A group of Kent State University professors recently returned from a visit to the commemoration of the Gwangju Uprising at Chonnam National University in Gwangju, South Korea, feeling inspired for the meaningful connections they made to the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State.
“I believe that we were all profoundly shaped by this whole experience,” said Karl Martin, Ph.D., adjunct faculty in the School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies in the College of Education, Health and Human Services.
Martin was on the trip, along with Landon Hancock, Ph.D., professor in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies, Sara Koopman, Ph.D., assistant professor in Peace and Conflict Studies; and Jennifer Mapes, Ph.D., assistant professor of geography.
The trip was part of an exchange of faculty between the two universities. Several members of the Chonnam faculty were at Kent State for the May 4 Commemoration, and four Kent State faculty members traveled to South Korea for the commemoration of the May 18 uprising.
On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students protesting the United States’ escalating involvement in the Vietnam War, killing four and wounding nine others, and directly changing the course of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
The May 18, 1980, the Gwangju Uprising began when a group of Chonnam National University students raised their voices to protest the military dictatorship ruling South Korea at the time. Demonstrators were fired upon, killed and tortured by the military government during the 10-day uprising. Unofficial estimates of the death toll were at 2,000 or more, and it would be another 13 years before South Korea became a fully democratic government in 1993.
Yeonmin Kim, Ph.D., a literature professor at Chonnam who received his doctorate at Kent State in 2013, proposed the exchange program between the two institutions based on their historical campus tragedies, believing it would be beneficial to further the legacies of both institutions.
The Kent State faculty members participated in a panel discussion at Chonnam, sharing their work as curators of Kent State's May 4 history, and attended May 18 commemoration events.
“It was moving to learn about what happened in Gwangju, but one of the things that came up that I have always thought was true for those of us who study May 4 here on campus is this feeling of responsibility for telling the story of what happened and keeping the memory alive,” Mapes said. “I know that sounds kind of cliche but keeping the memory alive and reminding people.”
Mapes said historically faculty members at Kent State have played a pivotal role in learning more and sharing more, so that each year there is something to commemorate.
“There’s lots of meaning to be made of both these events, but if you focus, they feel very strongly that you keep this alive to remember the struggle for democracy,” Mapes said. “I think there are folks who are like 'We have democracy, we’re all good now.’ And we are reminded, especially recently, that democracy is not something that we can take for granted and it is worth commemorating every year and remembering.”
Hancock said the group was able to participate in many commemoration events and make meaningful connections with the people at Chonnam and identify connections between the two tragedies.
He noted that Chonnam professors who had been fired for advocating for education began commemorating the anniversary in secret soon after the uprising.
“The secret commemoration reminds me of the early stages of the May 4 Task Force where they came together and unofficially started commemorating,” Hancock said.
Koopman noted one moving account that she learned about how Gwangju Uprising victims were buried in a mass grave. Initially, it was so dangerous to go to the site, that a group of professors formed a hiking club to go on regular hikes so that when they wanted to go to the site for the commemoration, it would appear to be just one of their normal hikes.
For the future, Hancock said the School of Peace and Conflict Studies will work with Chonnam faculty to help them develop peace and conflict study elements for their degree programs.
“There’s plenty of room for collaboration as we move forward, and it would be really worthwhile if we could continue this kind of exchange and more academically oriented exchanges,” Hancock said.
Koopman said one proposal was for a joint assignment between students at both universities to take their photos at a commemoration marker that holds the most meaning for them and then meet online to exchange pictures and discuss the markers and their meaning.
The School of Peace and Conflict Studies, the Office of Global Education, the May 4 Visitors Center and President Todd Diacon’s office worked together to help make the exchange a reality.
Koopman and Mapes are the creators of Mapping May 4, a web app that draws from the oral histories in the May 4 Collection in the Kent State Special Collections & Archives, and maps stories from those histories that describe events at a particular place in Kent from May 1-5, 1970. The app is designed to serve as a digital memorial to remember and honor the events.
Hancock learned about the Gwangju uprising while serving as a Senior Fulbright Fellow from 2018 to 2019 in Korea. He visited the commemoration in 2019 as part of his research interest into the role that commemoration plays in instances of transitional justice.
Martin, whose trip was sponsored by Kent State’s Gerald H. Read Center for International and Intercultural Education is the author of a new book, “Currere and Psychoanalytic Guided Regression - Revisiting the Kent State Shootings,” which revisits the 1970 shootings, using a novel approach of currere and psychoanalytic guided regression. The currere method is an approach to education that encourages educators and students to undertake an autobiographical examination of themselves.