It Takes Political Maturity to Remember a Country's Darkest History
Undertaking a popular political movement against a government backed by military force is often not the easiest of tasks, and the task is particularly difficult if the government is a military junta with no hesitation to use force to keep itself in power. Organizers of political movements, with no military force of its own, inevitably come up against the barrels of guns when confronting the state, often with devastating consequences that results in endless bloodshed. The state, fearful of losing moral authority and political legitimacy as murderers of unarmed civilians, would of course like to suppress news of such confrontations.
For many countries that transitioned from top-down authoritarian rule to one based on popular elections, such bloody political confrontations were part of the transition process, a necessary part of political changes that institutionalized the current political systems. It is particularly true of Cold War-era democratic movements against dictators, who felt justified to open fire against civilians who they deemed communist plots to overthrow staunchly anti-communist political orders. South Korea was one such case, where US-backed military regimes increasingly came under assault from left-wing forces in the1980s.
The quiet buildup of tension came to a head in the so-called Gwangju Uprising in May 18th, 1980, when local citizens took the fight to military and police units in response to student demonstrations against military rule being fired upon. The result left anywhere between a hundred to more than two thousand dead, and an all-around censorship and lockdown of the entire area. It is perhaps one of the darkest chapters of recent Korean, and Asian political histories, a chapter suppressed by various governments until the reconciliation of the late 1990s.
However, three decades since the Uprising, the general public has not only embraced the sacrifices of the Gwangju citizenry in those pivotal days, but have come to see them as heroes who, in their part, have made modern-day South Korea the free society that it has become. The praise for the Gwangju citizenry is certainly not lacking in A Taxi Driver, a recent Korean film that depicts the incident from the point of a view of a German journalist and a Seoul taxi driver who had little idea of the extent of the crackdown as they ventured into a 1980 Gwangju under complete military lockdown.
The film does not hesitate to show the brutality of military units operating against civilians of the city. Candid shots of people getting beaten and shot at point-blank range by soldiers fill the entirety of the film, against the confusion of protagonists who wonder why the government is capable of such actions. Selfish thoughts about personal safety and making money give way to heroic sacrifices by individuals to get the truth about the extent of brutality out to international press. As more and more protagonists fall at the hands of soldiers and plain-clothes policemen, it become difficult not to get teary-eyed.
But aside from the ability to instill such real character into a few normal people-turned heroes in the historical event that they had no idea was taking place, perhaps the greatest contribution of the film is in its ability to remind viewers that whatever freedoms that they enjoy today come from the ultimate sacrifices made by thousands of their compatriots of the past generations. It reminds people that whatever political rights they strive for, they can only be acquired by fighting for them, against overwhelming odds. And most importantly, it reminds people that governments are capable of making mistakes but also atoning for them.
As of yet, not all governments are like the South Korean one in being able to make such amends. Not many countries are capable of producing and popularizing a politically charged film about an event as graphic and recent as the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. The fact that China, for instance, outright banned the movie from the country, and completely scrubbed it from all domestic distributors, online and offline, show that the courage of atoning for past mistakes is a characteristic not shared by all governments, even if similar kinds of mistakes were made by them around the same time.
And because many governments are not yet as enlightened about the past as the South Korean one, movies like A Taxi Driver finds enormous resonance, not just among authoritarian states but even democratic ones. Until a society can celebrate nameless citizens who lost it all in order to strive for the ideals that they believe in, and governments that unjustifiably suppress the will of the people can be openly exposed, the society in question is not yet progressive enough to move forward with improving itself without historical baggage. Only with more films like A Taxi Driver made and shown can more political progressivism take root.
For many countries that transitioned from top-down authoritarian rule to one based on popular elections, such bloody political confrontations were part of the transition process, a necessary part of political changes that institutionalized the current political systems. It is particularly true of Cold War-era democratic movements against dictators, who felt justified to open fire against civilians who they deemed communist plots to overthrow staunchly anti-communist political orders. South Korea was one such case, where US-backed military regimes increasingly came under assault from left-wing forces in the1980s.
The quiet buildup of tension came to a head in the so-called Gwangju Uprising in May 18th, 1980, when local citizens took the fight to military and police units in response to student demonstrations against military rule being fired upon. The result left anywhere between a hundred to more than two thousand dead, and an all-around censorship and lockdown of the entire area. It is perhaps one of the darkest chapters of recent Korean, and Asian political histories, a chapter suppressed by various governments until the reconciliation of the late 1990s.
However, three decades since the Uprising, the general public has not only embraced the sacrifices of the Gwangju citizenry in those pivotal days, but have come to see them as heroes who, in their part, have made modern-day South Korea the free society that it has become. The praise for the Gwangju citizenry is certainly not lacking in A Taxi Driver, a recent Korean film that depicts the incident from the point of a view of a German journalist and a Seoul taxi driver who had little idea of the extent of the crackdown as they ventured into a 1980 Gwangju under complete military lockdown.
The film does not hesitate to show the brutality of military units operating against civilians of the city. Candid shots of people getting beaten and shot at point-blank range by soldiers fill the entirety of the film, against the confusion of protagonists who wonder why the government is capable of such actions. Selfish thoughts about personal safety and making money give way to heroic sacrifices by individuals to get the truth about the extent of brutality out to international press. As more and more protagonists fall at the hands of soldiers and plain-clothes policemen, it become difficult not to get teary-eyed.
But aside from the ability to instill such real character into a few normal people-turned heroes in the historical event that they had no idea was taking place, perhaps the greatest contribution of the film is in its ability to remind viewers that whatever freedoms that they enjoy today come from the ultimate sacrifices made by thousands of their compatriots of the past generations. It reminds people that whatever political rights they strive for, they can only be acquired by fighting for them, against overwhelming odds. And most importantly, it reminds people that governments are capable of making mistakes but also atoning for them.
As of yet, not all governments are like the South Korean one in being able to make such amends. Not many countries are capable of producing and popularizing a politically charged film about an event as graphic and recent as the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. The fact that China, for instance, outright banned the movie from the country, and completely scrubbed it from all domestic distributors, online and offline, show that the courage of atoning for past mistakes is a characteristic not shared by all governments, even if similar kinds of mistakes were made by them around the same time.
And because many governments are not yet as enlightened about the past as the South Korean one, movies like A Taxi Driver finds enormous resonance, not just among authoritarian states but even democratic ones. Until a society can celebrate nameless citizens who lost it all in order to strive for the ideals that they believe in, and governments that unjustifiably suppress the will of the people can be openly exposed, the society in question is not yet progressive enough to move forward with improving itself without historical baggage. Only with more films like A Taxi Driver made and shown can more political progressivism take root.
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