User:Jirangmoon/sandbox/Jürgen Hinzpeter

Jürgen Hinzpeter (6 July 1937 – 25 January 2016) was a German journalist best known for his coverage of South Korea topic.

Hinzpeter was reporter for the ARD and the only journalist to film the massacres during the Gwangju uprising in South Korea in 1980. His footage was delivered to Germany and broadcast worldwide. He reported about the student uprising and the leader Kim Dae-jung who later became President of South Korea. In Gwangju there is a memorial to honor Hinzpeter erected by the 18 May Memorial Foundation.

Career
Hinzpeter was eager to be a doctor during his school days but joined to the Hamburg branch of ARD, Germany's regional public-service broadcasters, as the TV station cameraman in 1963, changing his career path to a journalist. In the early of 1967, he was assigned to Hong Kong where the ARD had the only branch of East Asia. Covering the Vietnam War, he got injured in Saigon in the spring of 1967. After that, he transferred to the Tokyo branch of the ARD and worked as a correspondent there for nearly 17 years from 1973 to 1989.

He visited Korea several times as Japanese correspondent of the ARD. He recorded a large number of public security incidents under the Park Jung-hee regime and did interviews with Kim Young-sam who was under house arrest just before the May 18th Democratic Uprising. On May 19th when the Democratic Uprising was in progress, Paul Schwarts, Pastor of East Asia Germany Mission, arranged for him to go to Gwangju from Japan, and then on the May 20th morning he entered Gwangju. Coverty arriving in Korea where he stayed until the 23rd, he took pictures of the disastrous scenes of Gwangju. He was emotionally shaken by the brutal events he witnessed. Hinzpeter's film was immediately shared with many countries through the ARD in Germany and it was incorporated and broadcasted in a documentary titled Korea standing at a crossroads in September of that year. The documentary was secretly screened in the 5th Republic of Korea, where at that time the media was being controlled. Most of the video materials related to the Gwangju Democratization Movement known today were collected by him. Covering protests at Gwanghwamun intersection in November 1986, the end of the 5th Republic of Korea, he was beaten by plain clothes officers and received a neck spine injury. After retiring from journalist in 1995, he settled in Ratzeburg, Germany.

The video taken by Hinzpeter at Gwangju was released in May 1980 - Blue Eyed Witnesses, the episode of KBS 1TV's Sunday Special in 2003. With his chronic heart disease temporarily causing him in a life-threatening condition in 2004, he reveled his desire to be buried in the May 18th National Cemetery after his death. Dramatically recovering his health, he attended the 25th ceremony for the Democratic Uprising and continued his activities such as writing his memoir.

In 2003 he was awarded the "Song Kun-Ho Prize" by the South Korean journalist association in recognition of his contribution to the South Korean democratization movement. On May 19th 2005 a special prize was awarded to him by the Korea Broadcast Camera Journalists Association.

On January 25, 2016th he died 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. According to his wishes to be buried in Gwangju, his memorial tombstone with his nail clippings and hair kept by the May 18 Memorial Foundation was installed in the May 18th National Cemetery in May 16th.

The 2017 film A Taxi Driver centers on Kim Man-seob, a taxi driver who helped Hinzpeter during the uprising.