EGN NEWS DESK
It is an iconic picture — a black-and-white picture of a blood-splattered pupil being clubbed by a paratrooper medic. It was the primary picture to slide by the army cordon round Gwangju, South Korea, in 1980, exposing the brutal suppression of what could be often called the Gwangju Democratization Movement.
But for years, the identification of the photographer — an unassuming man named Na Kyung Taek — remained a secret.
Mr. Na dared not take credit score for the picture and different unsettling photos from Gwangju for concern of the army junta and its chief, Chun Doo-hwan, whose crackdown there left a whole lot killed or lacking within the darkest chapter in South Korea’s lengthy battle towards dictatorship. Mr. Chun’s rule resulted in 1988, and now many in South Korea assist a Constitutional revision to sanctify Gwangju’s function within the nation’s democratization. Still, most have by no means heard of Mr. Na.
Mr. Na, 75, sounded detached to the dearth of recognition throughout an interview in Gwangju, the place he was a photojournalist for 4 a long time till his retirement in 2007. But he was nonetheless haunted by what he noticed that fateful spring.
“South Korean democracy started in Gwangju,” he mentioned. “I simply did what little I may for its residents.”
Mr. Na was born in Naju, close to Gwangju, in 1949, a farming household’s solely son with 5 elder sisters. He joined Jeonnam Maeil, one of many two Gwangju every day newspapers, in 1967 after highschool.
When then-President Park Chung-hee visited the area amid drought and it occurred to rain, the 2 dailies blared an identical front-page headlines praising the army strongman as a “rainmaker.” The editor of Mr. Na’s paper bragged that his headline was greater than his rival’s.
“Our newspaper had three photographers however two cameras,” Mr. Na recalled. “When certainly one of us got here in, one other took the digital camera and went out.”
When Mr. Park’s 18-year rule ended along with his assassination in late 1979, Mr. Chun, one other military basic, seized energy. The subsequent May, Mr. Chun banned all political actions, closing colleges and arresting dissidents. When individuals in Gwangju rallied towards martial regulation, he despatched in tanks and paratroopers.
Mr. Na was attending a Sunday Mass in a suburb on May 18 when individuals from Gwangju had been reporting a commotion. It was the start of a 10-day rebellion throughout which troopers shot protesters and residents fought again with stones and rifles stolen from police stations.
Mr. Na discovered town middle so thick with tear fuel that he couldn’t take any photos; he had no fuel masks. The subsequent day, he noticed a radio station automotive on fireplace. Under martial regulation censorship, native media vilified the protesters as “violent mobs” however didn’t report army brutality. Angry residents later torched two TV stations as effectively.
“I used to be as afraid of protesters as of troopers,” Mr. Na mentioned. “When they noticed a reporter, there was homicide of their eyes.”
Mr. Na hid on the fifth flooring of a constructing and took photos of what was unfolding down on the road: a civilian made to kneel earlier than armed troopers, a person and lady with blood streaming down their heads as they had been dragged away by paratroopers, and the coed cudgeled by a paratrooper carrying a medic’s red-cross armband.
Mr. Na rushed to his night newspaper, solely to seek out it unable to publish something concerning the crackdown. When reporters put collectively a bulletin, editors confiscated and destroyed its typesetting.
“We noticed residents being dragged away like canines and slaughtered, however couldn’t report a single line about them,” mentioned the reporters’ joint letter of resignation.
Mr. Na and a sympathetic editor determined at hand over his photographs to overseas information media.
Tony Chung, a photographer for the American information company UPI, was in Seoul when two reporters from Gwangju furtively approached him. They had been carrying two envelopes, one for Mr. Chung and the opposite for The Associated Press in Seoul. Each envelope contained pictures taken by Mr. Na and Shin Bok-jin, a photographer for the opposite Gwangju every day, Jeonnam Ilbo.
There had been sketchy studies about “riots” in Gwangju, Mr. Chung, who’s retired and lives south of Seoul, mentioned by phone. But the photographs contradicted the federal government by bearing witness to army atrocities.
Mr. Chung didn’t know who took the photographs and didn’t ask. The photographers’ identities needed to be protected for his or her security, he mentioned.
The first of the a number of photographs Mr. Chung transmitted overseas was that of the club-wielding medic. The authorities’s data minister accused him of propagating a “faux” picture, and an intelligence agent warned Mr. Chung to observe his again at evening. Mr. Chung was not intimidated and years later, in 1987, his picture of a pupil killed in an anti-government protest, taken for Reuters, helped propel South Korea’s democratization to its climax.
“Those photographs from Gwangju instructed the reality, compelling overseas journalists to hurry there,” mentioned Mr. Chung, 84.
In 1980, though his newspaper had closed, Mr. Na continued to take photos till extra journalists, together with Mr. Chung, arrived in Gwangju. Together, they captured town in indelible photos. Citizens gathering round individuals killed by troopers. The burning of “Chun Doo-hwan the assassin” in effigy. The commandeering of army jeeps and vehicles. Paratroopers shifting in with armored automobiles, and surrounding and bludgeoning college students cowering on the road. Protesters mendacity dead in blood. Mothers wailing over rows of coffins.
Mr. Na spent nights hiding inside a bullet-scarred constructing, hungry and terrified of military snipers. Protesters as soon as grabbed him by the collar, asking “what sort of reporter I used to be, not publishing what I noticed.”
“I didn’t know how you can make them perceive that I needed to go away a report with my digital camera, despite the fact that I couldn’t publish my photographs,” he mentioned.
Today, the images by Mr. Na and Mr. Shin, the photographer for the opposite newspaper, who died in 2010, stay just about the one photos capturing the early days of the turmoil, mentioned Jang Je Geun, an editor of three books of Gwangju photographs.
The rebellion ended on May 27, when paratroopers stormed town corridor, the place the protesters, together with highschool college students, took their final stand with a rifle and some bullets for every. As the early-morning assault started, a feminine pupil named Park Young-soon appealed by loudspeakers on the roof: “Citizens of Gwangju, please don’t overlook us.”
By the official depend, almost 200 individuals had been killed in Gwangju, together with about 20 troopers, half of them by pleasant fireplace. Civic teams have steered that the toll was a lot increased.
Mr. Na’s newspaper reopened six days after the blood tub ended, however nonetheless couldn’t point out the occasions. When the paper carried a poem describing a metropolis “deserted by God and birds,” most of it was redacted by censors. Mr. Na and different reporters visited the victims’ graves and laid flowers in apology.
Mr. Na hid his negatives within the ceiling of his condo as a result of the army was on the lookout for the supply of the image of the baton-wielding paratrooper. When officers visited his house demanding copies of all his photographs, Mr. Na saved delicate ones hidden.
Gwangju impressed a wave of protests throughout South Korea, forcing the federal government to comply with democratic reforms within the late Eighties. The photographs Mr. Na hid had been lastly proven in public exhibitions and used as proof when Parliament investigated the army crackdown. But it was not till 1990, when the Catholic church honored him for his braveness, that Mr. Na was recognized as their supply.
In 2011, an archive on the Gwangju rebellion, which included 2,000 photographs by Mr. Na, was inscribed into Unesco’s “Memory of the World” program that goals to protect essential documentary heritages around the globe.
Married with three grown-up daughters, Mr. Na labored at a well being middle for the aged for a number of years after leaving journalism. But he’s by no means free from the ache of Gwangju.
Today, the outdated army disinformation — that the Gwangju “riots” had been instigated by “hooligans” and “Communist components” — remains to be amplified on-line by right-wing extremists. Mr. Na spends his retirement giving lectures and attending picture exhibitions to assist set the report straight.
Looking again, Mr. Na has one remorse.
On the fourth day of the rebellion, he discovered himself amid paratroopers, along with his cameras hidden beneath his shirt. He heard a captain repeating an order that got here by the radio to shoot into the crowds. Mr. Na fled for his life, and nobody took photos of the mass taking pictures.
“I ought to have taken out my digital camera,” he mentioned, “though if I had, I most likely wouldn’t be right here.”
