June 1987

It was 20 years ago, the Korean people finally removed their dictator follow by nation-wide demonstrations.

 

The Korean people had been suffered from military oriented dictatorship in a long period from Park to Chun (and Rho Tae-woo). During the age of the dictatorship, the demonstrators and the riot police had exchanged tons of tear gas, petrol bombs, stones at days and nights in the streets of Seoul and other cities in Korea.  Police had made thousand of arrests and they had faced country’s biggest demonstrations for six years in 1987 follow by the death in custody of Park Chong-Chul.

21 Years old at that time, a linguistics student at Seoul National University suffocated during police interrogation for alleged pro-communist activities on 14 January.  

It was this photo, A wounded YonSei Univ. student – Lee Han Yeol by a directly angled shot of tear gas on June 9th and died 5th day of July, moved everyone to the streets.

The photo flamed the whole nation and the pro-democracy rallies definitely includes the student, civic, church groups and ordinary citizens as well.  Rallies continued across the country to commemorate the death of Lee  HanYeol.

After further civil demonstrations Dictator Chun was forced out of the office and replaced by Roh Tae-woo with unconditional surrender on June 29th 1987.

It was the year of the transition in Korea .

 (Moments rip off from here, here and here)