4.2. Korea’s Democratization and Media
4.2.5. The ‘Great June Struggle’ of 1987 and Media
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ned active politics at the request of the ruling party. With the inauguration of the 5th Republic, 23 journalists gave up influential careers to enter the Democratic Justice P arty (Lee, 1989: 190). Thus, the government’s control over the media had a great impa ct both on the actual work of journalists and on media owners.
The monopoly of the media market and the collusion between the government and media owners have contributed to the growing alienation of the audiences, and later to the rise of the public outcry for more freedom of the press and democratic broadcasting. So, throughout the early 1980s, there persisted increasing concerns and worries that the media, including the KBS, Korea’s main public broadcasting company, were reflecting the interests of the government and businesses rather than that of the audiences. It would be no exaggeration to describe this state of affairs as a crisis of civic communication. However, on the other hand, it was increasingly clear that formidable pressures were building up from listeners and viewers to push broadcasting towards the democratic principles of fairness, objectivity and impartiality. The disillusionment of the audience, coupled with the unhealthy media environment, finally led to the massive collective movement of television reception fee boycotts in the mid-1980s.
4.2.5.The ‘Great June Struggle’ of 1987 and Media
Under the 5th republic’s iron-fist ruling, democracy reached its boiling point in June 1987. The civilian movement had often denounced the opposition parties having too narrow a definition of democracy by equating it only with direct presidential elections. However, a combination of two events in the early spring of
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1987 served to bring the two sides together in mass protest. In April 1987, the authoritarian regime announced that it was suspending ‘wasteful’ debate on constitutional revision, and then a month later it was publicly disclosed that a Seoul National University student had been tortured to death during a police interrogation (Kim, 2000). These revelations served to enrage all segments of society and in what has been termed the ‘Great June Struggle’, about one million students and civilians took to the streets in demonstration.
The mass protests in June of 1987 showed serious signs of revolutionary potential. The middle class seemed to have finally lost their tolerance for the regime and they joined the students and labor radicals in the streets. The U.S. was also clearly fearful of the potential for a dramatic shift of control in Korean politics. The Reagan administration, in a highly unusual move, dispatched a career CIA officer to Seoul to be the American ambassador. However, the middle class and student alliance was only temporary and it disintegrated as soon as the government conceded to the public pressure and agreed to stage direct presidential elections. The middle class and its political representatives sought thereafter to keep their distance from the students. Cardinal Kim of the Catholic Church pleaded to students that they should shy away from “left-leaning radical ideology and the cry of revolution” (Park, 2002, p.11).
The student movement also became politically disoriented and after the brief putting aside of differences, once again divided up into their various ideological camps. This division was further accentuated when the two opposition leaders; Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam failed to unite and form a single opposition party. In the subsequent elections, both Kims ran independent campaigns against the military
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government. This move proved disastrous for the left as one faction threw their support behind Kim Dae-jung; another tried to force one of the Kims to withdraw; and a third faction supported an independent people’s candidate. Combined, the two Kims garnered the majority of the popular vote but because it was a split vote, former general and Chun’s accomplice -Roh Tae Woo- emerged victorious. The United States rushed to congratulate Roh and trumpet Korea’s “march to democracy”
(Hart-Landsberg, 1989, p.67).
However, if the outcome of the June struggle had disoriented the student left, this was certainly not the case with radical labor. “Without addressing socioeconomic inequality and injustice democracy sounded rather empty to labor activists” (Kim, 2000, p.95). Taking advantage of the political space that briefly opened up after the June protests, workers went on strike to demand higher wages, better working conditions, and above all, the guarantee of democratic worker’s rights. As Bruce Cumings (1999) notes in his book Parallax Visions, more strikes and labor actions occurred in the following year than at any other point in Korean history, or most national histories for that matter (p.114). This explosion of labor militancy caught student and academic revolutionaries off-guard. While these revolutionaries had played a pivotal role in raising workers consciousness about their basic labor rights,
“they were not capable of transforming worker’s illegal industrial action into a revolutionary uprising” (Park, 2002, p.11). This was because the student movement was lacking key central and national leadership at this point. President Roh soon put his foot down, crushing unions and imprisoning massive numbers of workers under the pretense of the National Security Law and by claiming that unions were destroying the country’s exporting comparative advantage by bidding up wages.
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The trigger of the Great June Struggle was one Korean college student’s death, Park Jong-chul of Seoul National University. In January, 1987, Korean national police agency was arrest and tortured Park. During a harsh torture, he dead, and police agency was cover up this accident.
The events surrounding Park Jong-chul's death was suppressed at first. However, the Catholic Priests Association for Justice (CPAJ), revealed the truth to the public on May 18, further inflaming public sentiment. CPAJ planned a June 10th demonstration in his honor. And after, the JoongAng ilbo’s one reporter was disclosure torture and death of Park. This news report was trigger of the great struggle(Kang 2002).
4.2.6.Citizen’s boycott of government control broadcasting : The KBS-TV