For South Korea, the popular uprising that convulsed the southwestern city of Gwangju for ten days in 1980 was a defining historical moment. The country that has since given the world the androgynous boy band BTS and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite had been living under the thumb of successive strongmen. Until 1992, regime change only took place through mass revolts or military coups. The Gwangju Uprising marked the beginning of the end for authoritarian rule in South Korea, now a vibrant young democracy that often reinvigorates itself not only at the ballot box, but also on the streets.

Of the three coups in modern South Korean history, the first two — both staged by Park Chung-hee, first to seize power in 1961, then to retain it in 1972 — were relatively bloodless affairs. Park preempted protest by rounding up thousands of activists and muzzling the press. Chun Doo-hwan, a young, US-trained general, mounted the third and final coup in May 1980, deploying the techniques he had learned from the US military.

While the rest of the country silently capitulated, Gwangju resisted the coup for ten days. Its citizens fought to repel the country’s best-trained special forces even as they wielded deadly force against the population in a bid to enforce martial law. The movement ended up controlling the city for five days until a massacre brought their insurrection to an end.