April Revolution
| Korean spelling | |
|---|---|
| Korean alphabet : | 4.19 혁명 |
| Hanja : | 四 一九 革命 |
| Revised Romanization : | 4.19 Hyeongmyeong |
| McCune-Reischauer : | 4.19 Hyŏngmyŏng |
The April Revolution in South Korea , also known as the April Movement , stands for a protest movement that formed on April 19, 1960 and led to the abdication of President Syngman Rhee a week later, on April 26. It heralded the end of an authoritarian rule that had lasted for 12 years and then paved the way for the short-lived Second Korean Republic .
prehistory
Years in the run-up to the protests, the domestic political situation in the young South Korean state under Syngman Rhee had already developed in an authoritarian direction. While Rhee, who came to power in 1948 in the year of the Jeju uprising , was still very anxious in his first term of office to bring other parties into the government, his stance in this respect changed noticeably. In his second term as president Rhee was able to change the constitution in 1954 in the country weakened by the Korean War with his Liberal Party by manipulating numbers, which lifted the limitation of his power as president to two terms of office. From this time onwards, his cabinet no longer consisted largely of representatives of the various political groups in the country, as was originally the case, but largely of former Japanese collaborators, who primarily supported Rhee's retention of power.
“The goals of reconstruction and retention of power were thus carried out with the same team. This attitude also meant that before 1958 maintaining power would not have been an important maxim of Syngman Rhee's policy, but the restrictive measures against the opposition have now been tightened. "
The attempt by Syngman Rhees, who is now over 80 years old, to extend his authoritarian regime even further with the elections from 1960 onwards at any cost, led to massive unrest in the country.
Protests
Masan uprising
With the emergence of student organizations and unions critical of the regime, the Rhees regime was forced to grossly manipulate the elections for its fourth term in order to enable re-election. The deception and the elimination of opposition activists initially led to a great uproar in the population of the city of Masan , where citizens, students, and politicians of the opposition expressed their disapproval in the elections for Rhees Vice President Lee on March 15, 1960 and demonstrated by the thousands. As a result, there were clashes between demonstrators and police forces, the latter cracking down on their opponents. The regime tried to portray the protests as communist maneuvers, but due to its lack of credibility it had the hoped-for effect and led to demonstrations by sympathizers in other cities. After the body of the student Ju-yeol Kim, whose skull had been split open by a tear gas grenade, was found near the port of Masan, the riot spread like wildfire across the country. From the original motivation for challenging the elections, the people developed a striving to get rid of the corrupt tyranny of Rhees.
Protests at Korea University
On April 18, when students from Korea University in Seoul peacefully protested against the government in the city center with slogans such as "Leave the enemies of democracy", the regime deployed thugs who violently attacked the students. The next morning, Chosun Ilbo newspaper published pictures under the title "Seoul in the Shadow of Violence" and news of the regime's brutality spread.
Spread of the protests
After the regime's violent crackdown on the students at Korea University, on April 19, 1960, which would go down in Korean history as "Bloody Tuesday", over 30,000 students from other leading universities in Seoul gathered and marched towards the headquarters of the President. As the police began shooting at the unarmed, peaceful protesting students, killing 21 people, the demonstrations got out of hand, with the government imposing martial law in several major cities and over 120 people in Seoul alone during the day found death.
Resignation Rhees
After Rhee first tried to appease the angry population by dissolving his cabinet and removing high officials of the Liberal Party, there was still no calm, since Rhee's resignation was the real goal of the demonstrators. When the military under General Chan-yo Song and the United States government forbade the regime to support the regime, Syngman Rhee was finally forced to abdicate and did so on April 26, while Vice-President Lee committed suicide. After more than 180 deaths and many thousands of injuries, the civil society of South Korea, with students, professors and journalists as a base, finally managed to overthrow an authoritarian regime on its own for the first time.
consequences
After Rhees resigned, he went into exile in Hawaii and the rule of the Liberal Party came to an end. After a brief transitional government, Yun Bo-Seon was elected the new President of South Korea in August 1960 and the Second Republic was established. De facto, however, power in this form of government rested with Prime Minister Chang Myon , who had already served under Rhee. Since the process of coming to terms with the protests and the decisive elections on March 15 only resulted in the dismissal of some of the corrupt leaders and instead dismissed young officers, the military finally launched a coup in May of the following year under the leadership of the controversial future President Park Chung-hee and, after just a few months, marked the end of the Second Republic. Park writes in his justification that the Democratic Party of his predecessors disregarded the sacrifice of the revolution and disappointed the hopes of the brave people.
literature
- ↑ a b Rainer Dormels: Political Culture and Minister recruitment in South Korea. Lit-Verlag, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9459-2 .
- ↑ a b c d Sunhyuk Kim: The Politics of Democratization in Korea - The Role of Civil Society. Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh 2000, ISBN 978-0-8229-5736-2 , pp. 23-50.
- ↑ 60 Years of the Republic: The End of Syngman Rhee's Rule. In: The Chosun Ilbo , July 7, 2007, last seen on June 14, 2014 ( [1] )
- ↑ Namhee Lee: The Making of Minjung. Cornell Univ. Press, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-8014-4566-8 .
- ^ Chung-Hee Park: The Country, The Revolution And I. Hollym Corporation Publishers, Seoul, Korea, 1970.