A new film about the 1980 massacre in Gwangju has an unlikely protagonist: the taxi driver who made sure a foreign journalist got there to document it.
SEOUL, South Korea — When foreign correspondents cover dangerous situations, they often depend on local assistants, who in many cases take greater risks than they do. In the bloody month of May 1980 in Gwangju, South Korea, one such invisible hero was a taxi driver whose name may or may not have been Kim Sa-bok.
As the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan slaughtered people in Gwangju who were calling for democracy, Mr. Kim, if that was his name, played a pivotal role in telling the world what was happening. He managed to get a German TV reporter, Jürgen Hinzpeter, past the military cordon that surrounded the city, not once but twice. Mr. Hinzpeter was one of the few foreign correspondents to document the carnage, and his footage was seen around the globe.
Mr. Hinzpeter, who died last year at 78, has long been celebrated in South Korea for his part in exposing Mr. Chun’s atrocities. A memorial to the journalist stands in Gwangju.
And this week, it is his driver’s turn to be recognized. A film, “ A Taxi Driver, ” opened Wednesday in theaters across the country, telling the story of the uprising from the point of view of a fictionalized version of Mr. Kim — who, despite the efforts of Mr. Hinzpeter and others over the years, has never been identified.
“Until now, I had never known there was a taxi driver in this great tale about Mr. Hinzpeter, ” Kim Ju-sung, a high school student, said after a recent preview screening of the movie. “I feel as proud of him as I am of Mr. Hinzpeter.”
The Gwangju killings were a painful landmark in South Korea’s long, tumultuous journey to democracy. Mr. Chun, an army general who had seized power in December 1979 after the assassination of President Park Chung-hee, was tightening his grip in May. He declared martial law across the country, shut down universities and Parliament, and arrested opposition leaders. In Gwangju, a midsize southern city, protesters took to the streets on May 18, and soldiers opened fire.
Hearing word of the unrest, Mr. Hinzpeter, who was based in Tokyo for the German broadcaster ARD, and his sound technician Henning Rumohr flew to Seoul. An acquaintance of Mr. Hinzpeter arranged for a driver, a middle-aged man who said his name was Kim Sa-bok, to meet them at the airport. They headed south.
“Signs at the expressway entrance saying ‘closed’ were a warning to us. But these did not hinder our driver Kim from continuing on the empty highway, ” Mr. Hinzpeter wrote in 2006, when he was asked to recount his experience for the Seoul Foreign Correspondents’ Club. “After driving for about an hour, we began to encounter detour signs, but Kim continued to drive straight toward Gwangju.”
Eventually, they reached military checkpoints, where soldiers forced them to turn aside. Mr. Kim headed for nearby villages; there, farmers told him about alternate routes to Gwangju, narrow roads winding among the rice paddies. (Mr. Hinzpeter made up a story that helped them get through later checkpoints, telling soldiers that his boss was stranded in Gwangju and he had to get him out.)
Mr. Hinzpeter was among the first foreign reporters to find Gwangju in a state of bloody uprising. After the troops started killing protesters, residents had begun to arm themselves. A “ citizens’ army ” sped through the streets in commandeered military jeeps and trucks, carrying weapons and munitions stolen from police stations, as people on the sidewalks chanted against the dictatorship.
Behind a hospital, “relatives and friends showed me their loved ones, opening many of the coffins that had been placed in rows, ” Mr. Hinzpeter wrote. “Never in my life, even filming in Vietnam, had I seen anything like this.”
With the Korean news media muzzled by martial law, only the handful of foreign correspondents present could publish reports on what was happening in Gwangju — no easy task, given the army cordon. Telephone lines had been cut by the military; some reporters walked miles to villages to line up at the nearest phones still working.
Getting footage to the outside world would be even more challenging. Mr. Hinzpeter wrapped his exposed film in its original packaging, to make soldiers at the checkpoints think it had not been used. Once back in Seoul, he hid it in a large can of cookies, which he wrapped in gold-colored foil and green ribbons so it would pass for a wedding gift.
“The wrapping was so impressive that it actually made it through the security checks” at the airport, Mr. Hinzpeter wrote. He flew the film to Tokyo on May 22 and got it to his employers.
That same day, he flew back to Seoul. He and Mr. Kim headed to Gwangju again, in time to cover the military’s assault on a government building where armed citizens had dug in for their last, doomed stand.
Nearly 200 people, including about 20 soldiers, were killed in Gwangju, by the official count, though civic groups and bereaved families have suggested that the toll was much higher. The junta blamed “vicious rioters” and “communist agitators” for the casualties, saying the military had been there only to protect people.
But Mr. Hinzpeter’s footage exposed those assertions as lies — not just to the world, but to South Koreans.
For the remaining years of Mr. Chun’s rule, tear gas, Molotov cocktails and shouts for democracy rocked the campuses, as students clashed with the riot police. The dictator finally agreed to democratic overhaul, including free elections, in 1987. In the late 1990s, Mr. Chun was convicted of sedition and mutiny in connection with the 1979 coup and the Gwangju killings.
In the years that followed, when Mr. Hinzpeter was honored with awards by South Korean journalist associations and civic groups, he often spoke of Mr. Kim. He said he wanted to ride again in Mr. Kim’s cab through the streets of a “new Korea, ” a vibrant democracy. Shin Nan-ja, 75, who worked for Mr. Hinzpeter after the uprising, said he asked her repeatedly to find him. But the searches went nowhere.
