Kim Yong-jang, who claimed to be an intelligence agent in the U.S. Army and answered all the unanswered questions about the May 18 Gwangju Uprising, had never worked as an intelligence officer of the 501st Military Intelligence Brigade. Kim joined the 501st Intelligence Brigade as an interpreter in 1974 and retired as an interpreter in the mid-1990s. He was not in a position or had the authority to personally draw up official reports for the 524th Military Intelligence Battalion, the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

The only evidence Kim submitted to the Prosecution Service as a witness was a commendation for twenty years of service. He failed to give any proof of his position. The commendation, which was briefly displayed on the JTBC show, Lee Gyu-yeon's Spotlight, on May 16 only stated that he was a civilian interpreter.

I made several requests for information and confirmed that there was no report written by Kim at INSCOM and also discovered the possibility that his personnel records might have been removed to another agency over the years. The Public Affairs Office at INSCOM, who heard of Kim's argument, said that the U.S. military could not appoint or use a civilian language expert or interpreter as a military intelligence agent. I called H, who was a commander of the 501st Brigade shortly before Kim retired, but he could not remember Kim. He suggested we hang up after snickering, when I asked if a civilian interpreter could become a military intelligence agent or assume both duties of an interpreter and intelligence agent. Meanwhile, Kim told me over the phone that the 501st Brigade used different titles--interpreter, language expert, military intelligence agent--according to its needs. He did not remember the specific office code necessary to write a report at the time.

Just because Kim lied about his identity, does not mean that everything he said was false. But as Kim appeared in the press more frequently, more false statements were uncovered. Kim said that the fact that Chun Doo-whan went to the Gwangju Air Force Base on May 21, 1980 was an "unchangeable fact" and suggested that the officials search the flight schedule at that time. The Gwangju base was under the joint jurisdiction of the ROK and US Air Force and the U.S. military intelligence agency was in a position to easily check the flight schedule and list of passengers. When a reporter asked Kim if he checked the helicopter flight schedule of Chun Doo-hwan, Kim avoided giving an answer.

At a Gwangju press conference, Kim said that the report that the soldiers received orders to open fire was reflected in the May 21, 1980 DIA document, and that it was the agency’s mistake to release such sensitive information. However, the DIA report referred to the self-defense rights that the military headquarters issued after the mass shootout in front of the provincial office on May 21, and it did not include any information that the agency would have removed in a screening.

In an interview with OhMyNews on May 18, Kim said that the U.S. had its citizens evacuate Gwangju upon orders from Pentagon three to four days before the May 18 uprising and claimed that this proved that the U.S. was aware of the new military regime's plans before they were executed. But a U.S. missionary at the time testified that the U.S. never gave any evacuation orders or executed plans before or during the May uprising. On May 20, Kim appeared on the TBS show, Kim Eo-jun's News Factory and changed his statement saying that there was an evacuation plan for May 22, 1980.

Kim's perjury was able to decorate the headlines because of the press, which was busy taking down notes of his comments. In particular, JTBC seemed intent on creating an alibi for Kim. In an interview aired on May 16, James Young, a DIA agent and also an officer at the U.S. Embassy in 1980, consistently denied Kim's argument. Unlike Kim's argument, Young claimed that there were two and not four agents at the Gwangju base and that the 501st Intelligence Brigade just had a small number of detachments, not eleven, across the country. But if you simply follow the subtitles and the narration, you can't know these details.

Kim's testimony strengthened the argument that the May 18 uprising was a perfect scenario by the new military regime to put Chun Doo-hwan in office. And if we explain everything according to this scenario, then the Gwangju citizens were simply a crowd that was instigated by Chun Doo-hwan and his soldiers. This interpretation is a twisted reflection of Ji Man-won's argument about the infiltration of North Koreans. These two interpretations cannot coexist with the voluntary actions of the Gwangju citizens to fight the violence of the military of May 1980 and to build a peaceful community.