Ryu Shik, a member of the steering committee of the Korean Society of Sydney NSW Australia, puts on a commemorative event each year in Sydney to mark the anniversary of the May 18, 1980, Gwangju Democratization Movement. (Kim Yong-hee/Hankyoreh)
A Korean Australian who lived through the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement of 1980 is pushing for greater global awareness of the uprising and massacre.“Without even telling me beforehand, my oldest daughter, who was born in Australia, visited the May 18 National Cemetery last year while traveling in Korea with friends,” said Ryu Shik, 61, a member of the steering committee of the Korean Society of Sydney NSW Australia.“Global awareness of the incident has risen following author Han Kang’s winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Now’s the time to cement it as the key historical event in Korea’s democracy and take its story to the world,” he said, adding that commemorative events should go beyond being centered in Gwangju to widely promote the pro-democracy movement in 1980 abroad.After immigrating to Australia in 1995, Ryu became an active member of the local Korean Society and leads a ceremony to mark the uprising every year. The Hankyoreh sat down with Ryu on April 24 at the May 18 Foundation in Gwangju.Behind Ryu’s efforts to raise awareness of May 18 from a distant land is a tragic family history. As a first-year student at Gwangju Inseong High School, he attended protests with his youngest uncle, Ryu Young-sun (then 27), around the former building of the South Jeolla Provincial Office and Geumnam-ro, a famous thoroughfare in the city. His eldest sister, So-young, then 21 and the only university student among Ryu’s brother and two sisters, was taken into preventive custody from the family home in the city’s Sansu neighborhood on the night of May 17, 1980, on the charge of illegal assembly. Ryu’s uncle left the house to look for his niece.During mass shootings by martial law troops on May 21 in front of the provincial office building, Ryu saw the deaths of a young man waving the Korean flag from atop an armored vehicle and a student in a military training uniform standing next to him, but his anger outweighed his fear.
