The Gwangju People's Uprising and the construction of collective identity

Beyond the political significance of the May 18th Gwangju People’s Uprising, ¹ the uprising as a research theme of collective behavior has been analyzed in a variety of ways. The dominant thrust of the research concerning the uprising has focused on: (1) the political and socio-economic background, (2) the process of the development of the uprising in terms of its chronological order, (3) the individual participants’ motivations, (4) the psychological traumas of its aftermath, and (5) the distorted or biased media representations of the uprising. ²