Vacuum
Assassination; investigation politics.
Start on 26 October, not only on 12 December. The assassination is the vacuum.
Yushin's late Park years are the longer preface of a politicised army.
Timeline
- Park assassinated
Kim Jae-gyu; a vacuum.
- Choi government
A weak acting presidency; Chun at DSC investigates.
- The night
Jeong seized; Hanahoe units move in Seoul.
- New military centre
Chun's circle holds the guns.
- Expansion
Political shutdown; martial widening.
- Gwangju
Uprising and crackdown -- the sequel dead.
- Chun as president
The 12.12 cohort takes the Blue House path.
- June Struggle
Direct election forced.
- Trials
Chun and Roh convicted.
- Cinema / civic memory
A new generation's 12.12 and 5.18.
Eras
The night
Hanahoe seizes the army centre.
Gwangju
The civic sequel.
Fifth Republic
Chun years; 1987 break.
Trials and film
Legal and cultural afterlife.
Milestones
Faction captured the chain of command
The 12.12 fact.
Gwangju as sequel
May 1980 is why December matters civically.
Later convictions
A rare coup-in-the-dock afterlife.
If the story stops on 13 December it is an officers' anecdote. Gwangju makes it a civic history.
1987 and the 1990s trials are the incomplete democratic reply.