freedom of expression and academic freedom do not extend to a freedom to distort historical fact at will. If a public space of the National Assembly was used as a stage to spread unverified claims and grant absolution to a historical perpetrator, the responsibility must be pursued all the more sternly. When a particular politician pockets the political benefit while Gwangju and the public as a whole bear the resulting wounds and conflict, that is the privatization of political gain and the socialization of historical injury. Little wonder that some 3,700 dues-paying members of the People Power Party filed a complaint with the party's ethics committee demanding disciplinary action against Rep. Lee.
It is no exaggeration to call this "Yoon Again, Season 2, and martial law in the National Assembly." Both the May 17 expansion of martial law by Chun Doo-hwan's new military group and Yoon Suk-yeol's declaration of emergency martial law were unconstitutional and illegal acts that threatened the constitutional order. May 18 is living history for South Korean democracy, and scholarly reexamination is an entirely different matter from historical distortion for political ends. In fact, controversy over Rep. Lee's understanding of history is nothing new. At the confirmation hearing for the chair of the Korea Communications Commission, Lee sidestepped questions on whether the Japanese military's wartime sexual slavery was coercive, calling it a contentious issue. By contrast, Lee sent a congratulatory wreath to the baseball team at Baejae High School after it drew criticism for mocking May 18. Lee also invited Huh Hwa-pyoung, a former chief of staff to President Chun Doo-hwan who served prison time over the Dec. 12 military insurrection, to the halls of the National Assembly — and yet, in votes on the laws providing recognition and compensation for those honored for their role in the May 18 democratization movement, cast no vote at all, neither for, against nor abstaining.
Current law does not treat the spread of false claims about May 18 as a mere expression of opinion. Article 8, Paragraph 1 of the Special Act on the May 18 Democratization Movement provides for punishment of the spreading of false facts about the movement at debates, discussion sessions and similar events. In February this year, the Supreme Court likewise ruled, in a case concerning Chun Doo-hwan's memoir and its distortion of May 18, that even statements cast in the form of opinion or commentary cannot escape liability for defamation if they contain false facts that harm another person's social standing. In other words, the label "academic forum" does not automatically exempt every remark from legal responsibility.
Reckless attempts to distort history — and firm efforts to counter them — are not unique to South Korea. Holocaust deniers, for instance, have persistently made false claims about facts long since verified, asserting that "the number of Jewish victims of mass murder was not 6 million," that "gas chambers did not exist" and that "it is a lie invented to extract reparations." They have also carved out only the portions favorable to them and packaged the result as "a new interpretation of history." Notably, they deliberately deleted subjects from sentences and softened language by calling executions "special measures." In doing so, they blurred where responsibility lay and concealed the sheer brutality of the crimes. They went further, bending words such as truth, objectivity, justice and scholarship to fit their own logic.
In response, Article 130 of Germany's criminal code makes it punishable to approve, deny or minimize crimes committed under Nazi rule in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace. The European Union has likewise set common standards requiring member states to respond through criminal law to the public denial or gross trivialization of genocide crimes where it may incite violence or hatred on grounds such as race or religion. This is not revenge for the past. It is a democratic society defending itself against the way historical distortion leads to a recurrence of hatred and violence.
In the end, defending May 18 is not a matter of dwelling in the past. It is a matter of defending today's principles — democracy, the constitutional order and popular sovereignty. When distorted words are repeated, falsehood is at some point dressed up as just another opinion. That is why someone must draw a clear line between fact and falsehood.
During May 18, the civilian militia issued a statement titled "Why We Have No Choice but to Take Up Arms." Those who were someone's father and someone's son were not trying to protect the power of a particular faction. What they sought to protect was the constitutional order, democracy and popular sovereignty.
Forty-six years on, today's South Korea stands on that foundation. The spirit of Gwangju in May is the spirit of democratization and the defining spirit of South Korea. The Spring and Autumn method is no grand rhetoric. It is the stance of writing wrong as wrong, of never switching the places of perpetrator and victim, and of putting truth before power. There is no statute of limitations on defending history.
He is...
A graduate of Sogang University's Department of English Language and Literature, he spent 28 years in journalism, beginning as a reporter at Gwangju MBC in 1994 and going on to work as a reporter and anchor at JTV Jeonju Broadcasting and as an anchor and Tokyo correspondent for JTBC. He is a National Assembly member representing Gwangjin-A in Seoul and currently serves on the National Assembly's Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee.
