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May 18: Lasting Effects on a Life
Gwangju Gwangju News, News, August August 2022 2022
gwangjunewsgic.com gwangjunewsgic.com
FEATURE
By David Dolinger
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to life. I can provide vivid detail the long-lasting effects of witnessing and being threatened with violence.
I lost many a friend and acquaintance in May of 1980. Some I know gave their lives, and I can visit them at the 5.18 National Cemetery. Some I have been lucky enough to meet again. But it is the others I have never been able to meet again, the ones that I have no idea what happened to, that trouble me. After 5.18, I knew that if I contacted or met someone, they would be questioned by the police or the KCIA. I saw the consequences of violence on the human form, saw true courage and sacrifice from others, saw people come together, but I also saw the consequences of governments and how in real-time historical events were marginalized.
I did not fear “having an accident.” It was still a threat I knew existed, as I was being watched. The mental violence continued until I left Korea in July of 1981. I did not trust people, Americans or Koreans, unless I had known them prior to 5.18.
I have thought long and hard about what I could write for you, how I could regal you in tales about Gwangju and Jeollanam-do in the late 1970s and, perhaps, at a later time I will. However, I thought that since it has been forty-two years, and those of us who were there are getting grey or greyer, with fewer and fewer of us every year, I thought that I would talk a little about what does not seem to get focused on or, when it does, gets labeled and not really thought about. That is the lasting effect of 5.18 on those of us that were there.
I cannot say that any of us had any idea as to how our lives would end up when we were in our youth. Hopefully, we have taken our lives one day at a time and let our experiences guide us down a path that has been fulfilling and meaningful. One can be affected by state-sponsored violence in multiple manners, such as being a witness to or recipient of it; it can also manifest itself as both physical and psychological violence. Both can have long-term effects on a young, impressionable youth’s approach
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There is the mental side of the equation. For me, this was extended by my own government: being forced to resign from the Peace Corps, but even worse, being threatened to never discuss with others what I had observed, especially with other volunteers. This was only topped by the threat of violence, as I was informed that the U.S. government could no longer guarantee my safety and that the KCIA had already stated to the U.S. officials that something could happen if I talked or did not leave the country immediately.
While 5.18 has brought a lot of pain to my life, pain that I still have a hard time dealing with, it has caused me to focus, to take what I saw, what I witnessed, and the sacrifice of others, to heart. I have taken those examples and applied them to my life and to the way I help to raise my son. I have been lucky to work in a field that I find both fulfilling and frustrating, but one that I am in sync with: the field of diagnostics for diseases. During my life, I have never forgotten 5.18, the people that I met, nor the people I lost. I see them every day, and they have driven me to give my all in the field of diagnostics and, when I have the
2022-07-26 �� 3:50:15
