Jürgen Hinzpeter

Jürgen Hinzpeter (6 July 1937 – 25 January 2016) was a German journalist best known for his coverage of South Korean topics. Hinzpeter was a reporter for the ARD and the only journalist to film the massacres during the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980. He captured the events on camera, documenting the violence against civilians and the military crackdown in the city. His footage was sent to West Germany and broadcast internationally, exposing the South Korean regime under Chun Doo-hwan to global scrutiny.

His coverage helped draw pressure from the international community, contributing to the eventual push for democratization in South Korea, which culminated in 1987. Hinzpeter also reported on opposition politician Kim Dae-jung, who later became president of South Korea after winning the 1997 election. In Gwangju, a memorial honouring Hinzpeter has been erected by the May 18 Memorial Foundation.

Hinzpeter visited South Korea several times as the ARD's Japanese correspondent. He recorded a large number of public security incidents under the Park Chung Hee regime and did interviews with Kim Young-sam, who was under house arrest just before the 18 May Democratic Uprising. Hinzpeter filmed the Gwangju massacre, where young people were beaten and trampled, and the bodies of other young people were seen in the provincial government building, on ten rolls of film. Smuggling out his film, Hinzpeter hid the five most important rolls of film on his person, and the other five in a metal biscuit tin decorated to look like a wedding gift. He flew to Tokyo and sent the film to Germany. Hinzpeter returned to Gwangju on 23 May to photograph the liberation of Gwangju, when martial law was withdrawn and the citizens' local self-government was formed.

Hinzpeter's film was immediately shared with many countries through the ARD, and it was incorporated in and broadcast as a documentary titled Korea standing at a crossroads in September of that year. The 2017 film A Taxi Driver centers on Kim Man-seob, a dramatization of the taxi driver who helped Hinzpeter during the uprising.

Awards and honors In 2003, Hinzpeter was awarded the "Song Gun-ho Press Award" by the South Korean journalist association in recognition of his contribution to the South Korean democratization movement. On 19 May 2005, he was awarded a special prize by the Korea Broadcast Camera Journalists Association.

Later life and death With his chronic heart disease temporarily putting him in a life-threatening condition in 2004, Hinzpeter revealed his desire to be buried in Gwangju after his death.

Hinzpeter died on 25 January 2016, at the age of 78 at the University of Lübeck in Germany. Another source said that he died in his hometown of Ratzeburg, northern Germany. Though he had expressed the desire to be buried in Gwangju, his family did not honor that wish. Instead, a memorial tombstone containing his nail clippings and hair, which Hinzpeter had left in the city in 2005, was installed in a special memorial garden in Gwangju by the May 18 Memorial Foundation on 16 May 2016.