This Week: Funniest Moments
Hungry Ghosts: Part 3
by Leigh Hellman, ETA This is part 3 of a 3 part series, published here on Infusion’s website. hungry ghosts Historians remain hesitant to conclusively label the assassination of Park Chung-hee as a coup d’état. For the two months following it, Park’s prime minister stepped into the role of acting president and Major General Chun Doo-hwan—Park’s commander of the Defense Security Command—went about ostensibly rooting out political and military traitors. On December 12th, 1979, Chun ordered the arrest of the ROK Army Chief of Staff and—along with his supporters—violently consolidated his control of the Korean military. This, historians agree, was undoubtedly a coup d’état; it would not be Chun’s last. On May 17th, 1980, Chun strong-armed an extension of the nationwide martial law imposed after Park Chung-hee’s assassination—closing universities, banning political activities, ordering mass arrests, and further restricting the press—and dispatched troops to ensure “public order and safety” in the wake of multiple pro-democracy demonstrations around the country. Broadcasts went out assuring citizens that this was a natural transfer of power: Stay inside your homes as we pacify any anti-national insurgencies. Do not congregate. Do not protest. From the barbed wire fences slicing along the Demilitarized Zone to the tropical beaches of Jeju Island, across the sanded-down green mountain ranges that bisect the peninsula five times over, along the craggy coastlines that wind vicious and rocky, in industrializing cities and one-lane villages—everywhere doors closed, shuttered, locked down. Demonstrators reluctantly went home. Lights went out. Everywhere except Gwangju. — The first known fatality was a 29 year-old deaf man named Kim Gyeong-chul. He was clubbed to death by Special Forces paratroopers on May 18th as he passed by a swelling protest that had begun at the gates of Chonnam National University that morning, but had since pushed its way towards the streets of downtown and right up onto the steps of the Provincial Office. Witnesses recount that when Kim didn’t follow the paratroopers’ directive to get out of the way—a directive he couldn’t hear—they struck him to the ground and didn’t stop swinging until he was dead. The people of Gwangju and South Jeolla, infuriated by the surge of violence and simmering after decades of oppression, poured into the demonstrations en masse. On May 20th, the army began firing on civilians (whose numbers now exceeded 10,000). That same day citizens burned down a local news station, enraged by their misreporting of the escalating brutality. By the evening, hundreds of cars-motorcycles-taxis-trucks led a parade of buses toward the Provincial Office. Citizens climbed on the hoods and roofs and waved black-white-red-blue flags that, in their hands, dwarfed them. Over the next seven days, those flags would be used to wrap bodies as they lay in open pine boxes lining the floors of makeshift hospitals and headquarters. Even inside and out of the sunlight, the spring heat still got to them. On May 21st, the army fired into a crowd of protesters on the steps of the Provincial Office. In response, factional militias broke off from the unarmed citizens. They raided armories and police stations for M1 rifles and carbines. Gunfights between soldiers and militia members punctured the blood and sweat-thick air. The army finally began to retreat from the downtown area after the militias obtained two light machine guns. Gwangju was declared by its citizens to be a “liberated” city. — In Washington D.C., President Jimmy Carter and his national security team held an emergency meeting to determine the administration’s response to reports funneling in of a crisis unfolding in the southwestern province of Korea: “We have counseled moderation, but have not ruled out the use of force, should the Koreans need to employ it to restore order.” [1. Carter Administration, Policy Review Committee Meeting Minutes (May 22, 1980)] — It’s strange, but the thing that stays with me is the sound. Relatively few video feeds exist so audio tracks are usually run over grainy still photographs instead. A military stormtrooper—baton raised, black combat boots set, visor shut over his face. A cowering man—torn polyester button-up, arms braced over his head, streaks of something dark tracking down his pants. Unnatural puddles in the street. Flatbed trucks stacked high with arms and legs and skulls blown half-away. And in the background sobs, wails, shrieks like the end of the world is here—is now. Is on these streets. Cacophonies of anger, voices breaking at the pitch. The rat-tat-tat of gunfire, in short bursts rather than sustained, controlled commands. But it’s the singing—the flat, off-pitch, half shout-half melody. It’s the singing that bores into my sense memory and infects my synapses as they crack like club against skull. I don’t know what they’re saying. Between my own pitifully lacking vocabulary and the evolution of regional dialects from then until now, it might as well be a rally of nonsense. I don’t know what they are saying, but I feel it in the sink of my stomach still. Sometimes I watch documentaries in insulated rooms—in ergonomic chairs where I can reign as the always-disconnected, always-distanced, always-safe Other. Sometimes I watch and cry; I cry ugly and personal like a steel fire and crumble in real-time like an active shooter in a classroom like a jagged scar left on a place and on a collective soul from when history stabbed and tore and it healed up but not quite right again. I cry and I feel like a fraud. Like an appropriator, like a common thief. Like this is their pain and their trauma and theirs and how unbelievably white and American of me to remake it as all I mine me. — From May 22nd to May 25th, the repulsed troops hung back on the city fringes and waited for reinforcements. From there, they formed a blockade around the city’s perimeter as sporadic confrontations continued to increase the number of causalities. Within the city, settlement committees were formed to support the citizens and communities. Committee and militia leaders clashed over the former’s call for the latter’s disarmament.
Pho’na Thai (포나타이)
Review by Kristen O’Brien, ETA 2014-2016 City: Seoul Restaurant Name: Pho’na Thai (포나타이) Food Served: Thai, Vietnamese Restaurant Address: 1) Sinchon-ro 155, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 서울특별시 서대문구 신촌로 155 120-809 2) Gaepo-ro 621, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 서울특별시 강남구 개포로 621 SH공사 View Map Directions: I visited the branch in Sinchon (right near Ewha Women’s University). Take Line 2 the green line to Ewha Women’s University Station, exit 1. Walk straight, away from the other subway exits. If you keep walking, you’ll pass two side streets on your right (pass a post office). At the next street, you will find yourself at a big 4-way intersection. On the corner (on your right) is a NH bank, and the restaurant is right there. You have to go up to the 2nd floor up a ramp to get there. Cost: ~8,000 won and up The price of this restaurant varies by dish, but the prices are very reasonable. The decor is very nice, with cushioned seats, and it sits on the 2nd floor so you get a nice view of the streets below. There is seating for people dining alone, and even seating for groups of people. This restaurant has the best pad thai and the best pho I’ve had in Korea. I always get the pad thai here, and I also love their Vietnamese iced coffee! The food here is very delicious and fresh, and the coffee is really, really good. If you’re looking for great Thai and Vietnamese food, I highly recommend this place! It’s also perfect for a shopping trip to Ewha. If you’re already shopping along the main strip, just shop your way along it, and once you reach the end and find yourself hungry, stop at Pho’na ^^ [slideshow_deploy id=’4233′]