ABSTRACT
Most Koreans who experienced the 1980s will remember the decade as a period of dramatic upheaval and bewildering and seemingly chaotic change in their country. Politically, the decade began with a military coup that eventually brought about the Kwangju incident, in which hundreds of people were killed and thousands wounded fighting for democracy. It ended with a televised congressional hearing in 1989 in which the leader of that coup, who had been summoned from political asylum, testified before an angry audience. Socially, the decade began with the increased suppression of the press by the military junta and ended with the institution of freedom of speech and writing in a sweeping tide of democratization. The monochromatic military culture that characterized the beginning of the decade was by its end transformed into colorful diversity in every aspect of life.
