May 18

May 1980, Gwangju. The city is going about an ordinary life: taxi drivers, students, shopkeepers. Then the army moves in. The stated grounds are that the population is working with communists and preparing a rising against the government. Soldiers beat unarmed people, mostly students, to death in the streets. The city answers back; the residents form a militia of their own and hold the city for several days. The characters in Kim Ji-hoon's film are invented but the events are not. The Gwangju uprising that began on 18 May 1980 is among the gravest episodes in South Korea's recent history. The death toll is still disputed; the official figures and independent estimates do not agree.