- Title: Why Were They Arrested? Religious Leaders and the Kwangju Democratization Movement
- Date: Friday, Nov 24th, 2023
- Time: 3:30-5:00PM (PST)
- Location: The Case Room (Room 132), UBC Liu Institute for Global Issues
- Speaker: Dr. Don Baker (Professor of Korean Civilization, Department of Asian Studies at University of British Columbia)
- Bio: Don Baker is Professor of Korean Civilization in the Department of Asian Studies at UBC, where he has been teaching courses on both modern and premodern Korean history since 1987. He has published extensively on the history of Korea, paying particular attention to philosophy, religion, and traditional science in Korea’s past. His latest book is A Korean Confucian’s Advice on How to be Moral: Tasan Chŏng Yagyong’s Reading of the Zhongyong (University of Hawai’i Press). Prof. Baker first went to Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer to teach English in Kwangju from 1971 to 1974. He returned briefly to Kwangju in May,1980. He is currently serving as co-director of the Centre for Korean Research.
- Abstract: I am a historian. That means that I try to unravel puzzles in past events, trying to figure out why things happened the way they did. One puzzle I have been trying to unravel recently is related to the Kwangju Uprising of May, 1980. (It is also known as the Kwangju Democratization Movement.) I have been investigating why so many Catholic priests in Kwangju were jailed by the Chun Doo-hwan government soon after that uprising was suppressed, though no Protestant pastors or Buddhist abbots who were in the Kwangju area at that time were arrested in the immediate aftermath of the uprising. A related puzzle is why did the YWCA rather than the YMCA play such an important role during the 10 days of terror Gwangju residents had to endure between May 18 and May 27. In my talk, I will present what I have discovered so far about the roles Catholic priests and Protestant women played in helping people in Kwangju cope with the traumatic events they were confronting.
