Historians say Jimmy Carter’s human rights legacy includes abject failures | Human rights news

In South Korea, too, historians say Carter adopted the messages of a military government facing human rights criticism.

In May 1980, a pro-democracy uprising led by students in the South Korean city of Gwangju was met with brutal suppression. In one day, 60 people were killed and hundreds were wounded.

Journalist Timothy Shorrock, who has covered US-South Korea relations for decades, said the Carter administration was wary of losing a useful Cold War ally and therefore stood behind the military government.

He explained that the US supported the South Korean leadership by freeing up military resources that allowed troops to quell the uprising.

“Knowing that [military leader General Chun Doo-hwan’s] forces killed 60 people the day before, they still believed this insurgency was a threat to the national security of the United States,” Shorrock said of the Carter officials.

He added that when the US aircraft carrier was sent to the region, some protesters convinced by US rhetoric about democracy and human rights believed that the US was coming to intervene on their behalf.

Instead, the carrier was deployed to bolster the US military presence so that South Korean troops in the demilitarized zone with North Korea could be moved to quell the uprising.

Shorrock says the contingency plans even included the possible use of US forces if the unrest in Gwangju spread further.

Although there is no generally accepted death toll from the rebellion, the official government figure is that more than 160 people died. Some academic sources put the death toll at over 1,000.

When asked by reporters if his actions were inconsistent with his stated commitment to human rights, Carter said there was “no incompatibility.”

He asserted that the US was helping South Korea maintain its national security against the threat of “communist subversion,” echoing the rhetoric of the country’s military leadership.

It was the kind of rhetoric South Korean leaders have long used to justify repressive and anti-democratic measures.

When the South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol declared state of war in December 2024 in the name of fighting “anti-state forces”, many drew parallels with the traumatic events in Gwangju.

“What he was saying at the time was what General Chun Doo-hwan was saying, characterizing this as a communist uprising, which it was not,” Shorrock said. “He never apologized for it.”