12 December 1979 coup (1980): Chun as president

The 12 December 1979 seizure in which Chun Doo-hwan's Hanahoe arrested the army chief -- a Korean coup that led toward 17 May 1980 and Gwangju. On the night of 12 December 1979, Major General Chun Doo-hwan -- head of the Defense Security Command and of the secret officers' club Hanahoe -- moved troops in Seoul and arrested General Jeong Seung-hwa, the Army Chief of Staff. President Park Chung-hee had been assassinated on 26 October by Kim Jae-gyu. Acting president Choi Kyu-hah's government was already weak. 12.12 was a coup inside the army that captured the centre of the ROK military.

Shooting in the capital that night was limited compared with a civil war; the political violence of the sequel was not. On 17 May 1980 Chun's circle expanded martial control; the Gwangju Uprising (18-27 May) was crushed with a death toll in the hundreds in official figures and higher in civic memory. The 12 December night is the necessary preface to May.

English-language memory of 1979-80 Korea is thin beside Kwangju's later human-rights file. For Korean readers this is a core civic wound: Hanahoe, the "new military," and the long road to the June 1987 democratic struggle. This page is political-military history -- named units and dates -- not a guide to moving battalions through Seoul.