▲ It is the photograph of the Gwangju Democratization Movement.

On May 18th, 2019, it will be the 39th anniversary of the Gwangju Democratization Movement. It is referred to be one part of the process of democracy of South Korea, and it made many people dead by mobilizing the military.

▲ A soldier assaulted a student who was protesting.

The start of the Gwangju Democratization Movement is the death of ex-president, Park Chung-hee. After that, students had a large scale of protest with a desire for democracy and dispersed with the government's word that if the society was stable, it would have withdrawn the martial law. However, the government said not to cancel the martial law but expand it. Then, the government ordered all the colleges to close, but students got angry, so they gathered at the school and continued to have a protest. The government sent the military to suppress it, but it made the protest get larger. On May 21, 1980, it was the day when the troops would supposedly retreat, but they did not retreat and started to fire with live ammunition. Then, the government gave a false report about Gwangju on purpose, isolated the citizens of Gwangju and made lots of casualties.

▲ They are Hinzpeter(left) and Thomas Kretschmann(right) who acted Hinzpeter in the movie ˝Taxi Driver˝.

There is a movie titled "Taxi Driver" based on the Gwangju Democratization Movement. In fact, it is based on the words of Jürgen Hinzpeter, a German journalist who announced the fact about Gwangju and the Korean government's false reports to the world. He said he just told the truth. The documentary exists because of the brave taxi driver, Kim Sa-bock. The movie starts with a taxi driver's desire for money. One day, the taxi driver, living in Seoul, heard that if he took one foreign journalist to Gwangju, he would get 100thousand won. So, he took him to Gwangju, but the real Gwangju was so different from the Gwangju being shown in the news. At first, he wanted to get back to Seoul quickly, but he tried to announce the fact about Gwangju little by little and helped the journalist. In the last part of the movie, through the journalist names Hinzpeter the real Gwangju became known to everybody.

Nowadays, there are lots of historical movies, and many people are reminded of the history which we should remember. Also, everybody gets sad about the death of many students and thankful to them who tried to achieve democratization.