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 Charles Betts Huntley(U.S.A.)
All our years in Korea were good years. Our children grew up there. We ministered there. But there were years that were not fun. When Park Chung Hee wasassassinated in October, 1979, the whole country went into shock. A political power vacuum emerged, and there were people all too willing to fill that gap. The first inkling that things were not right was a battle that occurred on the streets of Seoul on December 12, 1979. Soldiers fought it out: the two sides, as far as we could tell, vconsisted of those who wanted to democratize South Korea, and those who wanted to follow in Park Chung Hee's footsteps. It did not take us long to find out that people with the unassailable opinion that they are the ones in the right can cause havoc in the lives of other people. During the early months of 1980 we saw students and others demonstrating for the reinstitution of democratic institutions and a democratic government. The powers that be, or were, saw the demonstrations as lawlessness and anarchy. It all came to a boil in May. Our family went up to Taejon to see Mary in a play, The Sound of Music. On the train going up from Kwangju the cars were filled with soldiers, some of whom got drunk and obnoxious. The next day, Sunday, martial law had been declared. I remember the taxi ride back to the Mission Compound passing groups of students with banners asking for the return of democracy and for the ousting of a general named Chun Doo Whan. When we got back home we were besieged by telephone calls from friends asking if we knew what was happening. All that Sunday, people on the streets were attacked by martial law troopers, who beat them and carted some off to prison. And since a great number of people were simply on their way to church that morning, a great number of these believing Christians were attacked without warning by these troopers. It was not a great day in Korean history, and that Sunday, May 18, has gone down in history. It was also the day (actually it was Monday, May 19 in Charlotte) that my mother died at about 11 pm Sunday night. It was a strange, unreal thing for me that Monday morning. All that day I kept hearing her voice saying in my heart, Let me go. Then about noon I no longer heard that voice. My Dad had called Monday to say that Mom was not expected to live, and Tuesday he called again to say that she had passed away May 18.
In Kwangju, Sunday's beatings continued into Monday. It seemed to us that the city was simply attacked by soldiers of the ROK! Many of them were commandoes. On Monday people started coming to the hospital. They were ordinary people who bore huge bruises all over their bodies, attesting to the beatings they had received. They had no idea why they were being attacked. And they were angry! On Tuesday there was an uneasy silence over the city, and Mr. Chung, our diver, and I went out to see what had happened. There were signs all over the city that a fight had occurred. There were burned out taxis, bulldozers pushed into a hole that later became an underground shopping center, the Cultural Radio Station had been trashed and burned. And saddest of all were the shoes of young people who had been carted off by the soldiers. Some of the shoes had belonged to young women. Where had they been taken? Why? Who sent these troopers? Those were the questions that the people of Kwangju were beginning to ask.
By now the anger of the city had boiled over, and the next day, Wednesday, the shooting began. One of the sounds we heard the most during those first days was, To City Hall! And on Wednesday morning there were these thousands of people, gathered to protest what had been happening. The troopers, nervous, or acting under orders, began to fire into the crowd. Not over their heads. Not at the ground in front of them. No, right into the crowds! The people of the city, some nervous, some scared, some very angry, went and raided the arsenals for the use of the Reserve Army in town and in the surrounding villages. When the shooting started, it was in both directions. That was when the hospital started receiving the bodies of civilians and civilians with gunshot wounds. Perhaps this day was the worst day for us. We could not believe that the Army of the Republic of Korea was actually shooting our neighbors! And the neighbors began to shoot back! To this day we do not see the necessity of that little war, which lasted until the following Tuesday morning. By now Honam Seminary was closed, but the Kwangju Christian Hospital never closed. There were fewer patients than before, since there had been no public transportation for several days. We took the wounded, the dead, and those who could walk to the hospital. That Wednesday night we had several families who came to our house for sanctuary, which we of course, gave. The deaf mute families came. The vice-director of the hospital and her husband (in the medical school of Chonnam University) came. The sons of minister friends came. At one point there were 22 of these people in our house! The wife and baby son of one of our surgical residents was in our bedroom and spent the night there on the floor at our feet as explosions and gunfire ripped the night, and the telephone rang as friends called all night to inquire about our safety. Frightened people came to other houses on the compound too. Some went to John and Jean Underwood, asking for sanctuary. He said that they would take them in.
A strange thing happened on May 19. Mother had been injured in April by a person who ran a red light and crashed into Mother's car while Dad was driving. When I heard that I immediately took a flight to the United States, to Charlotte. I stayed there for about 10 days with Dad and Mom and my brothers Bill, Reid, and John. When she seemed to be getting better it seemed to me time to return to Korea. We stayed in contact with Dad and Mom on the telephone, but Dad called on Sunday the 18th to say that Mom was much worse and not expected to live. By then the Kwangju Incident was well underway. The next morning, May 19, I kept hearing in my mind Mother's voice, saying, Let me go.
Let me go. Then about 1 pm I didnt hear the voice any more. I was not surprised when Dad called on the morning of the 20th that Mom had died. I have since wondered about the significance of hearing Mom, then hearing no more. During that time I also kept hearing Susan's voice saying, Im scared. Im scared. Later I talked to her about it and she said that she had gone in her closet and had been crying.
By now Jenny was the only child with us, as Michael had gone with the Petersons' up to Taejon, where he wouldn't have to listen to the gunfire. The Petersons drove up, then returned to be with their people (our people) during whatever was to happen. He had to talk his way past a soldier who kept his M-16 trained on Arnold until the talking was over.
At the hospital most of our patients changed from the ordinary sick to those wounded in the battles. We had policemen there, whom the hospital protected. One of the greatest shocks for me was to see the x-rays of the wounded. The bullets being used by these Martial Law troopers were breaking apart on contact with a person's body! Instead of remaining in one piece, the bullet would break into inoperable fragments in our patients arms, legs, and spinal cords. A normal military bullet stays in one piece and passes through a human body, wounding the enemy soldier, but not killing him, or her. One of these will shoot through trees to reach the enemy solider. But these bullets, if they were traveling at close to muzzle velocity, fragmented. There were also bodies! We still have pictures of some of those bodies. And we remember those dead, nameless people on occasion. The pictures remind us of humankind's unlimited ability to be inhumane to humankind.
One of the memories of those days is of the faces of our Kwangju Christian Hospitals employees. They were in shock, as were all the people of Kwangju. But they responded very well in the face of such a disaster, and were soon dealing with the injured. The hospital's leadership determined that response, and I soon realized that they made a big difference. That includes our chapel staff. They circulated II Chronicles 7:14 around the hospital: 'If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.' I was proud of them for that. Now years later, I realize that that spirit of praying for repentance, and praying for those who had mistreated them, contributed to the healing of the city over the next years. I realize now too that the idea of 'reformation, yes; revolution, no' comes from that time.
When I would ask of my friends, 'Don't you want to punish Chun Doo Whan?' they would say that that would only lead to more suffering and pain. What they were praying for was a gradual change in the government. That is indeed what happened, and it was an answer to prayer. I also realize that when the time comes for North Korea to be opened to real freedom of religion, it will be that attitude of reformation, not revolution, that will lead to real healing in North Korea. Yes, our friends in Kwangju taught us a great deal about basic Christianity.
And then came the press. We had people coming from all over the world to report on what was going on in Kwangju. We saw them in town, and they came to our house. We spoke freely, because we wanted the whole world to know what was happening in Kwangju. As it turned out, the whole world knew, but the rest of the Republic of Korea did not know what happened until months, even years, later.
There were lots of rumors in the city during those days. I guess that people under that much stress tend to hear everything, and pass everything on. One friend of ours called it the Rumor Newspaper. We heard, truthfully, that representatives of the denominations were meeting together with each other and what they could find of the city officials, with the Army command. The Army command promised that they would acknowledge the brutalities that had led to the incident. There were leaflets dropped on the city acknowledging the atrocities. But the brutalities were never acknowledged and it became illegal to have in one's possession a copy of the leaflets!
By now there was very little traffic in the city. Most of the private cars were hidden, many of the school busses and the city busses had been damaged, so people rode bicycles or walked. Seung Gon and I rode bicycles downtown and showed our faces around town as much as we could during those days. We were asked over and over to tell the world what was happening. And we have indeed told what we saw and heard.
All things come to an end, even bad things. The explosion of violence and the cacophony of gunfire faded. People were taking the guns back to the city's armory. And the city found itself in a narrowing ring of tanks and other big weapons. The helicopters flew higher, out of range of shooters on the rooftops. And some of our guests went back home, feeling safer now that the worst of the violence was over. So it seemed.
On Sunday, May 25, we went to church at Yangnim Church. Pastor Cho spoke on the role of faith in a time of terror. No one was bored. The rest of the day passed uneventfully. On Monday, May 26, we had another telephone call. A nurse friend called to ask if a friend of hers could stay in our house. When they came they told us that in the house next door there were in the middle of the night several bursts of machine gun fire. The next morning the whole family next door had been killed except for one child hiding under bedcovers. The friend's friend thought the gunfire was meant for her, since she had come down from Seoul. So they came to our house! As soon as she was settled there was a telephone call, asking for her. So I slipped downstairs and listened to the conversations. A rough male voice spoke to our friends friend, Miss Kim. She said she was terrified. He told her to stay put! When she finished I hung up and went upstairs. I asked her where the telephone call had come from. She said it was from the Blue House! The Blue House? Yes, from the President's house. We could not call out long distance, but they could call in. It turned out that her older brother was on the President's bodyguard staff. So now we knew that the Korean government knew where one of their people was staying. That knowledge made us feel a bit more secure. But we also put signs on the front door and the backdoor, identifying ourselves. And we put an American flag out. That night I shut off the gas, and battened down the house as best as I could. Meanwhile our cats were out caterwauling all night to add to the atmosphere of those nights. At 4 in the morning we were awakened by gunfire close by outside. We took everybody down to the first floor, which was the safest place in the house. Seung Gon later told us that while it was still dark, just before the shooting started, he saw a trooper walk past, machine gun in hand. The gunfire was up on the hill. Helicopters roared over ahead, some so low and close that I could look down and see the pilots! The gunfire stopped after a half hour or so. And then it was deathly quiet. No one dared move. When it was fully light I heard the voice of a friend over at the hospital, Lee Suk Soo, calling out that it was okay to come out, calling the hospital employees to work! That night, Tuesday May 27, the city was back under the complete control of the ROK Army. Troopers were all over our missionary compound, on guard. That night the adult missionaries were at the Underwood house, having a prayer meeting and comparing notes. Jennifer told us later that an officer came to the door and knocked, looking for possible students to take away. Jennifer kept her cool (the boys were still upstairs) and said that her parents were not there. She also asked him not to shoot her cats! He laughed, but he went away and did not return. That was the end of the violence, but not of the terror. The South Korean Army had shot its way back into the city. Now we started having other visitors. Missionary colleagues drove in from Taejon and Soonchun, bringing bread, thinking we had gone hungry during the ten days. The press kept coming to interview us or to get our help in interviewing people. And the police came too, to interrogate the wounded in our hospital. The head nurse of the hospital soon realized the real possibility of our wounded being injured again during the interrogation, so asked me to sit in on the interrogations, which I readily did. The police were not always happy with my presence. One asked me, with his nose in my face, 'Are you afraid we will hurt them?' Somehow the Lord gave me the confidence and wit to answer, 'They are afraid of you. They think you might hurt them. So I am staying.' Then they left me alone. Soon they came from the Air Base for Miss Kim, our visitor from Seoul. They helicoptered her out of Kwangju. Before she left, we told her to tell what she had seen and heard. She said she would, but added that the President was surrounded by a ring of security people who might not let her get that close. We still think she was a relative of President Choi.
Others came too. Billy Kim (Kim Chang Whan) came to encourage our wounded. I took him to see the wounded patients, thinking he might help. He kept telling them, 'Don't lose your courage.' I mentioned to him that this was what the taxes paid to the government had financed. And I showed him x-rays. I found out later that he had gone to the government and told the officials what I had said! Thanks, Billy! After that I lost respect for him! Thats how I found out that even Billy Graham's most trusted interpreter could not be trusted when the chips were down.
I also had chances to tell the State Department what I had seen. I showed them pictures of x-rays and pictures of fragmented bullets. They were to look into it. The answer was that it was an internal matter, and the U.S. government could do little about it. A year later in Atlanta I showed the same pictures of x-rays and fragmented bullets to Colleen Townsend Evans. She said that she would show them to Mark Hatfield. I never heard anything about it again.
Sometime about the beginning of 1981, officials of the German Evangelical Church came to visit and to inquire what had happened and what could they do to help. We met with them. They were good, honest people. They also gave me about $5000 to give to the victims of the incident. They said not to keep records of it, but just to use it for the victims as I saw fit. I appreciated their concern and generosity. I kept it in my darkroom, and when I heard that any of the victims or their families needed medical or scholarship help, I gave them what was needed. When we left Korea for the last time in 1985, there were just a few won left. I guess that the Lord knew just what was needed.
In 1981 we returned to the United States for a year of home assignment. We were carrying Martha's book (typed) in a briefcase. The customs people looked at my cameras, wanted to take one of my unexposed rolls of film to see if anything dangerous was on it. I said, 'Go ahead. Be my guest.' They didnt take the films. Then they looked at her manuscript. That got them going! They looked through the pages, found a chapter on conflict, and wanted to read the whole thing! They asked her questions about the history of Christianity in Korea, which she answered, of course. So they either realized that the manuscript was about 80 years before, or they thought it would be too much trouble to detain us and go through the book. So we boarded the plane and were off. Martha and I kept hearing that the Korean government was coming to interrogate us. They never did. We would have loved the opportunity to tell them what we thought of the incident, which we felt to have been manufactured by the ROK government. I also laid out some decoy pictures for them to find in our house, in case they came to search the house. The worst pictures, the most embarrassing for the government, of course, I had long since sent out of the country. We still have them, and have shared them at appropriate times to people who might help. Now, twenty years later, with Kim Dae Jung in the Blue House, nothing more needs to be said about the incident. It's over. But some memories hang on in my mind: the sounds of gunfire when people are shooting at each other, the broken bodies of the innocent and not so innocent, the sounds of a city in terror and mourning, and the forlorn banners of a Baptist revival that was to have begun May 18, 1980, flapping in the breeze. The next year Martha wrote an article for the Presbyterian Survey. They used some of my pictures taken at the hospital and others that were circulating through the media. The cover shot was one I took of a little boy who had been paralyzed by the gunfire. We still have the magazine. It brings back memories. Those are the memories of the incident that put the nails in the coffin of any naivety we might have had before The Incident. It was one of the experiences in life where a person places dates as 'before the incident' and 'after the incident'. Since then we have not been naive about human greed and depravity, nor have we been surprised at how ordinary people can do great things under stress.
The aftermath of the Kwangju Incident also harmed people who were not there at the time. During the Incident we had two Union Theological Seminary students, a married couple named the Dudleys. After the Incident they returned to UTS, graduated, and since then have been missionaries in Taiwan. They were followed in the fall of 1980 by Scott and Jo Leslie. The Leslies were not there during the Incident, but they were caught up in the aftermath. Scott had and has a great deal of ministerial talent. Jo struggled. We, the career missionaries, did everything we could to help them, as we had for the Dudleys. But Jo had other problems dating from her childhood. One day Scott came and said that Jo had left to go back to Texas. She was followed by Seung Gon, whom we had mentored. Jo divorced Scott without his being present and without his consent. Then she married Seung Gon. A year later they were back in Korea with a baby girl. Scott, though, stuck it out with us, kept teaching, worked on his dissertation, and according to the original plan for interns, returned to UTS and graduated in 1982 with a D. Min. We were proud and glad for him. Scott returned to Korea in 1983 for a month long visit. It gave him closure. About then Scott met a nurse named Mary, whose husband had left her. They bonded and were married. We rejoiced with them. Scott and Mary were missionaries themselves in Zaire, then pastored in a church in Kansas, then moved to Okeechobee, Florida. I am happy to say I recommended him to the church. We went to his installation there in 1993. We have e-mailed, telephoned, and written regular mail over the years. Now Mary and Scott have two daughters, Sarah and Abby, 12 and 10. The church has thrived under his leadership. In December 2001 they moved to Allen, Texas to take up another church. We are proud of them all four. Its a reminder every time I think of them that the Lord can make the greatest tragedy into a marvelous healing for His children. It definitely is their story.
Martha's book was published while we were still in Korea. She had worked on it for years during our stay in Korea, often making trips to the United States to find first hand accounts written by the early Protestant missionaries to Korea. When she was ready, the publisher said it was too long, and they didnt have enough money to publish it. Low point! We called our friend in Bay City, Texas, Russell and Juanita Matthes, who said that he would pay for it! And so it was published by Friendship Press as Caring, Growing, Changing: A History of the Protestant Mission in Korea, 1884-1919. Martha's original title was To Start a Work. And that full work was published by the Korean Presbyterian Church. Martha says it was so all that sound scholarship would not get lost. Yes, but it is also a good read as well as thorough and scholarly! Not surprisingly, the Koreans like the book very much, and it has been translated into Korean by our friend Cha Chong Soon, who is a professor at Honam Seminary. Her book is used in Korea and in the United States in seminary courses on missions. Once Jenny and I visited the websites of Dukes library and the library of the University of North Carolina, and there was Martha's book!
How proud we were! And still we are ! |
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