Students commemorate anniversary of Gwangju Uprising with guardhouse experience tours.

A little while ago a teacher and blogger in Gwangju, Wanderlust: Korea, shared some pictures from the field trip her middle school took on Monday, May 17th to commemorate the Gwangju Uprising that began on May 18th, 1980. The students toured a few sites associated with the uprising and made the news posing with politician and Jeolla favorite Chung Dong-young, all in all a busy day.



Anyway, here are a few of my favorites, reposted with permission. The students had a tour guide to show them around the National Cemetery in Gwangju (which was also captured by Newsis):





An interesting placard at the museum:



The series that interested me most was at an old guardhouse, a site I didn't even know was still in existence and open to the public:




The students were yelled at by guards and then led across the grounds into holding cells.





Beyond the white buildings is a brick semicircle building "used as a detainment facility" a placard explains

where those who struggled against the military dictatorship during the May 18 Democratic Uprising were held in custody. In this fan-shaped guardhouse consisting of 6 chambers detainees could easily be monitored with a single glance. Detainees had to sit up straight for 16 hours a day and were beaten with a club regardless of age if they moved an inch. In one chamber as many as 150 were imprisoned, which made it almost impossible to sleep. Detainees often suffered from rashes and skin disease in the scorching heat. They were served two portions of food in one tray and were given only three spoonfuls of rice. The captives were under a constant threat of violence from the military police. Yet, they never caved in to such atrocities having the firm belief that truth always prevails in the end.

There are mannequins demonstrating how prisoners had to sit:



And, as in this Newsis photograph, how they were interrogated:



A Naver search turns up videos of these guardhouse experience tours (영창체험) for students, such as one with a local elementary school from 2006---with inappropriately-pleasant background music---and this one with Honam University students and Japanese yuhaksaeng from 2007.

The facility is located in the 518 Freedom Park (518자유공원) in Chipyeong-dong, behind the Kim Daejung Convention Center. It's accessible via a number of buses and by the Kim Daejung Convention Center subway station. The National Cemetary is accessible by the aptly-numbered city bus 518.