The Gwangju Uprising in 1980 was a spontaneous, week-long, violent insurrection against the military dictatorship of General Chun Doo-Hwan by workers and students in the South Korean city of Gwangju. Although the rebellion was a disaster in military terms, it led to a political victory, inspiring a wave of democratic uprisings across Asia, granting freedoms to hundreds of millions of people and eventually creating a progressive democracy in South Korea.