I
watched a movie named <Glamorous Vacation> on TV. It was about 광주(Gwangju) prodemocracy movement. In the movie, there were a boy named
Minwoo and a girl named Shinae. The boy saved the girl several times and they
fell in love. Gwangju was dangerous because people in Gwangju were against
autocracy of 전두환(Jeon Duhwan). However, Minwoo’s brother,
Jinwoo participated in a demonstration. Duhwan let soldiers shoot Gwangju
citizens even though Duhwan had promised he will withdraw soldiers. Jinwoo
died. Jinwoo’s death made Minwoo angry. He and many of Gwangju citizens decided
to fight against Duhwan. They robbed armory and made a barricade. Minwoo wants
Shinae go out of the barricade since it was dangerous. However, Shinae wants to
stay to help her father, a man who became a leader of the citizens since he was
a retired general. Her father and Minwoo decided to let her out and lied to her
that she had to publicize to gain more people to fight with. After Shinae goes
out, plenty of soldiers came and the fight started. Understandably, the
soldiers killed people in a twinkling and all the citizens in that barricade
died.
The
Gwangju prodemocracy movement was an important try for democracy. I learned
about it at school, but I wanted to learn more about it after watching the
movie. Searching it on the internet, I found that my mother was a high school
student in that period. Since I wanted to listen to some opinions whose people
experienced that event, I asked my mother what she remembered about it.
However, she told me she didn’t know anything about it. She is from Busan, so
she had to pass by Gwangju to go home from her school. One day, she had to go
home by another way which took more time. She hadn’t known why, and it was
because of the Gwangju prodemocracy movement. The government didn’t want other
Koreans know that it let the soldiers kill Gwangju citizens. So, the government
banned going to Gwangju and come out from Gwangju. That was why she had to go
to another way. She heard of the event next day, but she wasn’t interested in
it since it was not her business.
Why
she didn’t try to know what was happening around her? Because she didn’t get
any influence from that event. She didn’t know it was this important movement.
Maybe she would have interested in it and tried to know about it if she had
known about its role and influence on Korean democracy. I think we could be
ignoring some important problems since it isn’t important for us or we are afraid
what will happen if we point out the problems. Sometimes we should lose
something to talk about the problems. However, to ignore the problem because of
the things that we may lose is stupid reaction. To solve the problem and make a
better society is much more important than to keep small benefits. To do that,
we have to have eyes that can see what’s happening. Sometimes we don’t know
what is happening around us and what we have to do. My mom didn’t notice she
experienced a historically important event. She didn’t solve the problem,
autocracy because she didn’t notice that it was a big problem. She concentrated
only on her daily life.
She
didn’t have eyes that can see more widely. So she couldn’t notice a big stream
of history. But we have to. We are students who want to be leaders of Korea. We
have to find some problems and solve them. In conclusion, to change something,
to solve some problems, we have to try to get eyes which can see a big picture
of history.
