It’s an iconic picture — a black-and-white photograph of a blood-splattered pupil being clubbed by a paratrooper medic. It was the primary photograph to slide by way of the navy cordon round Gwangju, South Korea, in 1980, exposing the brutal suppression of what can be often called the Gwangju Democratization Motion.
However for years, the id of the photographer — an unassuming man named Na Kyung Taek — remained a secret.
Mr. Na dared not take credit score for the photograph and different unsettling pictures from Gwangju for concern of the navy junta and its chief, Chun Doo-hwan, whose crackdown there left a whole bunch killed or lacking within the darkest chapter in South Korea’s lengthy wrestle towards dictatorship. Mr. Chun’s rule resulted in 1988, and now many in South Korea assist a Constitutional revision to sanctify Gwangju’s position within the nation’s democratization. Nonetheless, most have by no means heard of Mr. Na.
Mr. Na, 75, sounded detached to the shortage of recognition throughout an interview in Gwangju, the place he was a photojournalist for 4 many years till his retirement in 2007. However 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 might 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 day by 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 similar front-page headlines praising the navy strongman as a “rainmaker.” The editor of Mr. Na’s paper bragged that his headline was larger than his rival’s.
“Our newspaper had three photographers however two cameras,” Mr. Na recalled. “When one in every 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 common, seized energy. The subsequent Might, Mr. Chun banned all political actions, closing faculties 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 Might 18 when individuals from Gwangju have 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 the town heart so thick with tear fuel that he couldn’t take any footage; he had no fuel masks. The subsequent day, he noticed a radio station automotive on hearth. Underneath martial regulation censorship, native media vilified the protesters as “violent mobs” however didn’t report navy brutality. Indignant residents later torched two TV stations as effectively.
“I used to be as afraid of protesters as of troopers,” Mr. Na mentioned. “After they noticed a reporter, there was homicide of their eyes.”
Mr. Na hid on the fifth flooring of a constructing and took footage 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 have 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 handy over his pictures 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 have been carrying two envelopes, one for Mr. Chung and the opposite for The Related Press in Seoul. Every envelope contained images taken by Mr. Na and Shin Bok-jin, a photographer for the opposite Gwangju day by day, Jeonnam Ilbo.
There had been sketchy stories about “riots” in Gwangju, Mr. Chung, who’s retired and lives south of Seoul, mentioned by phone. However the pictures contradicted the federal government by bearing witness to navy atrocities.
Mr. Chung didn’t know who took the pictures and didn’t ask. The photographers’ identities needed to be protected for his or her security, he mentioned.
The primary of the a number of pictures Mr. Chung transmitted overseas was that of the club-wielding medic. The federal government’s data minister accused him of propagating a “pretend” photograph, and an intelligence agent warned Mr. Chung to look at his again at night time. Mr. Chung was not intimidated and years later, in 1987, his photograph of a pupil killed in an anti-government protest, taken for Reuters, helped propel South Korea’s democratization to its climax.
“These pictures from Gwangju advised the reality, compelling overseas journalists to hurry there,” mentioned Mr. Chung, 84.
In 1980, though his newspaper had closed, Mr. Na continued to take footage till extra journalists, together with Mr. Chung, arrived in Gwangju. Collectively, they captured the town in indelible pictures. Residents gathering round individuals killed by troopers. The burning of “Chun Doo-hwan the assassin” in effigy. The commandeering of navy jeeps and vans. Paratroopers transferring in with armored automobiles, and surrounding and bludgeoning college students cowering on the road. Protesters mendacity lifeless in blood. Moms wailing over rows of coffins.
Mr. Na spent nights hiding inside a bullet-scarred constructing, hungry and afraid 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 one can make them perceive that I needed to go away a report with my digital camera, though I couldn’t publish my pictures,” he mentioned.
Immediately, the images by Mr. Na and Mr. Shin, the photographer for the opposite newspaper, who died in 2010, stay just about the one pictures capturing the early days of the turmoil, mentioned Jang Je Geun, an editor of three books of Gwangju pictures.
The rebellion ended on Might 27, when paratroopers stormed the town corridor, the place the protesters, together with highschool college students, took their final stand with a rifle and some bullets for every. Because the early-morning assault started, a feminine pupil named Park Younger-soon appealed by way of loudspeakers on the roof: “Residents of Gwangju, please don’t overlook us.”
By the official depend, almost 200 individuals have been killed in Gwangju, together with about 20 troopers, half of them by pleasant hearth. Civic teams have instructed 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 residence as a result of the navy was searching for the supply of the image of the baton-wielding paratrooper. When officers visited his house demanding copies of all his pictures, 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 Nineteen Eighties. The pictures Mr. Na hid have been lastly proven in public exhibitions and used as proof when Parliament investigated the navy crackdown. Nevertheless 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 pictures by Mr. Na, was inscribed into Unesco’s “Reminiscence of the World” program that goals to protect essential documentary heritages world wide.
Married with three grown-up daughters, Mr. Na labored at a well being heart for the aged for a number of years after leaving journalism. However he’s by no means free from the ache of Gwangju.
Immediately, the previous navy disinformation — that the Gwangju “riots” have been instigated by “hooligans” and “Communist parts” — remains to be amplified on-line by right-wing extremists. Mr. Na spends his retirement giving lectures and attending photograph exhibitions to assist set the report straight.
Trying again, Mr. Na has one remorse.
On the fourth day of the rebellion, he discovered himself amid paratroopers, along with his cameras hidden underneath his shirt. He heard a captain repeating an order that got here by way of the radio to shoot into the crowds. Mr. Na fled for his life, and nobody took footage of the mass taking pictures.
“I ought to have taken out my digital camera,” he mentioned, “though if I had, I in all probability wouldn’t be right here.”
