Gwangju Uprising – Windows on Worlds

Following the assassination of president Park Chung-hee in 1979, many assumed that democracy would return and that the society would be liberated from its authoritarian past. That did not, however, come to pass. While the government floundered, general Chun Doo-hwan launched a coup that led to nothing other than a second military dictatorship. Citizens continued to press for democratisation and the lifting of the martial law that had been declared in the wake of Park’s death. In order to cement his authoritarian rule, Chun embarked on an oppressive crackdown of resistance activity, actually expanding martial law and sending troops to monitor universities where the majority of protests were taking place.

It’s against this backdrop that Kim Ji-hoon’s May 18 (화려한 휴가, Hwaryeohan hyuga) unfolds, so named for the first day of Gwangju Uprising in which citizens of the small provincial city were subject to beatings, torture, rape and murder at the hands of military forces. He opens however with pleasant scenes of the local countryside as taxi driver Min-woo (Kim Sang-kyung) heads back into the city eventually arriving to pick up his younger brother Jin-woo (Lee Joon-gi) from high school and deliver him to the local church. Min-woo also has a crush on mutual friend and fellow attendee, Shin-ae (Lee Yo-won), who works as a nurse at the local hospital. For some reason even though this is a fairly small place, Min-woo also seems to be unaware that Shin-ae is the daughter of his boss Heung-su (Ahn Sung-ki ), a former army captain now retired and running a taxi firm.

In an attempt to make the political personal, Kim spends the first hour on Min-woo’s awkward romance which by modern standards is quite problematic in that he basically ends up following Shin-ae around and offering to give her free lifts even though she seems annoyed to see him and isn’t keen on him effectively deciding where she doesn’t and doesn’t go. Meanwhile, as he and his brother are orphaned he’s adopted a paternal role towards Jin-woo who is bright and studying hard with the aim of getting into Seoul University to study law while Min-woo most likely had to give up school to drive the taxi so he could support them both. This is also in its way a little uncomfortable in its emphasis on Jin-woo’s bright future which is about to be destroyed by the uprising as if his life is worth more because of all the ruined potential rather than just because he was an ordinary human betrayed by his government and trapped by hellish atrocity. Even so, it hints at a conflict within Min-woo as he wants to keep his brother safe but also has a natural desire to resist injustice and is moved when Jin-woo explains that one of his best friends has been murdered by state violence.

Then again, the film’s framing is also in a sense reactionary in Jin-woo’s intense offence against being branded as a “rebel” or a “communist” rather refocusing on the fact the military’s actions are inhuman and the their attempt to slur the local people only a means of justification. As the local priest accurately suggests, the military provokes them in order to have an excuse to crack down with extreme prejudice ensuring that there will be no further resistance to increasing authoritarianism. Some army officers begin to ask questions but are quickly shut down by their overzealous commander who claims the North may be on its way to link up with these “communists” and is quite clearly prepared to wipe out the entire town rather than back down and risk a further escalation of their resistance.

While the soldiers are faceless and implacable, the townspeople are sometimes depicted as naive bumblers with significant time spent on a “loudmouth” comic relief character who is nevertheless one of the first to pick up a gun and join the town’s civilian army led by Heung-su who like the priest is under no illusions and assumes troops will soon storm the town. The comedic tone and melodramatic undercurrent often undercut Kim’s attempts to depict the horror of the massacre even in the irony of their juxtaposition as bullets suddenly rip into a cheerful crowd which had been laughing and joking only seconds before. The closing scenes in which a man refuses to surrender and is killed are framed as heroic but in the end seem futile, as if he’s thrown his life away for no reason. Even so there is something Shin-ae’s loudspeaker pleas to remember the citizens of Gwangju who stayed strong and resisted to the last rather than consent to their oppression even if she is in a sense condemned to be the storyteller bearing the horror of it all alone along with the loss of her own happy future crushed under the boots of violent authoritarianism.

International trailer (English subtitles)

In these (generally) well connected days of mass communication when every major event is live broadcast to the world at large, it’s difficult to remember a time when dreadful things might be happening the next town over yet no one knows (or perhaps dares to ask). Until 1979, Korea had been under the control of an oppressive dictatorship which was brought to a sudden and bloody end by the murder of the president, Park Chung-hee, at the hands of one of his aides. Though the democracy movement had been growing, hopes of installing a modern governmental system were dashed with the accession of the de facto president, General Chun Doo-hwan, who reinstated martial law, placing troops on the streets on the pretext of a possible North Korean invasion. In an event known as the Gwanjgu Uprising, a long term peaceful protest led by the area’s large student population was brutally suppressed with large numbers dead or wounded by government soldiers.

Meanwhile, in Seoul, regular Joe taxi driver Kim Man-seob (Song Kang-ho) is trying to go about his everyday business and is finding all of this protesting very irritating, especially when he is forced to swerve to avoid a young man running from riot police and breaks the wing mirror on his otherwise pristine vehicle. Man-seob thinks these kids don’t know they’re born, if they’d spent time abroad like he did in Saudi Arabia, they’d know that few places are quite as nice as Korea. A single father raising his young daughter alone, Man-seob’s major worry is money. He’s four months behind on his rent and his daughter keeps getting into fights with the landlord’s son. Actually, the rent might not be such a pressing problem seeing as Man-seob’s landlord is a close friend and colleague – close enough for him to cheekily ask to borrow the money to “pay” him so his friend’s wife will stop being so mean. When he overhears another driver boasting that he’s picked up an improbably large fare that’s exactly the same amount as the money Man-seob owes, Man-seob bluffs his way into stealing it out from under him. Man-seob, however, has not stopped to consider why a foreigner wants to pay him an insane amount of money to drive from Seoul to provincial Gwangju.

Like many in the Korea of 1980, Man-seob is a man just trying to get by. He has his private sorrows, but largely avoids thinking about the big picture. To him, the Seoul protest movement has become such a normal inconvenience that he keeps cream in his car to help cope with the smell of the smoke bombs. He thinks all of this rancour is just kids out of control and will eventually blow over when order is restored.

Others feel differently. A BBC journalist relocated from Korea to Tokyo describes the situation as “tense” and avows that this time something may be about to break. Tokyo in 1980 is a nice place to live, but extremely boring if you’re an international journalist and so German reporter Peter (Thomas Kretschmann) catches the next flight out with the intention of investigating the rumours of state sponsored violence coming out Gwangju.

Though Man-seob’s original motivation is the money, the events he witnesses in Gwangju have a profound effect on the way he sees his country. Bypassing roadblocks and sneaking into a city under lockdown, Man-seob and Peter witness acts of extreme violence as the army deploys smoke grenades, beatings, and bullets on a peaceful assembly of ordinary people. Prior to the military’s intervention, the atmosphere is joyful and welcoming. The people of Gwangju dance and sing, share meals with each other, and all are excited about the idea of real social change. This juxtaposition of joy and kindness with such brutal and uncompromising cruelty eventually awakens Man-seob’s wider consciousness, forcing him to rethink some early advice he gave to his daughter concerning her difficult relationship with the little boy next-door to the effect that non-reaction is often the best reaction.

Rather than focus on the Uprising itself, Jang presents it at ground level through the eyes of the previously blind Man-seob and the jaded Peter. Inspired by real events though heavily fictionalised (despite a search which continued until his death, Peter was never able to discover the true identity of the taxi driver who had helped him), A Taxi Driver (택시 운전사, Taxi Woonjunsa) is a testament to the everyman’s historical importance which, even if occasionally contrived, speaks with a quiet power in the gradual reawakening of a self-centred man’s sense of honour and personal responsibility.

A Taxi Driver was screened as the sixth teaser for the upcoming London Korean Film Festival 2017. Tickets for the next and final film, The Villainess which screens along with the official programme launch at Regent Street Cinema on 11th September, are on sale now.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Tag: Gwangju Uprising

May 18 (화려한 휴가, Kim Ji-hoon, 2007)

A Taxi Driver (택시 운전사, Jang Hoon, 2017)