In 1987, a mass uprising took place in South Korea which overthrew the brutal US-backed dictatorship.

Soon after, workers launched what became known as the Great Workers' Struggle, a mass strike which helped transform the country for working class and poor people.

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a brief mention of sexual violence. Now we're not going to go into too much detail about

the background to this movement because we cover this in a lot of detail in our previous episodes.

In episode 51 we talk about the period from World War II up to the end of the 70s and in episodes 53 to 56 we cover the 1980s and in particular the quangju uprising of 1980 which was the most significant pro-democratic rebellion in the country,

prior to 1987.

But in short, for most of the time since the end of World War II, South Korea was ruled by a succession

of violent and repressive dictatorships, all propped up by the United States,

where workers toiled long hours for low pay and any resistance was brutally

crushed, as it was in Guangzhou.

In 1980, when the Guangzhou uprising occurred, I was in the first year of middle school.

At that time, my older sister and brother were university students.

This is Hong-Sung-Haa, who was born in Seoul and whom I met with there last year.

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