How a bloody uprising in South Korea sowed the seeds for a must-see Edinburgh Fringe show

I have come here with Jae-Ho Son, Il Won and Sam-Jo Jeong, the creative team behind Jasmine Gwangju, a performance piece which comes to Edinburgh for the Festival Fringe next month. The production aims to honour those who died in the uprising and contribute towards the process of national reconciliation.

Son, the show’s artistic director, offers some incense in memory of the martyrs at the altar which stands before the cemetery’s massive memorial tower.

The mood of sombre respect which pervades this impressive and pristine place, which was opened in 1997 and designated a national cemetery in 2002, is in stark contrast to the ignominy of its past. It was on this site that the dictatorship unceremoniously dumped the bodies of its victims in unmarked graves during and immediately after the 10-day uprising.

The production of Jasmine Gwangju coincides with Unesco’s recent decision to grant world documentary heritage status to material pertaining to the Gwangju Uprising. The show and Unesco recognition are the latest in a series of projects which memorialise the 1980 events.

The sorrow and pride felt by the people of Gwangju about the uprising is represented not only by the Memorial Cemetery, but also in the May 18 Park and Museum, which stand on the site where pro-democracy protesters were falsely imprisoned and tortured by the military, and the May 18 Foundation, the organisation, led by renowned poet of the uprising, Jun-Tae Kim, which holds the May 18 archives and works for democracy, peace and reconciliation throughout the Korean peninsula and internationally.

It is little wonder that the Gwangju Uprising has received such national and international renown. This relatively small city on the southern tip of the peninsula (current population 1.4 million, just over twice that of Glasgow) has become a beacon for democracy in Asia.

During the events of 1980, the city was placed under army occupation, phone lines were cut, transport links blocked and the media banned from reporting the suppression of the civilian movement.

The violent crackdown on the initially peaceful protest led to the creation of a citizens’ militia, who armed themselves with whatever makeshift weapons they could find. Local armouries and police stations were raided and the arms taken, but the rebels’ weapons were no match for the automatic firearms, tanks and helicopter gunships sent in by the regime.

Although the uprising was drowned in blood and slandered at the time as an attempted Communist takeover, it is now a matter of historical record that the immense sacrifice of the people of Gwangju was a crucial factor in the eventual overthrow of the South Korean junta in 1987. Indeed, as everyone engaged in memorialising May 18 (including the creators of Jasmine Gwangju) is keen to point out, the spirit of the Gwangju Uprising is currently spreading throughout the Arab world: a recent performance of Jasmine Gwangju, in its home city, was attended by representatives of the new Tunisian government.

When I talk with Son (artistic director), Won (musical director) and Jeong (producer) at the cemetery, they explain why their show – which combines music, dance, ritual and digital art – has been created in 2011.

The timing is not an accident, explains Jeong. The Unesco recognition of the May 18 Uprising has coincided with Gwangju’s bid to become an Asian cultural hub, complete with the construction of an impressive cultural quarter in the centre of the city, housing everything from art galleries and libraries to a large theatre and children’s arts centre.

It was important to the show’s creators that these two developments should not be seen as separate. The May 18 events remain at the heart of the identity of Gwangju as a city, so the creation of the artwork was the logical way of connecting the city’s role as a beacon of peace and democracy with its aspiration to become a major cultural centre.

“We want to be reconciled with the victims of May 18 and use our performance to promote the message of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness,” Jeong continues. “We do this by using the ritual we have on Jin Island, which cleanses the dead of their sins before they go to heaven.”

Jin Island (or Jindo, in Korean) is a deeply significant place for Koreans. An island in the Yellow Sea, at the southern point of the peninsula, it is famous for music, songs and the rituals of its shamans. Although the pagan religion of Korean shamanism has fewer adherents in South Korea than Christianity or Buddhism, its rites and rituals are deeply embedded in Korean culture and respected by people of all faiths.

“Shaman ritual is common on Jin Island,” adds Won. “It is a ritual which can be understood by people all over the world. When Catholics hold mass, everyone understands the rituals. It is similar with shaman rituals.”

If the 20-minute excerpt from the show to which I was treated in Gwangju is any indication, the meanings of the rituals in this emotively spiritual production will certainly be clear to Edinburgh audiences.

A disconsolate man carrying an open suitcase is slumped on the floor. He represents the spirit of a martyr of the May 18 Uprising. Still carrying his rage at the injustice of the suppression and still, like any mortal, with his sins upon him, he is caught in a kind of limbo, unable to ascend from this world to the next. Surrounded by white-robed female shamans, he is ceremoniously cleansed of his anger and sins and prepared for heaven.

The elements of ritual (known collectively as “gut”) integrated into the performance are very faithful to those for which the Jin Island shamans are famous. The ritual cleansing of the dead is called Ssitgim-gut, and is performed using a Gi-Geon (meaning “paper money”), which is a series of white paper ribbons joined together by a handle. For the purpose of the show, this cleansing ritual is extended to the living.

Shaman ritual is only one part of a multi-artform production which the makers of Jasmine Gwangju describe as “total theatre”.

“The music is the centre and main focus of the piece,” explains Son. “It is supported by digital media, dance and ritual performance.”

The visual element will bring together the representational (such as photos of the dead and Korean calligraphy) with evocative abstract images. The music – like so much of the art being created in South Korea these days – is a carefully considered hybrid of the traditional and the modern. Human voices and traditional Korean percussion and wind instruments are combined.

“I have borrowed sounds from real life,” Son explains. “There are sounds from May 18 and created sounds – using new technologies – combined with song and music.”

However, at the heart of his composition are the sounds of Korean classical music. I was privileged to hear some of this played during the performance in Gwangju, and I am not embarrassed to say that the carefully cumulative effect of this subtlety repeating and varying music and song brought me to the brink of tears.

Won is a specialist in the interpretation of traditional Korean song within contemporary music – techniques which he has applied in creating the new songs within Jasmine Gwangju.

His extensive background in musicology has given rise to a somewhat surprising European parallel, given the distinctively Korean nature of the music in the show. He finds inspiration, he says, in the music of the famously Communist Italian avant-garde composer Luigi Nono: “He made music from the tragedy of the Nazi occupation of Europe and the Second World War. I have listened to his music a lot. The music in Jasmine Gwangju is an homage to him.”

Which is not to say that the creators would be happy for their production to be considered an explicitly political artwork, as were many of Nono’s compositions. “This performance has no political meaning,” insists Won. “In the past there have been theatre productions and movies [commemorating the May 18 Uprising] which have been only against the government. This time, we want to avoid politics and focus only on peace.”

It is a curious statement, given the political significance of the May 18 Uprising to the revolutions currently sweeping the Arab world. While Jasmine Gwangju eschews polemic and is primarily spiritual in its implications, it is surely impossible to say that an artwork in which shamans sympathetically surround the spirit of a pro-democracy martyr has no politics at all.

“We are worried about Jasmine Gwangju being perceived as a heavy, political artwork,” Won concedes. “However, if you look at Emir Kusturica’s film Underground, it’s about politics, but not in a heavy way. That’s the same as our show.”

His request for an understanding of the subtleties of Jasmine Gwangju is understandable, as, given the personal histories of the show’s creators, is their concern that the Uprising be honoured with due reverence. Jeong and Son were young men in Gwangju region at the time. Won was living in Seoul, but, despite the blockade of Gwangju and the media black-out, was aware of what his contemporaries in the southern city were going through.

“I lived near Gwangju city at the time,” says Jeong. “I was a middle-school student. Although I was very young, I was aware of what was happening. Armed only with a wooden stick, I took the bus into the city with my friends to fight against the military. Although they didn’t see any blood, and the traffic was stopped and the media was stopped, most Gwangju people knew what had happened. They were outraged and many joined the uprising.”

“Even after the May 18 events, the supervisor of the city was still in office, and everyone was very nervous,” Son remembers. “The government also banned people from visiting the cemetery where the bodies of the victims had been buried. People of our age experienced a lot during those days. Many of us feel guilty that we survived when others lost their lives. We feel the need to do something to commemorate the dead.”

For Won it is important that Jasmine Gwangju generates a sense of the anguish which is created by events such as the suppression of the May 18 Uprising and the current loss of life in the Arab world: “We want audiences to feel the pain of what happened in Gwangju and to know that it could happen anywhere, that it could happen to them one day.”

Today Gwangju is a thriving city of commerce, culture and sport (Celtic star Ki Sung-Yueng, who I met on my trip, is from there). The impressive civil infrastructure, opulent modern architecture, ubiquitous electronic gadgets (produced by Korean companies Samsung and LG) and streets filled with new, Korean-built Hyundai and Kai motor cars are all testament to the city’s part in the South Korean economic miracle.

Visiting Gwangju today and witnessing the democratic openness of the city, it is difficult to believe that its people suffered so much under the heel of a far-right military dictatorship just 31 years ago. As Jasmine Gwangju attests, the political, economic and cultural progress of the city can be looked upon with hope by those currently struggling on the streets of Syria, Yemen and Bahrain.