12 December 1979 coup (1979): New military centre · 492

Choi Kyu-hah was a transitional civilian face without a secure gun. Hanahoe officers moved the 9th Division and other trusted units. Jeong was seized. Some loyalist resistance occurred at Army HQ. US Forces Korea was informed after the fact -- a still-argued alliance wrinkle, not a US-run coup.

This paragraph dates a past insubordination. It does not teach one. The "new military" widened control in May 1980, closed politics, and sent troops to Gwangju. The civic dead of 18-27 May are the moral centre of the 1979-80 file for most Koreans. Chun became president; Roh Tae-woo, another Hanahoe general, followed -- a decade of the 12.12 cohort.

The June Democratic Struggle forced a direct presidential election. Later trials (1995-96) convicted Chun and Roh for 12.12 and Gwangju -- a legal afterlife rare among this atlas's coups. Films (12.12: The Day, A Taxi Driver) recast the English-available memory in the 2010s-20s. A successful factional seizure in a front-line ally -- the Korean file this atlas owes its Korean audience.