In the southwest, the urban populations of Kwangju, Mokpo, Hwasun, Polkyo, and other areas have risen up and seized control of their cities, posing an immediate challenge to the survival of the military regime headed by Gen. Chon Too Hwan.

Not since the end of the Korean War has the country witnessed such massive political ferment.

The insurrection in Kwangju—South Korea’s fourth-largest city—was sparked by the military regime’s own actions.

After weeks of mounting student protests and labor strikes in Seoul, Taegu, Sabuk, and other cities, the military authorities announced on the morning of May 18 that they were closing all universities, banning all political gatherings and labor strikes, imposing press censorship, and extending martial law to the entire country.

Hundreds of political activists, journalists, dissident priests, and student leaders were arrested and taken off to secret detention centers. One of the most prominent figures arrested was Kim Dae Jung, a leader of the bourgeois opposition New Democratic Party who comes form South Cholla Province, of which Kwangju is the capital.  
 
June 6, 1955
The Supreme Court’s long-awaited enforcement ruling on school desegregation went about as far as it could go in appeasing the white-supremacist Deep South without reversing the original decision completely.

While the court reaffirmed what it said a year ago—that Jim Crow schools are unconstitutional, it failed to declare such schools illegal as of now or any specific time in the future. It asked school boards and federal judges in the South to apply the decision themselves and figure out how and when to go about it. While it said these officials should not delay, on the other hand, it said they needn’t hasten any more than was practicable and reasonable. Moreover, it said, the decision should be applied in “good faith.”

In short the court backed down completely from putting teeth into its May 17, 1954 decision. Southern racist officials may be subject, years from now, to the inconvenience of being gummed by the court’s desegregation ruling but they’ll never get bit by it.

Southern politicians and newspapers were loud in their praises of the high court’s “realism” and “wisdom” in rendering such a toothless implementation order. The only criticism the most violent racists could think of was that the ruling hadn't reversed the original decision outright.

Tom Tobb, head of the [Mississippi] State Democratic Committee, amplified: “We couldn’t have asked for anything better than to have the matter placed in the hands of our federal district courts. They will consider the suits in good faith and in the manner in which they understand Mississippi’s racial problems.”  
 
 
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