It’s an iconic photo – a black-and-white photo of a bloodied student being clubbed by a paratrooper medic. This is the first photograph taken across the military cordon around Gwangju, South Korea, in 1980, revealing the brutal suppression of Gwangju’s democratization movement.
But for years, the identity of the photographer – a humble man named Na Kyung Taek – remained a secret.
Mr. Law was afraid to attribute this and other disturbing images from Gwangju to the military junta and its leader Chun Doo-hwan. The crackdown has left hundreds dead or missing. Jeon’s rule ended in 1988, and many Koreans now support amending the constitution to sanctify Gwangju’s role in the country’s democratization. Despite this, most people have never heard of Mr. Na.
In an interview in Gwangju, Mr. Na, 75, sounded indifferent to the lack of recognition.
“Korean democracy began in Gwangju,” he said. “I just did what I could for the citizens.”
Mr. Na was born in Naju, near Gwangju, in 1949. He was the only son of a peasant family and had five sisters. After graduating from high school in 1967, he joined Jeonnam Daily, one of the two daily newspapers in Gwangju.
When then-President Park Chung-hee visited the region during a drought, it coincided with rain, and two daily newspapers ran identical front-page headlines praising the military strongman as a “rainmaker.” The editor of that newspaper boasted that his headlines were bigger than those of his competitors.
“Our paper had three photographers but two cameras,” Mr. Na recalled. “When one of us came in, the other one walked out with a camera.”
Park Geun-hye’s 18-year rule ended with an assassination in late 1979, and another army general, Chun Chun, seized power. In May of the following year, Mr. Quan banned all political activities, closed schools and arrested dissidents. When people in Gwangju rallied against martial law, he sent tanks and paratroopers.
Mr. Na was attending Sunday Mass in the suburbs on May 18 when people in Gwangju reported riots. It was the start of a 10-day uprising, during which soldiers shot at protesters and citizens fought back with rocks and rifles stolen from police stations.
The gentleman found the city center filled with tear gas and he couldn’t take pictures; he didn’t have a gas mask. The next day, he saw a radio station car on fire. Under martial law censorship, local media smeared protesters as “violent thugs” but failed to report military atrocities. Angry citizens later burned down two television stations.
“I’m as scared of the protesters as I am of the soldiers,” Mr. Na said. “When they saw the reporter, their eyes were filled with murderous intent.”
Mr. Na hid on the fifth floor of a building and filmed what was happening on the street: a civilian was forced to kneel in front of armed soldiers, a man and a woman were dragged away by paratroopers, their heads bleeding, and the student was Beaten by paratroopers with red cross armbands.
Mr. Na quickly checked the evening newspaper, but found that the newspaper could not publish anything about the repression. When reporters put together a bulletin, editors confiscated and destroyed its typeface.
“We saw citizens dragged away like dogs and slaughtered, yet unable to report a single line of their work,” the journalists’ joint resignation letter read.
Mr. Na and a sympathetic editor decided to turn his photos over to foreign news outlets.
United Press International (UPI) photographer Tony Chung was in Seoul when two Gwangju reporters sneaked up on him. They carried two envelopes, one for Mr. Chung and the other for the Associated Press in Seoul. Each envelope contained a photo taken by Mr. Na and Shin Bok-jin, a photographer for Jeonnam Ilbo, another daily newspaper in Gwangju.
Mr. Jung, a retiree living south of Seoul, said by phone that there were sketchy reports of “riots” in Gwangju. But the photos bear witness to military atrocities and contradict the government.
Mr. Zhong didn’t know who took the photo and didn’t ask. For the safety of photographers, their identities must be protected, he said.
The first of several photos Mr Chung sent abroad was of a doctor wielding a stick. The government information minister accused him of spreading “fake” photos, and an intelligence officer warned Mr Chung to be careful at night. Undeterred, Mr. Chung helped catapult South Korea’s democratization to its peak years later, in 1987, by photographing a student killed during an anti-government protest for Reuters.
“These photos from Gwangju told the truth and forced foreign journalists to rush there,” said Mr. Chung, 84.
Although his newspaper had ceased publication in 1980, Mr. Na continued to take photos until more reporters, including Mr. Chung, arrived in Gwangju. Together they captured indelible images of the city. Citizens gathered around those killed by soldiers. Burning the effigy of “murderer Chun Doo-hwan”. Requisition military jeeps and trucks. Paratroopers moved in in armored vehicles, surrounded and beat students huddled in the street. Protesters fell in pools of blood. Mothers wept before rows of coffins.
The gentleman spent the night hiding in a scarred building, hungry and afraid of army snipers. Protesters once grabbed him by the collar and questioned “what kind of journalist am I to not publish what I see.”
“I didn’t know how to make them understand that I wanted to leave a record with my camera, even though I couldn’t publish my photos,” he said.
Today, the photos taken by Mr. Na and another newspaper photographer, Mr. Shin, who died in 2010, remain virtually the only ones capturing the early days of the unrest, said Jang Je Geun, editor of Three Books in Gwangju.
The uprising ended on May 27, when paratroopers stormed City Hall and protesters, including high school students, made a last-ditch stand armed with rifles and a few bullets each. As the early morning attacks began, a female student named Park Young-soon called through a rooftop loudspeaker: “Citizens of Gwangju, please don’t forget us.”
According to official statistics, nearly 200 people died in Gwangju, including about 20 soldiers, half of whom were accidentally injured by friendly forces. Civil society groups say the death toll is much higher.
Mr. Na’s newspaper reopened six days after the bloodbath, but was still unable to mention the events. When a newspaper published a poem describing a city “forsaken by God and birds,” much of it was deleted by censors. Mr. Na and other reporters visited the graves of the victims and laid flowers to apologize.
Mr. Na hid the negatives in the ceiling of his apartment as the military searched for the source of the photos of baton-waving paratroopers. When the police came to his home and asked for copies of all his photos, Mr. Na hid the sensitive photos.
Gwangju sparked a wave of protests across South Korea, forcing the government to agree to democratic reforms in the late 1980s. Mr Na’s hidden photos were eventually put on public exhibition and used as evidence in a parliamentary inquiry into the military crackdown. But it was not until 1990, when the Catholic Church honored him for his courage, that Mr Rowe was identified as their source.
In 2011, the archives on the Gwangju Uprising, which included 2,000 of Mr. Na’s photographs, were included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World program, which seeks to protect important documentary heritage around the world.
Mr. Na is married with three adult daughters. After leaving journalism, he worked at a senior health center for several years. But he could never escape the pain of Gwangju.
Today, the military’s disinformation that the Gwangju “riot” was instigated by “gangsters” and “communists” is still being amplified by right-wing extremists on the Internet. Mr. Na spent his retirement helping to set the record straight by giving lectures and participating in photography exhibitions.
Looking back, the gentleman had one regret.
On the fourth day of the uprising, he found himself among paratroopers with his camera hidden under his shirt. He heard a captain repeating orders over the radio to shoot into the crowd. The gentleman ran for his life and no one took photos of the mass shooting.
“I should have taken out my camera,” he said, “but if I had taken out my camera, I probably wouldn’t be here.”
