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

Also in South Korea, historians say Carter adopted the message of the military government, which faces criticism in the field of human rights.

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

Journalist Timothy Shorrock, who has been writing about US-South Korean relations for decades, said the Carter administration was concerned about losing a useful Cold War ally and thus threw its weight behind the military government.

He explained that the United States supported the South Korean leadership by freeing up military resources that allowed the forces to put down the uprising.

“Knowing that (military commander Gen. Chun Doo-hwan’s) forces killed 60 people the day before, they still believe this uprising represents a threat to the national security of the United States,” Shorrock said of Carter officials.

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

Instead, the carrier was deployed to reinforce the US military presence so that South Korean forces could be redeployed to the demilitarized zone with North Korea to quell the uprising.

Shorrock says contingency plans even included the possibility of using US forces if the unrest in Gwangju expanded.

While there is no universally accepted death toll in the uprising, the official government figure is that more than 160 people died. Some academic sources put the death toll at more than 1,000 people.

In response to a journalist’s question whether his actions conflicted with his stated commitment to human rights, Carter said there was “no conflict.”

He stressed that the United States is helping South Korea maintain its national security against the threat of “communist subversion,” which reflects the rhetoric of the country’s military leadership.

This was the type of rhetoric that South Korean leaders had long used to justify repressive and anti-democratic measures.

When the president of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol Announce Martial law In December 2024, in the name of combating “anti-state forces,” many compared the traumatic events to Gwangju.

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