Gwangju Uprising memorial sees spike in visitors: report
May visitors to May 18th National Cemetery reach highest figure since 2018
A total of 242,503 people in May visited the graves of those who participated in the Gwangju Democratic Uprising in 1980, according to local media reports on Tuesday.
The monthly visitor count at the May 18th National Cemetery was the highest since 2018 and marked an on-year increase of over 40,000 from to May 2024, the Korean-language news agency News 1 said, citing the operators of the government facility under the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs.
The number of visitors usually peaks in May around the anniversary of the nationwide protest against Chun Doo-hwan's junta, which took power via a military coup in December 1979. The highest figures for any other month in 2025 and 2024 were 12,287 in April this year, and 11,202 in April last year.
The number of May visitors had usually exceeded 300,000 prior to 2019 but hovered in the 200,000 range over the past three years, plummeting to 5,822 in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The political turmoil following former President Yoon Suk Yeol's imposition of martial law in December is thought to have renewed public interest in the historic citizens' protest against the military regime.
Yoon's martial law decree, which led to his impeachment and removal from office, was the first to be imposed in the country since 1981, under Chun's authority. Chun was not yet president when martial law was extended nationwide on May 18, 1980, but he had effectively been leader of the junta since the coup a year before. Yoon's much-disputed martial law declaration led to comparisons with Chun.
The results of the June 3 presidential election showed that 84.8 percent of voters in Gwangju voted for Yoon's political rival and eventual successor, Lee Jae-myung, who also garnered over 80 percent of the vote in both North and South Jeolla Provinces.
Lee himself drew a comparison between Yoon and Chun at a commemoration of the Gwangju Uprising's 45th anniversary last month, when he attended as a presidential candidate. He said the spirit of the Gwangju citizens that refused to back down in the face of military oppression in 1980 has been inherited by those who opposed the dispatch of troops to the National Assembly under Yoon's martial law decree.
Those who have been recognized by the state as having died while participating in the Gwangju Uprising are entitled to be buried at the May 18th National Cemetery, in accordance with the Act on the Honorable Treatment of Persons of Distinguished Service to the May 18 Democratization Movement. Those who have relinquished their Korean nationality or have been convicted of certain crimes can have their burial rights revoked.
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