On a long walk through the center of Seoul a few weeks ago, my thoughts drifted back to June 1987. Demonstrations in favor of a direct presidential election and other democratic reforms raged for days in central Seoul after the Democratic Justice Party convention nominated Roh Tae-woo as a presidential candidate on June 10.

The demonstrations eventually forced then-president Chun Doo-hwan to accept a direct election and a series of democratic reforms on June 29, which set Korea on the path toward democratization.

In the 1980s, most foreigners in Korea avoided demonstrations. Some feared being caught by the police. Others thought that the foreigners had no place observing political turmoil in Korea. For most of the 1980s, severe demonstrations were confined to university campuses and could be avoided.

The demonstrations in June 1987 were different because they covered wide areas of the center of Seoul and other major cities. Citizens who had previously been afraid of voicing opposition to the Chun regime joined the demonstrations for the first time.

As I have noted many times before, the 1987 June Uprising was a seminal point in the history of the Republic of Korea. Armed with the idea that democracy was a key to becoming a “good country,” a generation of university students took to the streets to demand an end to dictatorship that had bloodily squashed previous hopes for democracy in 1980. Many leaders of the student movement made great personal sacrifice for the cause and a few gave their lives.

Beyond students, the democracy movement also included writers, artists and clergy who used their creative powers and moral authority to help the cause. Some had their works banned and were sent to jail.

The June Uprising is particularly important because it was the first time in Korean history that a broad-based social movement had succeeded in bringing about lasting change. The March 1 Movement of 1919 spread throughout the nation, but failed to achieve independence from Japanese colonial rule.

The April 4 Revolution in 1960 forced the authoritarian President Syngman Rhee to resign, but the Park Chung-hee-led coup d’etat in 1961 brought a quick end to the democratic experiment.

Historic sites related to the March 1 Movement are noted in central Seoul, but sites related to the April 4 Revolution and the June Uprising have been ignored. Joseon period historic sites, of course, are well marked. The dominance of Joseon and Japanese colonial periods is repeated in school education and public discourse on history in which they dominate.

Things have begun to change, albeit slowly, in recent years. The National Museum of Korean Contemporary History in Gwanghwamun, which opened in 2012, includes democratization in its narrative.

A memorial to Lee Han-yeol, a Yonsei University student who died of injuries from a tear gas grenade, opened in 2014. Besides these places, there is a lack of official memorialization of places and people in Seoul associated with the democracy movement. This is odd considering the importance of this achievement in Korean history.

Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the June Uprising. Most of the students who took to the streets are now in their 50s. They have grown up, raised children, and are now thinking about retirement. They have carried the collective memory of the June Uprising with them, but only have only recently started to think about how to memorialize that memory for future generations.

A simple way to memorialize them is to build a Museum of Korean Democracy in central Seoul dedicated to the democracy movement. Such a museum could serve as a focal point for activities dedicated to understanding, preserving, and deepening Korean democracy.

To work well, the museum would need to be architecturally unique and built in a historically relevant location. That empty space in front of the Anglican Cathedral across from City Hall would be appropriate, because the Cathedral and nearby areas were the locus of many pro-democracy activities.

Until recently, a Japanese colonial era office building sat in front of the Cathedral. The building was torn down to improve the cityscape by bring the Cathedral into view. A new building would block that view, so a Museum of Korean Democracy would have to go underground to get enough space to make the project worthwhile.

In the hands of a talented architect, the underground structure could serve as a metaphor for the democracy movement that came to the surface and triumphed in June 1987 after years of being forced underground.

By Robert J. Fouser

Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Ann Arbor, Michigan. — Ed.