Interesting, I don't remember learning or hearing about this one.

> While the South Korean government claimed 165 people were killed in the massacre, scholarship on the massacre today estimates 600 to 2,300 victims.

Just for the sake of it, compared it to the widely known chinese tiananmen square massacre, albeit this one has widely varying figures on wikipedia:

> The Chinese Red Cross had given a figure of 2,600 deaths but later denied having given such a figure.[16][17] The Swiss Ambassador had estimated 2,700. Beijing hospital records compiled shortly after the events recorded at least 478 dead and 920 wounded. ...etc

> The Gwangju Uprising, known in Korean as May 18 (Korean: 오일팔; Hanja: 五一八; RR: Oilpal; lit. Five One Eight), were student-led demonstrations that took place in Gwangju, South Korea, in May 1980, against the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan. The uprising was violently suppressed by the South Korean military with the approval and logistical support of the United States under the Carter administration, which feared the uprising might spread to other cities and tempt North Korea to interfere.

When I visited Gwangju I spend some time in the museum dedicated to the uprising, and the military area where people were tortured. It was pretty harrowing.