The rigged election in the military in 1987

In the wake of the democratic movement in 1987, Korean people could elect a president directly in Korea for the first time. But there was also a protest against a rigged election in the Guro District office due to high expectation for elections. As a result, some 1,000 people were taken to police and some 200 people were held in custody. There was a rumor that after the protest was cracked down, a few people threw themselves off the office building or suffocated to death in the engineering room, which later turned out to be false. However, an elite college student jumped off at the top of the building, ending up with a waste-down paralysis.

The incident began in the morning of the presidential election day of Dec. 16, 1987 with a report that national election commission officers of Guro B district were trying to load a suspicious absentee ballot box onto a van and leave the district office. Thousands of students and citizens flocked to the location. The ballot box were sent back to the national election commission only 44 hours after the protestors’ occupation of the commission. The ballot box has been sealed up until now. The Korean Political Science Association opened the box in 29 years in coordination with the election commission on Thursday, in the run up to the 30-year anniversary of Korea’s democratic movement.

The outcome was: out of 4,325 votes, Roh Tae-woo gained 3,133 votes (72.4 percent), Kim Dae-jung 575 votes (13.2 percent) and Kim Young-sam 404 (9.3 percent). Back then, the entire Guro B district gave 66,204 votes to Kim Dae-jung (35.7 percent), 52,076 votes for Roh Tae-woo (28.0 percent), and 47,078 votes for Kim Young-sam (25.4 percent). Back then, absentee votes were opened with the votes by general voters, and there is no tally of vote rates. It is true that the outcome shows Roh had a very high rate, but as it is impossible to compare it with other districts, it is hard to say that the national election officers of Guro B rigged the ballet box.

However, there must have been a rigged vote somewhere. Broad corruption had occurred in the military. Back then, 3 army officers unveiled this, only to be lynched by the intelligence agency. I know this because I worked in the same troops at that time. In fact, soldiers were forced to vote while their superiors watch them voting, and there were some proxy votes, too. I believe that the protest at the Guro District office helped us have historic data that can prove a rigged election in the military in the past.