I will never forget that day.
By 1987, the military government of Chun Doo-hwan was nearing the end of its term. The people wanted the right to elect their president directly, but Chun refused to amend the constitution, turning his back on that demand to hold on to power. Earlier that year, a student named Park Jong-chul had died under torture by police, and on June 9, another student, Lee Han-yeol, had been struck by a tear gas canister and lay dying. The nation rose up. This was the June Struggle, the uprising that would finally win South Korea its democracy.
On the day the protests reached their peak, the angry citizens of Busan broke through the police lines at Seomyeon and pushed all the way to Beomnaegol. It was like the fierce waves of Haeundae.
"Save Han-yeol!"
"Down with dictatorship! Abolish the constitution's defense!"
Lee Tae-chun marched with a candle, shouting the slogans. He was twenty-seven, a company worker who had graduated from Dong-A University in 1986 and worked at Taekwang Rubber. A tear gas canister, fired directly by the police, struck him, and he fell from an overpass. His face, from the forehead down, was coated white with tear gas powder.
His mother had pleaded with him. "We were poor, so don't do those things, I told him; do that and you won't even get a job, don't do it. But still he would say, 'Bringing down the military dictatorship, abolishing the constitution's defense, that's our whole purpose.' After he came home." His mother wept. Six days later, he died.
June 18, 1987 — the day he was struck down by tear gas was, that very day, the "Day to Expel Tear Gas." On that day, the tear gas ran out, and the police could no longer put down the protests.
Roh Moo-hyun carried his funeral portrait.
Source: It's Destiny (Unmyeong-ida), Roh Moo-hyun
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