SEOUL — "It was so strange. It was such a beautiful, bright shining day … a hot day like today," says Lee Jae Eui, 50, pointing out the window of a coffee shop in the Myeongdong district on a mid-April afternoon. A gentle, soft-spoken man, Lee is trying with difficulty to describe what it was like to hear the sound of bullets and then see bodies suddenly drop in front of his very eyes.

"I didn’t know what to do at the time. Do I help carry them away? I was so scared. How in the world can a human just leave behind someone like that?"

It was May 1980, and Lee was 25 years old, a third-year economics student at Jeonnam University in Gwangju, a city in the southwestern province of Jeollanam-do. A few years earlier, he had been one of the many students involved in protests and demonstrations calling for democratic freedoms. The mission had seemed possible after the October 1979 assassination of President Park Chung Hee, the leader whose long reign began in 1961 when he led a military coup and then an increasingly authoritarian government. Those hopes, however, were quashed when Major General Chun Doo Hwan initiated his own coup on Dec. 12, 1979 (known as the 12-12 Incident), with troops culled and cultivated through ties that went all the way back to Chun’s military school graduating class. Roh Tae Woo, also a commander of a division and a classmate of Chun’s, participated in the coup and would later become president.

Hundreds of civilians were killed by South Korean police in what is known as one of the country’s worst massacres.

May 16, 1980, marked the anniversary of Park’s 1961 coup, and this was fresh in the minds of Lee’s classmates. Student organizers would hold a demonstration to protest the government. "At that time, there was no expectation that it would turn so violent," says Lee. "Not at all."

"Around 9 a.m., I saw the paratroopers on the morning of the 18th, which was a Sunday, and they were standing at the front of the school. I didn’t participate directly in that demonstration, but instead, I went to my brother’s store, which was nearby downtown. He had a shop there. Around 10 a.m., over 100 students from Jeonnam came running past the store." Surprised, Lee ran out to join them. For the rest of the day, Lee participated in demonstrations, ducking in and out of alleys and clashing with soldiers who were using batons to beat students.

"The soldiers in downtown Gwangju started going around beating and striking people. If you went on a bus, the soldiers would get on board, and if you were a student or a young person, they would start striking you right then and there. They didn’t even ask if you had even participated in the demonstration or not. They just started beating people up until a person fainted or bled and fell down. Then they would just throw them next to a military vehicle." Lee pauses. "They tossed the unconscious bodies like piles of garbage, and suddenly, it really turned into a terrifying atmosphere."