5.18

The U.S.A. has 9-11, Koreans have 5-18, May 18th, 1980. When the students bring it up, they simply ask, "Do you know 5-18?"

Loads of my students come from Gwanju, South Korea and have told me plenty about it. So, when I heard the massacre story it touched me. Recently, we're sharing information about movies and the subject came up again. There's a movie called- in the English translation "Splendid Vacation". It's a fictional account of a few people's lives who were massacred on that day.

What happened? Well, basically it was a democracy movement. We know how well those go over, even in the USA.

I looked it up on the web, and there are some critical voices out there who say the movie overblows the incident, but then one person who said that strangely said that photographs of the incident are more gruesome than the movie. The particular blog that I read sounds really nit-picky if you ask me.
Here's photo from the movie and here's a link to an article in Seoul Times about it. The person who wrote the article was actually there.
Movie Review