The Ministry of Education reported that there was a total of 3,877 on-campus rallies, demonstrations, and other disturbances, with nearly half of all of them occurring in the first semester of 1985.

Radical student organizations were also formed, including the Sammintu,[2] Sanmin Struggle Committee.

They represented the struggle for “national unification, emancipation of the masses, and the establishment of democracy.” The organization was branded as pro-Communist and anti-American and they were responsible for the seizure of the USIS library in downtown Seoul.

They occupied it for three days, May 23 to May 26, although they surrendered in peace, their drawn out public trials made a mockery of South Korea's legal process forcing the minister of Justice, Kim Suk-hwi to resign.

South Korea had an accumulative foreign debt of around $45 billion, most of which was owed to Japan.