Re-making a place-of-memory: The competition between representativeness and place-making knowledge in Gwangju,South Korea

Introduction

This paper looks at how place-making at a historic site via a tragic collective memory provokes and embraces issues of memory and representativeness. Based on the theoretical framework of the politics of knowledge in making a place of memory, it examines how the power of place-making knowledge ¹ and the power of collective memory compete and negotiate in the city of Gwangju, ² South Korea. This research focuses on the key actors who have been involved in the reconstruction of a historic landmark. These key actors consist, on the one hand, of those who have been at the centre of the tragic collective memory of the past, and on the other, of those who are knowledgeable about urban place-(re)making in the city. Through the analysis, primarily, of archives and in-depth interviews, the research investigates how knowledge and representation of memory constitute power and how the future as well as the past is contested. Despite increasing attention to contested representations of collective memory, the issue of knowledge has not received enough attention. By investigating the case of conflicts surrounding the construction of the Asian Culture Complex in Gwangju, this study contributes to understandings the ways in which knowledge, power and collective memory intertwine and re-define one another.

The city of Gwangju looms large in the South Korean imagination as the location of the 1980 Gwangju Massacre of anti-government protesters by the Chun Do Hwan military regime. This event is considered a touchstone of the democracy movements which took root early on in the decade, eventually leading to the democratisation of the country in the later 1980s. ³ This study focuses on plans to renovate the former South Jolla provincial hall, one of the key locations of the 1980 events at Gwangju, into an Asian Cultural Hall. What became controversial was a part of the plan which called for the removal of a portion of the former provincial hall called the Byeolgwan, ⁴ the location where a final group of protestors were killed during the 18 May democratic uprisings. 5.18 organisations ⁵ objected to the demolition of the Byeolgwan at a time after several public consultations on the project had taken place and a consensus considered to have been achieved by the planners, architects and intellectuals in charge of the project.

This study asks: How do different actors compete over who is entitled to represent tragic collective memory in the project of place-making? What role does conflict play in the politics of memory? This research argues that place-making knowledge plays an important role in the politics of collective memory. A different understanding or misunderstanding of what are more widely understood as established ‘facts’ is a good indicator of differing power (education and knowledge) or differing interests (because of different interests, they come to an issue ready to understand it in different ways). In a transition from mourning to memorialising, the focus shifts from who is entitled to speak to who is entitled to make the place speak. Victim’s representation comes to be challenged by new groups armed with professional knowledge on how to (re)make a place. In the case of Gwangju, tensions erupted between a group of professionals including architects, planners and academics, who are focused on place-making for the future, and those who continue to focus on the memory of Gwangju and who are victims of the 1980 crackdown by the military (i.e. are family members of those who were killed).

Expert knowledge in place-of-memory making

In recent years, the theme of collective memory has received increasing attention from geographers and urban scholars. In cases of wounded cities bearing tragic memory (Till, 2012), ⁶ questions over how massive traumas are remembered and interpreted continually emerge and are contested over (Robben, 2012, 2005). Cultural and artistic or activist memory-work often provokes new controversies. Working on wounded places is critical in examinations of the politics of memory because they are ‘both a communal reminder of loss and a personal reserve for “constructive forgetting”’ (Till, 2008). Culture-led urban regeneration plans for places of collective memory, such as that focused on Gwangju (see below) become battlegrounds among victims, the government and experts for engaging in culture (Du Gay and Pryke, 2002; Flew, 2009; Shin and Stevens, 2013; Yúdice, 2003).

Places of memory have an inherent capacity for transformation and ‘come to act not only as spaces for representation and re-inscription of political events but also as sites of contention in and of themselves’ (Yea, 2002: 1571). Culture-led urban regeneration has become popular among policy-makers who have pursued the economic growth and image transformations of their respective cities (Lin and Hsing, 2009; Shin, 2004; Wu, 2004; Yeoh, 2005). As iconic buildings, cultural events, and symbols convey meaning, and thus conflicts among actors involved take place over the culture to be invoked and projected via such projects (Mitchell, 2000).

While conflict regarding places of memory (Muzaini and Yeoh, 2005; Rose-Redwood, 2008) ⁷ have received attention from scholars, not enough has involved attempts to figure out the power structure of the conflict and point out the importance of knowledge within the workings of this structure. One of the focuses of the cultural debate has been contestation regarding who is entitled to speak for the past in the present (Hodgkin and Radstone, 2003). The issue of representation has been critical among actors as the issue has shifted the focus from the past to the present. Place-making activities regarding collective memory tell us ‘more about the people building a memorial than the peoples and pasts being commemorated’ (Till, 2005: 18). The process of collective memory is evident during political change (Forest et al., 2004). This is because of the key actors, who drive place-of-memory making, change. Victims and survivors of events that are being memorialised ‘lack the skills and resources to successfully compete’ (Lewis, 2002: 153) while they may not be completely powerless. In the process of re-interpreting collective memories through culture, different knowledge, interests and approaches meet, are negotiated over and evolve (Bassett et al., 2002; Beazley et al., 1997; Boyle and Hughes, 1991).

The question of who is entitled to speak about the past has different implications and involves a re-composition of the qualifications of who can play what role in memorialising the past for the future (Till, 2005) when compared with other kinds of memorialisation. Especially in cases where spatial representations such as monument building and historic sites are funded by the public sector or private sector, experts play a leading role in place re-making. While victims of a tragedy at a place that is being memorialised have place-relevance, there is not necessarily a consensus among all actors involved that they should take the lead on such memorialising. So in the shift from mourning to memorialising as part of urban regeneration, legitimacy becomes based on the knowledge of place-making and the entitlement of the victims can come to be challenged. Power relations are rearranged as knowledge and networks oriented towards place-making become important, challenging place-relevance and the symbolic importance of the victims. This is why I approach contestation and conflicts surrounding collective memory in the framework of place-making knowledge. Cases of consensus-making in place-making involve negotiations between different groups. Public consultants have witnessed that knowledge plays a critical role in such negotiations (Walker, 2014), and that knowledge and power constitute each other (Flyvbjerg, 1998). The politics of knowledge in place-of memory making, however, has not received enough attention.

This paper argues that studies of urban collective memory should embrace the discussion of the politics of knowledge in the making of places of memory, with attention especially to the dynamics between expert knowledge and lay knowledge (Fraser and Lepofsky, 2004; Owens et al., 2006). Despite increasing awareness of the importance of interactive knowledge and shared understanding in place-making (Innes and Booher, 1999; Kelman, 1996; Merkel, 2013), a number of previous case studies have witnessed that lay knowledge has been marginalised (Petts and Brooks, 2006). Lay knowledge (local knowledge) provides tacit and comprehensive knowledge about a sentiment in a specific context (Barthel et al., 2015), but it has tended to be neither translated into nor invited into processes of collective knowledge formation (Blake, 1999). In the context of memorialisation, as an example, translation of professional jargon and knowledge is necessary to establish an understanding between local needs for collective memory and professional considerations.

A number of previous studies on grassroots engagement in the context of cultural regeneration have discussed conflicts, exploring discrepancies between different forms of knowledge and the dominance of professional knowledge (Petts and Brooks, 2006). In the making of a place of memory, knowledge is located in the very subtle area not only where domination exists but where the less powerful acquiesce to their domination (Dowding, 2006) by developing adaptive preferences. ⁸ Because a preference may not be clear, is distorted by unexpected factors, and in many cases is constantly changing, knowledge and power play an important role in the interplay of true preference and adaptive preference (Shin, 2010). In negotiation, participants, especially less powerful participants, develop adaptive preferences because they do not expect their true preferences to be accepted. The third-dimensional power theory (Dowding 2006; Lukes, 1974; Swartz, 2005) explains that consensus is so naturally and subtly manipulated through control of information, ideology and myths, and that it becomes difficult for the less powerful to even recognise their own grievances (Gaventa, 1980; Lukes, 1974). Rather than being explicitly prohibited from saying something that occurs to them, they voluntarily, or more exactly are forced to voluntarily, choose not to speak out, and instead simply agree with others. Regret or disagreement takes place only retrospectively (Boonstra and Bennebroek Gravenhorst, 1998; Culley and Hughey, 2008; Eliasoph, 1996; Norgaard, 2006; Speer and Hughey, 1995; Tauxe, 1995). Social status, including education, buttresses such power imbalances. Formally educated knowledge accompanies an education into manners by which agents maximise their use of knowledge.

The politics involved in the (re)-creation of a place of memory may block a cooperative mood and productive dialogue. Yet they can also serve to clarify what each actor means to argue, which actors likely do not recognise in themselves explicitly when they enter an argument or conflict. Such confusion and contestation provide conditions of possibility for a public sphere (Sennett, 2000). ‘Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us from our sheep-like passivity and sets us at noting and contriving – conflict is a “sine qua non” of reflection and ingenuity’ (Dewey, 1922: 207). Conflict triggers learning and change as actors are challenged in their understanding and perspectives (Termeer and Koppenjan, 1997). Conflict clarifies a context by urging those involved to formulate what they mean as precisely as possible (Eshuis and Stuiver, 2005), clarifying their meanings not only to their interlocutors, but to themselves as well.

Research methods

The data for this research is drawn from archival research, in-depth interviews and informal interviews, participant observation and site visits. The archives analysed include the official website of the Hub City of Asian Culture, newspaper articles, blogs and public reports.

For in-depth interviews, I selected 21 interviewees based on the name-dropping method, asking participants of the negotiations over the Gwangju regeneration who key actors of the debate over the reconstruction were. Resulting interviewees included actors in public, private and voluntary sectors, including 5.18 organisations and those who work in the media. Because the tension among actors was high, many of the potential interviewees contacted hesitated to respond. Some of these eventually refused to talk altogether, saying that they could not mention anything about the conflict because it hurt that they had been misunderstood. They were also suspicious that I was going to take sides. During the course of the interviews, I maintained an active and neutral listening demeanour, minimising any verbal or body response that would indicate that I was taking a side.

The in-depth semi-structured interviews lasted one to two hours in general; I also gained data from three short informal interviews that I was able to conduct serendipitously while in the field as an observer. Interview questions included whether or not the interviewee supported the demolition of the Byeolgwan and why, how in detail they expressed their opinions, what they thought about other perspectives on the issue, and how they wrestled with and negotiated over the issue with other interested groups. Only one interview subject, an individual who used to be in the May 18 Memorial Foundation claimed to be neutral regarding the demolition, and he personally knew key actors well and specific stories of both sides as he coordinated in the dispute. I asked what points of view he maintained and how he observed each side during the debate. Most in-depth interviews used in this study were recorded in full in Korean and then translated into English. Four interviewees did not agree to be voice-recorded, so I took notes either during or after the interview in these cases.

One key aspect of participant observation was attending a forum regarding the memory of 18 May to observe speeches and listen to the subsequent floor discussion. I recorded the whole discussion with the permission of the meeting’s participants. I also observed who participated in the verbal discussions, who received attention and whom other participants marginalised.

The case: Gwangju’s collective memory reinterpreted in a culture-led urban regeneration scheme

The Gwangju Uprising also referred to as the Gwangju Massacre and the 18 May democratic uprising, took place between 18 May and 27 May 1980. It took place in the aftermath of the assassination of President Park Chung Hee, a military dictator who ruled from 1962 through to his death in 1979, and the subsequent takeover of the country by General Chun Doo Hwan. The regime used military force to react to pro-democracy demonstrations, which had been gathering pace throughout the late 1970s, and which flared up again during the transition from the Park to the Chun regime. When approximately 200 students started a demonstration in Gwangju, a Korean Special Forces assault launched in response provoked widespread outrage. During the period between 18 May and 27 May 1980, citizens liberated the city and placed it under their own peaceful control, until Chun’s military forces brutally retook the city and perpetrated a massacre. Many were killed, although the number of victims is highly controversial, ranging from 190 to 2000. During the uprising and massacre, the army blocked all routes to and from Gwangju, and the national government prohibited any media reports about the uprising.

The memory of Gwangju played a critical role in the history of democratisation in Korea in the subsequent decades. ‘Many people reckoned the 1980s, and indeed the entire post Liberation era, as an ebb and flow of popular quiescence, punctuated by outbursts of popular outcry or protest’ (Abelmann, 1996: 15). Since the first non-military presidency began in 1993, the special May 18 Special Law has been enacted, and surviving victims and their families have received compensation from the National Government (Vink, 2010; Shin, 2004; Yea, 2002).

In the city of Gwangju, urban regeneration has been thoroughly imbricated with the collective memory of the city, particularly with regards to the 18 May uprising. After democratisation in the late 1980s, the national government tried to compensate for the losses and disadvantages faced by Gwangju city and the surrounding region. ⁹ Yet efforts on the part of the national government and the local government were not intended to focus on projects on the history of Gwangju and its tragic memory. In fact, the national government tried to distance themselves from the dispute on the content, focusing on financial investment for events and constructions. In the meantime, the local government wanted to shift the image of the city by means of culture-led regeneration projects, ones with no link to Gwangju’s past in relation to the prior military dictatorship. However, this kind of culture-led urban regeneration brought about resistance and criticism, and the projects ended up being linked with the history and memory of the city.

The Gwangju Biennale, an international art exhibition, was one of the regeneration projects initiated by the city government, and received significant financial support from the national government (Lee, 2007; Yea, 2002). The programme was subsequently expanded, the city being designated the Hub City of Asian Culture by the national government’s President Roh Moo Hyun in 2002. ¹⁰ The overall agenda of regenerating Gwangju by means of culture-led urban regeneration has included a number of such culture-oriented projects, with the construction of the Cultural Hall of Asia (Lee, 2007) a significant part of this agenda.

In South Korea, planning and construction projects are implemented usually through the subcontracting of planning and architecture experts from outside the government. ¹¹ The task force team of such experts for the creation of the Cultural Hall of Asia consisted of an architect (Sung Ryong Cho), three professors in architecture (Jung Man Lee from Hanyang University and Jae Pill Choi from Seoul National University) and their university teams and an architect and his non-profit architectural organisation (Pill Hoon Lee and Korea Architects Institute) in 2005. The team had a contract with the Hub City of Asian Culture Office. The office is part of the national government, and the office and the team members are all based in Seoul. Local planning and architecture experts based in Gwangju or even from anywhere in Jeolla province were not involved in the construction of the hall; few were part of the planning research team for the Hub City of Asian Culture, either.

The Hub City of Asian Culture website notes that the Hall:

is planned to be constructed on and around the site of the former Office of Jeollanamdo Province, which is a historically important area in this city known for its spirit of democracy, human rights, and peace. The location ¹² also serves as a bustling centre for the people of Gwangju. The lot is 128,621m² in size, with a total floor space of 178,199m². The sum of the project costs amounts to $680 million. (http://www.cct.go.kr/english/complex/outline.jsp, accessed 3 June 2014)

The city government thus planned to rehabilitate the former South Jolla provincial hall, turning it into the Cultural Hall of Asia. The South Jolla hall has been highly symbolic in the political history of Gwangju. The final victims of the 18 May democratic uprising died in a part of the building, and many anti-government demonstrations later took place around the hall.

A contest was held to decide upon a design for the renovated South Jolla hall. The winning design ¹³ proved to be controversial. First, unlike what many people expected, the proposed building was neither tall nor particularly visible, rendering it far short of a landmark in the minds of many. The architect’s idea was to locate most of the building underground so that the Moodeung Mountain which, he explained, had been an important Gwangju landmark, could be seen. Those who expected the economic boom effect of a landmark, especially those with businesses in the area, were thus highly critical of the design. But the leading group from the Hub City of Asian Culture Office supported the design, and the argument that the mountain constituted a genuine landmark eventually gained more support.

Second, the design included the demolition of part of the former South Jolla provincial hall, the Byeolgwan. The plans for demolition were based on the design instructions for the 5.18 Memorial Business Master Plan, published by the city of Gwangju. This aspect of the design was not well noticed in the process of public consultation, with no strong objections being raised at the time. A consensus was thus claimed to have been achieved with regards to the demolition of this part of the hall. In terms of the design, the demolition was important in that it would allow for a tunnel symbolising communication to be constructed. On 24 June 2008, the 5.18 DTA (Detainees Association ¹⁴ ) openly criticised the plan for the demolition of the Byeolgwan. They began a demonstration consisting of building a small tent where they squatted day and night outside the building. This belated criticism turned into conflict, a conflict which spiralled in severity. As a result, construction on the site was stopped on 9 December 2008, postponed, and a renegotiated compromise reached whereby the Byeolgwan section of the original site would be maintained. ¹⁵

The politics of (re)-making place-of-memory: Did victims understand the plan?

For the case analysis, knowledge is operationalised as knowledge through which people can understand social agendas and the plans constructed by experts, comment on them and suggest alternatives. The agendas involved in the process of place-making can be seen in the design instructions that the city provided for the design competition in 2005. The official website of the Hub City of Asian Culture said that when the 5.18 organisation representatives visited the Hub City of Asian Culture Office and discussed what to do in terms of the preservation of buildings in the area, the organisations submitted ‘The plan for 5.18-related preserved sites in the Asian Culture Complex’. The website stated that the plan submitted on 19 October 2006 by the organisations did not include the Byeolgwan in the list of buildings to be preserved. When the Asian Culture Complex was designed by US-based architect Kyu Seung Woo as a ‘Forest of Light’, intellectuals and civic organisations welcomed the nature-friendly idea, as did the 5.18 organisations. They were positive about the final instruction, which did not, in fact, include the preservation of Byeolgwan. Based on the plan and subsequent discussions among civic organisations, the city government, the national government and the general public, a master plan was established, and a ground-breaking ceremony took place on 10 June 2008 (http://www.cct.go.kr/intro/annex02.jsp, accessed 15 April 2014).

As such, the 5.18 organisations agreed to the plans during the process of consensus-making and started opposing the construction only after this consensus had been officially achieved. Explanations for this discrepancy were clearly divided. People in favour of the demolition – cultural organisations and intellectuals ¹⁶ – said that the opposition was due to the fact that 5.18 organisations had become used to gaining small financial benefits as a result of opposition to the government’s plans. In the past, victims of 18 May have indeed received financial compensation and opportunities from the national government. In turn, according to one of my interviewees, they have become manipulative interest groups who use the name of democracy and Gwangju’s political spirit to their own benefit. Such criticism was quite common, describing victims as having become compensation ‘queens and kings’, receiving easy opportunities such as ownership of vending machine businesses that ran in new governmental buildings.

The actual reason, however, why the 18 May associations started criticising the project so late, according to another interviewee, a 5.18 organisation member, was that:

Actually, we did not understand what was going on in the public consultation. We did not know that the part that was planned to be demolished was where the family members died.

He was reluctant to make that statement and said that it was embarrassing to admit their gaffe, but that they did not know that what they heard meant that the Byeolgwan itself was going to be demolished. He argued that although they had listened, they did not ‘understand’ what exactly would happen and now that this was understood, that they were against the removal plan, a stance taken in order to keep up Minjuhwa Jung-shin (the spirit of democracy). People from the 5.18 organisations did not understand what the architect had explained, some interviewees told me, but that what they had heard and understood was the principle that historical sites would be preserved.

The boundary between knowing and not knowing was thin, and the lack of clarity in their understanding reinforced their adaptive preference. It seemed that they did not recognise the fact that they actually did not understand the planning process, and/or they did not want to lose face by asking a lot of questions in the context of that process. In the mood of celebrating the rehabilitation of the place of memory to be allowed even to remember the event, they did not come to the realisation the degree to which they were following the lead of experts. The issue of whether those actors really understood what would transpire remained unsolved. The proponents of the demolition, however, said that it was a lie that their opponents did not understand. It was certainly true that the master plan and explanations included a great deal of professional architecture and planning jargon that would be difficult for ordinary people to understand. Besides, the debate about whether landmarks ought to be underground or overground took priority in the context of the consensus-making process, wherein discussions about historical sites did not pick up steam and was thus not a focus of explicit public attention by anyone.

In the context of my interviews, it also became clear that it had become questionable what constituted an agreement if members did not understand the contours of the debates themselves. Some expert interviewees who were based in universities and the media argued that leaders of the 5.18 organisations had come to certain agreements among themselves with regards to the renovation plan. One interviewee from a 5.18 organisation, however, argued that the ‘agreement’ was achieved based on the personal networks of a few top people of the organisations. The interviewee asked how an agreement is defined. He argued that attending in forums to discuss what to demolish and what to preserve does not necessarily mean that they agreed to any plan. A so-called consensus was based on the fact that a few well-connected people from policy-making circles and the 5.18 organisation had had dinner and a drink together and had a good time. So the organisation leaders listened, discussed and implicitly considered agreement of the plan to have taken place. But as it turned out, the ‘agreement’ on the part of the 5.18 people was a sort of adaptive preference to a situation in which they wanted to be relevant while not understanding the situation completely. The 5.18 organisation interviewee argued that experts should have researched about what was to be demolished and clarified the plan with the organisation membership. Some other interview subjects from the 5.18 organisations said that organisation leaders verbally agreed to the project at the personal level with project officials, not as leaders who had ever listened to the opinions of the organisation membership.

It seems clear that the 5.18 organisations submitted the plan without knowing that their own plan was contrary to what they in fact wanted. One interviewee from one of the 5.18 organisations said:

The 5.18 organisations agreed on the principle of preserving historical memorial sites. But, we were not capable of dealing with the government and convincing other organisations, specifying what we wanted in terms of professional and practical knowledge. We are an organization of victims, of lay-people, not experts. If we had understood what was going on exactly, we would have responded, but they realized [the gap in their knowledge – author] only as of May 2007.

Another interviewee, who was teaching at a university, one who was critical of the 5.18 organisations, said that the families of those killed in 1980 did, in fact, realise what the proposal involved; and that it was only while watching the emerging conflict that was being negotiated over that they, too, belatedly came to the opinion that the Byeolgwan should be preserved.

The matter of knowledge was rather directly pointed out by one interesting perspective from an interviewee who claimed to have adequate distance from the interest groups to have a relatively balanced take on the matter. He knew key actors in both sides well and tried not to affiliate strongly with any of them. He said that this conflict was a matter of education level and social status. Specifically, he stated:

The victims’ families and relatives are not highly formally educated because those who were killed in the democratic uprising were not intellectuals from middle class families. They were uneducated, ordinary people from poor families. And because they died, their families and relatives suffered from financial limits and political repression. So they [the surviving family members] became opportunistic to survive and they adapted to those small financial benefits [that they received as compensation – author]. And those who are very critical about them are intellectuals.

When the winning architect and other experts explained the master plan during public consultations, not all members of the 5.18 organisations attended, and although those that did attend nodded, they either did not understand the content of the presentation or did not even recognise their ignorance, the above interviewee said. This interviewee was also cautious in saying that it was about the victims’ educational level, concerned about whether what he said would be insulting to them. He was critical of the idea that people tend to think that the 18 May victims should be ethical and novel. He asked why their proud history necessarily meant that the victims should not actively seek charity and said that the survivors had merely lost their breadwinners and thus become impoverished and angry.

Worry about the success of the urban regeneration project seems to have been the biggest motivation in terms of why those who were for the original project plan argued so strongly that it (the historic space with so many memories attached to it) should be demolished. They were nervous that the central government would withdraw their financial support because of the conflict. In the past, urban mega projects that were to be financially supported by the central government had been cancelled for a variety of reasons. This prior history caused local elites to worry and experience anxiety over the successful completion of the Asian Culture Complex.

Conflict as reflective knowledge

The renewed discussion as to whether the historical part of the former South Jolla provincial hall should be demolished brought about significant tension among civil groups and citizens. Most of all, the conflict was eventually about representativeness, about who is entitled to speak for this place from the past in the present and for the future. The two groups, pro- and anti- demolition, had conflicting ideas regarding memory configuration and the meaning of the Byeolgwan. The Byeolgwan became the spatialised symbol of the conflicts between two different interests. The anti-demolition group, consisting mainly of the 5.18 organisations, expressed their opinions through demonstrations. That conflict gave the actors involved a chance to negotiate about the issues. The transition from agreement to conflict implies that the 5.18 organisations stopped developing adaptive preferences and began to clarify and express what they in fact wanted. In the process, however, their legitimacy was significantly challenged, and they did not gain access to the negotiation tables and were instead represented by civic organisation elites (http://www.asiaculturecity.com/intro/annex02.jsp, accessed 7 July 2015). Tensions were stoked as anti-demolition actors found themselves without direct access to negotiating milieus, their opinions instead being represented by such elites, who did little to consult with them.

A focal point of the struggle between the two groups came to be over the meaning of what 5.18 Jung-shin (spirit) is. In the promotion of regeneration projects, elites focused on cultural restructuring the meaning of the 5.18 Jung-shin. While the 5.18 organisations were not involved much, there was still broad agreement across all groups concerned on the principles that remembering history was necessary, that democracy was the root of the Gwangju Jung-shin, and that the Byeolgwan was an important place of memory. When it came to the issue of the demolition of the Byeolgwan, however, different approaches on the following two issues clashed. First, how to re-configure the history of the place was an important issue. While the 5.18 organisations focused on remembering and mourning what happened in the building itself, and in Gwangju at large, the proponents of the project looked forward to preparing for the future and focusing on urban development and growth in the future. According to one interviewee, the people from the 5.18 organisations did not trust that the so-called 5.18 Jung-shin, the 5.18 spirit (Lewis, 2002), would be maintained through a reconfiguration of history, i.e. rearranging how to speak about their tragic memory through memorialisation. Jung-shin Gyeseung is a phrase that has been a key aspect of the agenda for Gwangju’s culture-led urban regeneration as financially supported by the national government. The ways in which cultural regeneration had taken place thus far been had not convinced people of the 5.18 organisations that it was the right direction to take for a reconfiguration of history. One interviewee involved in the organisations asked me what on earth the reconfiguration of history really meant. He said that various places of memory stemming from Gwangju’s democratic spirit have undergone transformation in the name of re-configuring or developing memories. There was suspicion that those who supported the original design, including the demolition of the Byeolgwan, did not consider the importance of the Byeolgwan in any adequate sense. The proponents of the demolition, on the other hand, said that the accession and reconfiguration of memory did not have to be material. There are various creative ways to memorialise a history, they argued. Some of them took examples from advanced societies such the USA and its approach to the Oklahoma City National Memorial ¹⁷ to demonstrate how those societies had developed ways by which to memorialise their historical events immaterially.

Second, the meaning of the Byeolgwan was interpreted differently between the two groups. Interview subjects who were professionals in universities and media argued that the Byeolgwan was not necessarily one of the most important historical places of memory in the area. The most important places would include the 5.18 park where the dead bodies were re-located, for instance. Yet to the 5.18 organisations, the Byeolgwan constituted the grave of the dead, and to them, was the most symbolic place, one where non-elites had died. It was a fact that it was because it had been ordinary people who had perished here that made the 18 May event a popular democratic uprising rather than an elitist protest, interviewees from the opponents’ side told me. Therefore, it was not something that they could compromise upon. Other people were suspicious of the motivations of the opponents to the original plan and believed that the logic of non-elite protest places was employed only after the 5.18 organisations realised that they wanted to win a power game; to these people, the meaning of Byeolgwan was clearly different.

Conflict played notable roles in the renewed process of discussion. The first of these was that the conflict clarified different actors’ different interests and promoted competition between them. Competition implies that the question of who is entitled to speak about the memory was actually cast and discussed. The critics, the 5.18 organisations, were located in a complex position in terms of influence in the decision-making process over urban matters. As some interviewees pointed out, they consisted of low-income people lacking in formal education. But, it did not mean that they were powerless in 18 May-related decision-making. Rather, they had normative power that exerted an insuperable influence in a way. One interviewee in the Hub City of Asian Culture Office said that their voices were accepted when they asked questions such as ‘What did you do at that time (in 1980)?’ or ‘Have you ever experienced what it was like?’ He said that no one could beat the dead. In a way, it meant that the 5.18 organisations had some basis of power. This is part of the reason why these organisations were able to stop being quiet and start arguing against the decision that had been made.

Owing to such symbolic importance on the part of 5.18 organisations, they have been approached and mobilised for urban development projects and political events since democratisation. The financial rewards offered have influenced the internal politics of the three 5.18 organisations. The three organisations have become interest groups, and internal conflicts have increased, one interviewee, an organiser insider, said. The development of different views on the demolition of Byeolgwan held by different segments of the organisations was noted by a majority of the interviewees. The dramatic change in the stance of the Minjuhwa Undong Busangjahoe [Wounded Persons Association (WPA)] regarding the Byeolgwan (towards being against demolition and later supportive of it) in particular ¹⁸ caused suspicion in that accusations were floated that they changed their position because of economic interest. These insinuations brought about a negative image of the 18 May victims.

It should be noticed how knowledge works in terms of how it is embedded in the way that discourse works by means of the way it is presented. There was a feeling that the anti-demolition group was not civil, was spoiled and was unreasonable. The proponents of the demolition said that they were ashamed by the uncivilised attitudes conveyed by the means of speaking and physical conduct. Protesting after all public consultations and decision-making were complete was considered neither reasonable nor considerate. In what happened afterwards, these critics raised their voices in negotiations and discussions and were sometimes violent in expressing their misgivings, a physicality that including pulling people. Describing what they had done, interviewees who were working at universities and who were critical of the 5.18 organisations said that they were ashamed of them. There was fatigue regarding 18 May (Vink, 2010) among citizens in general, a sentiment directed mainly at 5.18 organisation members. Every single interviewee of this research mentioned it. According to a majority of the interviewees, the memory of the historical event should be reconfigured and the reconfiguration should constitute how collective memory ought to be reconstructed in a reasonable way.

Annoyance regarding the members of the 5.18 organisations was well-observed at a symposium at which I attended as a participant-observer. In the middle of discussions that were taking place after presentations, one man stood up and started speaking about the importance of 18 May. The man’s outfit looked less formal than many others, and he did not use the professional art of presenting his opinion that is usually used at professional conferences and symposiums. Rather, he raised his voice, his pronunciation was unclear and his logic was not strong. Many other participants, including the presenters and members of the audience, looked uncomfortable and annoyed. Some of them made faces, and only a few seriously looked at him while he was speaking. Without responding to him, the meeting moved on, the Chair suddenly asking a university professor for her comments on the whole symposium. His manner, not the content of what he said, seemed to be taken to be out of context. In terms of knowledge to be able to demonstrate an opinion in an appropriate and convincing manner, the 5.18 organisation members were in an inferior position, a position that influenced the politics of knowledge.

The conflict also rearranged power structures in terms of place-making. The importance of governance formation and negotiation increased throughout the whole urban regeneration process as of the Gwangju Biennale. Expert knowledge and networks with experts became critical assets in the power structure. The proponents of the demolition emerged as an alternative group of power because they were capable of being involved in place-making by means of their professional knowledge. Because the office for the Hub City of Asian Culture was located in Seoul, the disparity between Seoul (central) and other areas (local) worked as a rationale that implicitly remarked that these people’s perspectives were more advanced than others. The fact that the architect for the project worked in the USA also helped support that rationale. Having access to powerful networks and Seoul-based actors on their side, the proponents of the demolition challenged the power of the 5.18 organisations, arguing for the development of a collective memory in a more sophisticated way as soon as possible. In that way, they were influential in decision-making and discourse formation. They said that the Hub City of Asian Culture project was expected to improve the urban economy of Gwangju and to promote its image. Because the project was entirely dependent on funding from the national government, the proponents wanted to make the process as smooth as possible, the majority of interviewees who were pro-demolition said.

Before a renewed consensus was made regarding the fate of the Byeolgwan, the central government suggested that only part of it should be demolished so that the original plan to make a tunnel would be kept and that the specific part in question, which was judged to have historical significance, would remain. The first reaction from both the pro and con groups was negative. They said that, in that case, the Asian Culture Complex would become a symbol of their own conflict. However, after the safety risk in the case of a complete conservation was assessed and eight more negotiations, committee meetings and public consultations took place over December 2009 through to July 2010, the participants accepted the plan for partial conservation. The central government announced the final decision, that the building would be partially conserved (with 30 m out of the building’s 54 m to remain).

One influential figure in the 5.18 organisations said that the period after 2007 has become a time more difficult even than that under dictators such as Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo because the conflict existed within civil society itself. But, he did say that the conflict would bring about positive results, eventually. He stated:

I think that this conflict around the Byeolgwan provides a turning point for a fundamental consideration of how to rehabilitate Gwangju.

Other interviewees also agreed that the conflict would bring about positive changes in the long-term. The negotiations in the place-of-memory making reminded people that perhaps there had been no singular collective memory, but a collection of different memories. The consensus that emerged after the conflicts was that a part of the Byeolgwan would remain and that the Byeolgwan would become museumised, memorialising those who had been killed in the building. During the process of consensus-making, they formed a matrix of governance that included various actors and enabled continued negotiations. The conflict became a training ground for governance and interactive knowledge. Different actors’ different preferences were clearly expressed, and the knowledge of place-making came to be more inclusive than before.

Conclusion

Focusing on place-of-memory-remaking, this study has elaborated on how power relations are articulated in the rehabilitation of practices of remembrance by different actors. The empirical findings of this research are as follows. The rehabilitation of the former South Jolla provincial hall as part of culture-led urban regeneration included the demolition of the Byeolgwan, where ordinary protesters were killed in the 18 May democratic uprising of 1980. During public consultations and the consensus-making process, 5.18 organisations developed an adaptive preference and agreed to changes proposed without realising what exactly would happen. The controversy that emerged after they expressed their belated criticism clarified the collective memory of 18 May. The protagonists and critics of the demolition of the Byeolgwan focused on different methods of reconfiguration of the history and different meaning of what constituted the Byeolgwan. Intellectuals challenged the power of the 5.18 organisations, bearing professional knowledge and appropriate manners in debates. The conflict contributed to the re-arrangement of power relations in the city and to the clarification of issues that had not been openly discussed before.

These findings have implications regarding the politics of knowledge and memory in instances of place-of-memory-making. Place-making shifts power relationships because it often requires actors with professional knowledge. I find such tension in knowledge interaction highly relevant to cases of collective memories in that it demonstrates a close connection between the politics of knowledge and the politics of collective memories. It is the power of knowledge that emerges as an alternative power against the power of victims’ experiences. So, it is not a tension between different representations in a consistent setting but a shift in terms of the key actors that are involved. The power of mourning and symbolising tragedy, usually located with the victims of such tragedy, is challenged by the power of place-making for the future. The negotiation among different actors in the case of Gwangju reveals controversies with regards to expertise, the rehabilitation of tragic memory and on the representativeness of justice and of the democratic spirit. Such matters of knowledge are not merely about education level or academic degrees, or social status. It is also about the comprehensive assets of a socio-economic class, in which individuals learn particular manners of speaking, socialising and learning. Those manners empower or disempower members of certain classes in the context of negotiations.

A theoretical suggestion of this study is that the making of a place of memory should be approached comprehensively. In the transition from place-remembering to place-making, a shift of the representativeness takes place from victims to experts, and two different types of power come to compete. In the past, when talking about how memory was suppressed, the existence of the victims exerted the power of representativeness. When compensations were offered as part of a set of opportunities to make something for the future, those able to make adjustments for such a future gained more power. Power is challenged especially when financial and political resources are made available for place-making. In Gwangju’s case, the compensation from the national government was made in terms of an urban regeneration project, and the representativeness required in this context involves professional knowledge to a greater degree than activities that had been carried out earlier in the area.

In practical terms, understanding and communication occurred in the end because of the conflict that eventually took place. Communication eventually worked by means of the controversy that was caused over the proposed demolition of the Byeolgwan. Are the politics of knowledge bad news for grassroots community engagement? Do they mean that consensus-making between different actors will eventually fail? Not necessarily. Increased interaction among various actors means increased opportunities to acknowledge differences in understanding, knowing and sentiment. Conflicts make actors realise that differences exist, that their knowledge is not universal, and that conflicts emerge in part from those differences. Deserving attention, though, is that any actor’s knowledge is not fixed but evolving. Sometimes, it is not until something serious such as a conflict arises that actors realise what kinds of knowledge and understanding they possess about an issue.