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Ex-president Chun Doo-hwan

It’s of considerable importance that ex-president Chun Doo-hwan is on trial for defaming a deceased Catholic priest named Cho Cheol-hyeon (1938–2016, also known as Cho Pius) because this could become an opportunity to identify the person who gave the order to open fire upon innocent civilians during the Gwangju Uprising (Gwangju Democratization Movement), a question that remains unanswered to this day. If the court accepts the claim that martial law troops in helicopters fired on protesters during the Gwangju Uprising as part of determining whether or not Chun is guilty of defamation, the argument that the government troops were acting in self-defense, which was accepted by the court in an earlier trial of Chun, will lose its validity.

The first hearing in Chun’s trial was held on Mar. 11 in Room No. 201 of the Gwangju District Court. The decision that the court must make is whether Chun was guilty of defaming the deceased when he bashed Cho, who testified that he witnessed a helicopter attack on civilians during the Gwangju Uprising, as a “shameless liar” in a memoir published in 2017. The initial questions for the court to answer are whether the helicopter attack actually occurred and, presuming that it did, whether Chun included the criticism of Cho in his memoir despite being aware of that incident.

“Chun had basically been acting with legal impunity and hasn’t even paid most of the fines he owes. The fact that he has been brought to court is significant for the principle of fairness under the law. The question of dealing with the past is coming back into focus,” said Ahn Gil-jeong, an analyst at the May 18 Memorial Foundation.

But this trial isn’t merely about determining whether the charges of defamation against Chun will stick. This whole time, Chun and other members of the military junta have ferociously denied the testimony by Cho and groups representing victims of the Gwangju Uprising that helicopters fired on protesters between 1 and 3 pm on May 21, 1980. Academics and legal experts believe the reason for their denial is, if the helicopter attack is acknowledged, it would undermine the claim that Chun and his cronies have made over the past 39 years that the government troops were justified in shooting protesters because they were acting in self-defense.

“Gunfire from helicopters is a symbol of the use of hostile battlefield tactics against civilians,” said Kim Jeong-ho, an attorney for the complainants and head of the Gwangju and South Jeolla Province branch of MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society. “If the helicopter attack occurred between 1 and 3 pm, as Father Cho claimed, before the Defense Ministry authorized the martial law troops to defend themselves at 4:35 pm on May 21, 1980, then we can’t help but conclude that someone else gave the order to fire.”

In the end, the question of guilt or innocence in Chun’s defamation trial also serves as an important opportunity for determining if the gunfire in Gwangju 39 years ago resulted from a local commander exercising the right to self-defense with the consent of the Ministry of National Defense (MND) or whether the unit opened fire on someone else’s orders.

“The pilots of the helicopters flying above the downtown area couldn’t have felt any direct physical threat from the protesters. If they opened fire in that situation, we have to conclude they were not acting in self-defense but rather had orders from above,” said Lee Jae-ui, who wrote “Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age,” the first memoir of the Gwangju Uprising. If the helicopter attack is credited, Lee said, that would be evidence that the troops had been ordered to open fire on protesters.

Between 1 and 5 pm on May 21, paratroopers opened fire at Geumnam Street, near the former South Jeolla Provincial Office, killing 34 civilians, but it has never been determined who gave the order to fire. In 2007, the MND’s fact-finding commission only said it was “impossible to determine” who had given that order. Academics and civic society are hoping that Chun’s trial will give judicial momentum to a government investigation into the remaining questions about the Gwangju Uprising, including who ordered troops to open fire. But even though the ruling and opposition parties have agreed to set up a commission to investigate the uprising, the commission has yet to be fully staffed because of a debate about the qualifications of commission members nominated by the Liberty Korea Party.

By Jung Dae-ha and Ahn Kwan-ok, Gwangju correspondents

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