South Korea came to modernity and prosperity during its precarious “developmental dictatorship," a regime which, expectedly, violated the rights of the working class and suppressed democratic freedoms.

The 1970s and 80s saw a mass of South Koreans, with radical students and labor unions at the forefront, oppose the authoritarian governments of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan. The struggle reached its pinnacle with the Gwangju democratization movement of May 1980, when protests against Chun’s seizure of power after Park Chung-hee’s death were suppressed with military force and ended in the killing, by some estimates, of over 600 people.