E2024-G054

Gwangcheon Citizens’ Apartment: Labor, Democracy, and the Memory of Deulbul

Narrative

The Gwangcheon Citizens’ Apartment, built in 1970 in Gwangcheon-dong, was the first apartment complex in Gwangju. It was a public housing project established by the city to provide homes for poor workers and students in an area that had become a slum for refugees after the Korean War (1950-1953). Labor activists Bak Gi-sun (1957-1978) and Yun Sang-won (1950–1980) also lived here. The Deulbul (Wildfire) Night School, founded by Bak Gi-sun in 1978, began operating within the apartment complex from 1979, raising awareness of labor conditions and continuing the movement for workers’ education. When the May 18 Democratic Uprising broke out in 1980, members of the night school published the Tusa hoebo (Fighters’ Bulletin) to report on the suppression and to amplify citizens’ voices. Their spirit was later honored as the Seven Deulbul Martyrs, and the Gwangcheon Citizens’ Apartment remains a symbolic site where their lives and sacrifices intersected. The novel Spring Day draws upon the stories of this apartment, the Deulbul Night School, and Yun Sang-won, recording the truth of May in literary form. Today, the Deulbul Course, one of the pilgrimage routes that connect the historic sites of May 18, includes this apartment, allowing visitors to walk along the path where the passion for democracy once burned.