Category: English

For Posts in English

Oliver Stone Visits Jeju Island

(Fwd by Bruce K. Gagnon on Aug. 22. Re-blog from the article of Counterpunch, Aug. 23 to 25, 2013 and Hollywood Progressive, Aug. 26, 2013)

K. J. Noh, Oliver Stone and Bruce Gagnon were on KPFA radio in Berkeley, California on Aug. 22 talking about Jeju Island and the horrors of the Navy base. See here.

Oliver Stone marches with the leaders of the struggle on Aug. 3, 2013 (Photo by Lee Wooki)

Oliver Stone Visits Jeju Island

By K. J. Noh

In 1986, a young American director, burst out on the screens with a raw, charged, kinetic film.  Depicting a country on the verge of popular revolution, it documents the rightwing terror and massacres that are instigated, aided and abetted by the US government. Beginning as the chronicle of a gonzo journalist on his last moral legs, the film starts out disjointed, chaotic, hyper-kinetic; the unmoored, fragmented consciousness of a hedonic drifter. As the events unfurl towards greater and greater violence, the clarity and steadiness of the camera increase, its moral vision clearer and fiercer, carrying the viewer through a journey of political awakening even as the story hurtles inexorably towards heartbreak, tragedy, and loss.

The name of the director was Oliver Stone. The film was “Salvador”.   Opened to dismissal, derision and poor distribution, it nonetheless garnered two Oscar nominations , and is now lauded as one of the most important films of the period,  acknowledged to have influenced the political debate, if not the policy, around Central America at the time.

27 years later, Oliver Stone is discussing this film with the renowned Korean Film Critic Yang Yoon Mo.  Professor Yang mentions Salvador, and the powerful effect it had on his generation during the violent, brutal military dictatorships of his era. “We loved it. It was a big inspiration to people all over the world. We obtained bootleg copies of it and watched it.  It inspired a whole generation of young Korean film makers—for the courage and clarity of its vision.   It was a model for us of what ethical and political cinema could be.”   Stone smiles gently, and then reciprocates with his appreciation of current Korean Cinema—cinema that he himself may have had a hand in shaping—as he mentions “The President’s Last Bang”—a wry, understated morality tale about the assassination of the Dictator Park Chung Hee, during a dinner party-cum-orgy procured by his own intelligence services.

The rapport between two is warm and genuine and they talk as if they are old friends, old film buffs.  It’s almost possible to forget for a moment that this is taking place inside a Korean Prison on Jeju Island, where Professor Yang has been sentenced to 18 months as a political prisoner, that he has been 70 days on a hunger strike, and that there are 6 of us crammed into a closet-sized visiting room: Oliver Stone, Father Moon, several activists, and an violent-looking police officer, whose every gesture and look intimates a furious desire to pound us into submission.  On the other side, behind dual paned Plexiglas, the gentle Professor Yang is with another police officer, who is furiously transcribing every word that is exchanged.

It’s almost possible to forget that minutes before, we had been stripped of all cameras and recording equipment, had our ID’s confiscated and recorded, and had been escorted by half a dozen policemen to “have tea” with the chief of police, so he could “chat” with us.   The police chief is warm and congenial, as only someone with absolute mastery of the rhetoric and machinery of power can be: Pontius Pilate, surrounded by his centurions, speaking softly to send the just the right mixture of benevolence and imminent threat.  Out the window, to the left, we are surrounded by a panorama of verdant trees and hills.  To the right, inches away, a squadron of blue suited, glaring police.  It’s clear that there is more than one director in the room.

Professor Yang is being held in this jail for 18 months, along with dozens of other protestors, for the non-violent protest of a deep water Naval Base that is being constructed in Gang Jeong village on the Island of Jeju.  He has been imprisoned 4 times.

****************************************************************

Jeju Island is a stunning subtropical island, 60 miles south of the Korean Peninsula, an ecological jewel that is home to UNESCO World Heritage sites, and biosphere reserves.  World heritage sites are global treasures such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, the Pyramids of Giza.  Jeju has three of them.  The shoreline of Gangjeong village, where the base is being built, is an absolute conservation area, made of soft coral, harboring many rare endangered species, and home to two thousand subsistence farmers and divers.  The area called Gureombi is a site that is considered sacred to the villagers, a living, breathing landscape of tide pools, lava rock formations and stunning volcanic coastline irrigated with crystal clear springs:, the precious mineral kidneys of the island.  Unfortunately, the Jeju base is also one of the centerpieces of Obama’s militaristic Pivot to Asia.  Within easy striking distance—45 minutes by jet bomber, or 120 seconds as the missile flies–of Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, Taiwan, Vladivostok, it menaces all the major cities of East Asia.  If we imagine the pacific table as a large family banquet, the military base is a loaded hair-trigger shotgun, and Jeju island is the rotating lazy susan platter in middle.

94% of the villagers are adamantly opposed to the construction. 140 National organizations, and 110 international organizations have called for its cessation. The Korean Parliament has demanded an investigation. The leaders of all the major religions in Korea have called for dialogue.  The 5 opposition parties have challenged the legality of the construction.  Yet construction has gone ahead, violating, subverting or ignoring every democratic process, every local, regional, national, international statute, charter and law. And so for 7 years, every single day, in one of the most disciplined non-violent struggles ever seen in the country, the villagers have been protesting the construction of this base with marches, prayers, petitions, art, masses, non-violent resistance .  To date, 700 protestors have been arrested—including the largest mass arrest of Catholic Nuns in Korean History.  Yang, along with other prominent intellectuals, civic and religious leaders, members of parliament, Buddhist nun, the Mayor of the village have all been “dragged like animals and beaten unconscious”,  arrested, fined, sued, harassed by police, marines, and hired thugs; and received death threats.   They have also been branded as Communists, opening them up to potential prosecution for Sedition under the draconian national security laws.  It’s widely suspected Yang was singled out by the Korean National Intelligence Agency (the rebranded Korean CIA) in retaliation for drawing international attention to the issue.  He is the longest serving prisoner to date.

****************************************************

Salvador is also an apt point of reference for Jeju: at the end of the war, Jeju itself experienced its own history akin to El Salvador, but on a scale—if such comparisons of human suffering are ever possible– that dwarfed the bloodbath in El Salvador:  In El Salvador an estimated 75,000 were killed over 12 years, roughly 1-2% of the population, making it one of the bloodiest of the bloody, dirty wars in Central America.  On the small island of Jeju, that number, or more, were killed in less than a year (10-30% of the population), making it the first, and bloodiest genocide of the post-war era, and the savage template for subsequent US interventions across the world.

The historical background is as follows:  Korea had been a colony of Japan since 1910, suffering hideously under a brutal occupation.  After the surrender of Japan in WWII, the US Military Government occupying South Korea was astonished to discover that there were thousands of functioning people’s collectives (worker’s committees)-forged from anti-colonial resistance– in the south, constituting a Defacto popular government, with strong nationalist and socialist leanings.  In order to suppress this grassroots socialist government, the Korean People’s Republic,—American surveys show 80% of the population supported a socialist system—worker’s councils were outlawed, leaders imprisoned, a puppet dictator was rapidly installed, and the brutal apparatus of Japanese colonial rule was reconstituted in its entirety.

Jeju Island with its strong tradition of anti-colonial struggle was one of the strongholds of these indigenous collectives, leading it to be branded as a “red island” by the US Military Government.    When popular protest against the division of the country, capitalist recolonization and the wholesale re-institution of the collaborator class and its police force became vocal, a scorched earth policy of genocidal proportions was unleashed.  Using paramilitary death squads, strategic hamlets, free fire zones, mass rape, mass execution, torture, napalm, defoliation, entire villages were wiped out, 70-90% of all dwellings burned to the ground, and up to 80,000 massacred;  these tactics were to foreshadow US policy across the rest of Korea, in South East Asia, Central and Latin America, Indonesia, Africa, and of course,  El Salvador.

Members of Yang’s family were among the first killed in these massacres.   For half a century in South Korea, it was a crime against National Security, punishable by imprisonment and torture, to breathe a word of this history.  The island, a lush, beautiful subtropical paradise, with rich, volcanic soil, is strewn with unmarked mass graves, and haunted with unspeakable trauma.  Those who survived these killing fields, fled in terror, some 40,000 or so.  Those who remained were marked as subversives by family association, banned from civil employment, and driven into exile, poverty, suicide, madness.   Even the massacres themselves were erased from history, leaving the survivors unable to mourn, grieve, or seek redress.  After the slaughtered bodies were dumped into mass graves or caves, the facts vanished into an event horizon; even the memory of their obliteration was obliterated. Jeju Island, for all its beauty, is filled with ghosts—the unmourned dead, and the hushed, inconsolable pain of the survivors.   In this context, a large portion of the population see the remilitarization of their Island—belatedly designated as an Island of Peace—as yet another desecration, the nightmarish continuation of an atrocity that has yet to end.

****************************

Oliver asks the Police Chief, about the conditions that prisoners like Yang are kept in:  He asks whether they are able to exercise, read, receive and write letters.  The Police chief, ever the congenial diplomat, answers, that he is extremely attentive to the health and well-being of his inmates, and that they are allowed all manner of comfort and recreation.  He adds a comment about his concern about the hunger strike, and states with a worldly flourish, that “Esteemed Director Stone will find that the conditions of prisons in Korea are not that different from conditions in American prisons.”  “Esteemed Director Stone”, does not seem assured, and without missing a beat, points out that “the conditions of US prisons are, according to the United Nations Rapporteur on Human Rights, some of the worst in the world.  The systematic and routine use of prolonged isolation has been found tantamount to torture.”  The police chief accedes than that perhaps there are differences, and with the hair-splitting skills of a trained bureaucrat, mentions that Korean inmates sleep on traditionally heated floors, whereas American prisoners must sleep on beds. There’s no easy conversion scale to weigh the tradition of intimidation, bastinado and torture of a Korean prison against the isolation, violence, racism of the American penal system.   A beautiful police woman, impeccably coiffed, and immaculately made up,–a police geisha, if you will– passes around spring water in exquisite cut crystal glasses, with the terrifying precision of an assassin, moving, as if on cut-steel grooves.  There is no need for ice.  We gulp our water, thank the police chief, and Officer smash-your-face-in-if-you-so-much-as-blink-wrong then escorts us, with 5 other officers, down to the visiting rooms to meet with Professor Yang.

*************************

90 minutes earlier, Oliver had flown directly in from Barcelona, after 7 days non-stop night shooting of a commercial, and had landed in Jeju, exhausted and bleary eyed. “I don’t usually do commercials”, he says, “but this was soccer—it encourages people to exercise, get healthy, so I’m okay with this”.  Oliver looks to be needing a bit of exercise himself: 10 time zones and 20 hours of non-stop flying and transit have left him exhausted and drained.    He has wiped clear his schedule, and made a huge sacrifice to travel to Jeju, but as his exit from customs is delayed, the greeting team of local activists at the airport has become anxious that he will simply be denied entry into the country.  The Korean government has already denied entry to several international peace activists at the airport—most notably  Elliot Adams, Tarak Kauff and Mike Hastie from Veterans for Peace, and it is not inconceivable that they would do the same for any perceived rabble-rouser.  Alternatively, they are not above a little “rough play”, and for the Korean Authorities, for whom a beatdown is just a friendly way of getting acquainted, a sound drubbing could be spun as just an over eager welcome or a misunderstood expression of solicitude.   The burly men in suits and earpieces tailing the greeting team make this not an unlikely possibility. Finally, when Oliver is released from transit purgatory, all of us breathe a sigh of relief, although for some reason his luggage has gone AWOL.   Over the next 48 hours, the luggage will be repeatedly located but yet somehow unrecoverable, claim documents will not be filed, others improvised, leading activists to wonder if this is part of the harassment: :disrupt morale by disrupting logistics, separate the “enemy” from their materiel—in this case, Oliver’s clothes, toiletries, medicines, and his colorfully subversive collection of bandannas.

After a frantic, truncated 30 minute lunch at a local restaurant—there are no power lunches in rural Korea, only hurried ones—the team belatedly shuttles to the prison, where Professor Yang is waiting.  We submit to the mandarin ceremonies of power which permit us the short visit to professor Yang.  Then, as Oliver and the professor are talking shop, Oliver mentions his new series, “The Untold History of the US”.   As a director, he is known for his prolific output, sometimes making two or more films in a single year. “The Untold History”,  however, is a 5 year labor of love, a meticulously researched ten hour documentary (and 700 page companion volume), unmasking and chronicling of the rise of US Imperialism.  Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” is most often mentioned in the same breath, but the other great chronicle of imperialism and its excess–Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, is also an apt comparison: “The cause of all these evils was the lust for power, arising from greed and ambition, and from these passions, proceeded the violence”.   Professor Yang seems intrigued, and although he has been incarcerated too long to have heard of it, he promises that he will try to find a way to see it.   Oliver expresses his concerns for his well being, and inquires as to the depth of his support among other artists.  Then all too quickly, visiting time is over, and we are reduced to silent gestures of good will and hope across the plexiglass.  Professor Yang touches his palm to the glass, Oliver touches it, and then he slowly bows to each of the visiting team, hands together in traditional blessing. Professor Yang seems to have been deeply moved by the visit, but for us, it’s hard to avoid the sense of abandoning a comrade in prison.  We stop as we are exiting the prison to do a quick interview with a wire agency, and Oliver fiercely denounces the detention of Professor Yang.  “The courage of Professor Yang inspires me” he states, with fire in his voice.  “I believe without a doubt that he is a prisoner of conscience and I call for him to bereleased immediately.  I deplore the militarization of Jeju Island.  I deplore the building of the base”.   There is passion and heart in his voice.  He will reprise this theme many times over the next few days, but like the other stories about Jeju, these statements will pass largely unreported in the mainstream press.

********************************************

Nothing in Korea happens in half measures, and the heat is no exception.  The Jeju heat is swelteringly close to 100 F, the humidity is in the 80’s and although  there is a march for peace against the military base that is happening—an epic two day march that will circle all the way around the island, then meet up in the north and come together for a mass rally at a civic plaza, followed on the next day, by a human chain around the base–we wonder if after the harassment, delays, power plays, exhaustion, the blast furnace of summer heat is too much.  We ask Oliver if he is up to joining the march, as planned.

Oliver is still resolute. “Let’s do it” he says.

The following day, Koh Gil-Jun, a key protest organizer and artist–one of the key visionaries of the museum on the Jeju Massacre–will fall to the ground during the march, vomiting, paralyzed; done in from heat, stress, exhaustion, harassment, pain.  He will be taken to emergency and diagnosed with a hemorrhaged vessel in his brain.  But no one seems to be measuring risk against commitment.

“Haegun giji, gyolsa bandae!”

We arrive at the march—an ocean of yellow shirts and banners, youth, children, men and women, internationals—and a huge roar goes up, the tide of people surges  and vibrates with energy.  If, as it has been said, the true spiritual quest is not upward, or even inward, but forward, to march forward, surely this is one of its greater manifestations.

“Haegun giji, gyolsa bandae!”

A thousand banners flutter in the wind, and the crowd is abuzz with excitement and passion.  Chants thunder through the streets, like an unstoppable heartbeat.   Like the huge people’s marches that toppled the previous dictatorship, the winds of history, the breath of solidarity, the tide of inevitability, seem to propel the marchers upwards, onwards, forwards.

“Haegun giji, gyolsa bandae!”

Every dimension of human aspiration  is present and alive.

Drenched in sweat, Oliver puts on a yellow T-shirt on top of his sweat-soaked shirt, and is invited to join the march at the front.  He modestly declines to walk “point”, and falls into the ranks. Fabled director, Hollywood icon, decorated war veteran, becomes just another marcher in a sea of protestors, a forest of banners, marching, this time, against the Imperium.

“Haegun giji, gyolsa bandae!”

“Oppose to the Death, this Naval Base”

*******************************
.

“How do we stop this thing? How do we stop it? We have to stop this thing.”  He asks, as we return later to his lodgings.  We tell him that it already has stopped, –temporarily—construction that has been ongoing nonstop, 24 hour a day, Christmas, New Years, holidays, has suddenly tapered off, and the site is eerily silent, except for the occasional pile driver.   “It’s gone silent in your honor”, we joke. “You should move here permanently”.

Oliver looks out at the coast line from the balcony of his modest  B & B.  From there, what was one of the most stunning vistas on the coast, you can see a  shoreline littered with rubble, construction cranes, bull dozers and concrete jacks.

Earlier in the day, passing the lego-block apartment complexes that were sprouting near the main city, he had jokingly inquired if they were Soviet-inspired.  “This is as cheesy as anything  Donald Trump would build.  Donald Trump would love it here.  How does a country with such good film makers have such bad architects?”  He had quipped.

But looking out over the construction, no one feels like joking.

It’s not just narcissistic bad taste.

It looks evil.

**************************

Afterwards, we head out to the docks, to take a boat tour of the coastline.  Mindful of his reputation and activism, Korean news media has largely honored his visit by coordinated and conspicuous neglect, but Oliver has had the foresight to pull in a Japanese news crew.  A camera crew from NHK meets us at the docks, and we get onto the boats, and start our own tour of the coast line.  Out in the water, with the cool breezes, the heat abates, and it’s hard not to get a sense of the enormity of it all, the power, the endless beauty, the endless generosity and abundance of this area.  The pacific Islanders have a term, Moana Nui,  which sees all the pacific peoples living in a harmonious web of mutual co-existence and nourishment, connected by the benevolent ocean.  Connect all, so we may all live.  There’s enough for all of us: ocean, space, energy, love.

It’s hard to reconcile this with the realpolitik that is gridding off this area as a deadly chess game:  control the center of the game board–Jeju  Island–the king pawn/queen pawn squares, dominate the vectors and channels of lethal force, subjugate all enemies:  Occupy so we may dominate and kill.

The gentle swaying and cool breezes allow us to wash off some of the day’s earlier struggles, and we find the tour both relaxing and exhilarating. The ocean is a deep, sparkling cobalt, and with its gentle billows and power, we feel again the enchanting power and beauty of the water and the island.

On the boat as our tour guide, is a Jeju local, a shaman, meditation teacher, and also, incidentally, the founder of the first and only battered woman’s shelter on the island.  “Domestic violence is inseparable from State violence” she tells me.  “Militarism and military violence filter down into the smallest recesses of family life.    We can’t struggle against domestic violence without challenging this base.”

She tells us about the origin myths of the island, the goddess resting her head at the peak of Mt. Halla, the volcanic peak of the Island, with her feet pointing up to become the island.  The creation myths of Jeju island are all goddess myths, what powers lie within and around this island are nourished and channelled from the energies of the feminine.

The feminine is most clearly represented by the Haenyo,  the legendary women divers of Jeju Island.  The shaman’s mother was such a Haenyo. Fable has it that some travelled to the Japanese Isles, millennia ago, taught the Ama diver women of Japan and then spread the skill spread across the pacific; whether this is true, is unconfirmable, but what’s clear is that this is one of the few places on the world where breath-holding subsistence divers still exist.  If the Haenyo have survived to this day, it is clearly because these women are a force of nature:  they start diving in childhood, and continue diving into their 80’s and 90’s.  They have the courage, endurance, and diving skills to make sissy boys of the Navy Seals’ Underwater Demolition Teams, and during the 1930’s, they spearheaded the resistance to the Japanese Military Occupation on the island.  They spend hours in the water, three minutes with each dive, through all seasons, surrendering their lives to the ocean.  Their hemp or twilled cotton shirts have been replaced by modern wetsuits, but that is the only concession that they have made to technology.  They steadfastly refuse to use scuba gear, or even snorkels, relying on traditional practices of breath control, prayer, and meditation, both as part of tradition, but also with the understanding that stripping the sea bed with technology is pointless stupidity.   Their lifestyle is profoundly spiritual and ecological, and it is dying out in the area.  The base construction will be the death blow.

Centered around the economy of the Haenyo, Jeju island has, for centuries, been a traditional matriarchal society.  “No thieves, no beggars, no gates”, was a phrase  commonly used to describe the society of Jeju island, cooperative, communal, matrifocal, an indigenous form of socialism that led itself naturally to the grassroots workers’ councils that flourished after the liberation from the Japanese.   These worker’s councils were the basis of the “red island” designation by the US Military Government, and were the trigger for the genocide.  Bases will finish off what death squads, napalm, free-fire zones, and killing fields could not.   If and when the base is completed, the traditions of generations of powerful women will be replaced with bar girls, prostitutes and housemaids.  A young girl who would have learned from her grandmother to read the tides, dive to a hundred feet with only the air in her lungs, and talk to the spirits of the ocean to face down death, will be servicing GI’s on her knees in back alleys.  Cultural Genocide, if the term has any meaning, seems appropriate here.

Basalt Columns appear on the Island that we are passing.  This is Beom Seom, “Tiger Island”, a Unesco Reserve, and at close range, you can see the entire island is formed from hexagonal basalt columns, like a dark, chiseled, striated jewel in the ocean.  The top of the high cliffs is covered with pine trees, and there are wave-carved tunnels and archways around the island, an exalted, mystical architecture.  Whether you believe the myth of the goddess’s feet poking out of the dark sea or some other supernatural explanation, you know that you are at the conjunction of extraordinary forces of nature.  Underneath the billowing ocean, there is soft coral, and in front of us, the volcanic peak of Mt Halla, and all around us, the breeze and endless ocean.

Turning the corner of the island, we witness full on the devastation of the base construction.

We stop the boat.

From the ocean, we can see the entire scale of the violation.  It is monstrous.

“F***” Stone blurts out.  .

Do not touch a single pebble, a twig, a flower.  All of it is sacred, the protestors have been shouting for years.

7 story, 10,000 ton, steel-bladed caissons, have been sunk into the soft coral below, exposing themselves above the waterline like the bared fangs of a mad predator.  Construction  has blasted, pulverized, and befouled the sacred Gureombi, the living kidneys of the island, paved it over with concrete, leaving it looking like a massive latrine.  Pile drivers, bull dozers, cranes, high explosives have gashed the womb of the Goddess of Mt. Halla, leaving concrete and steel maggots writhing out of its innards, and bleeding dark silt and slurry into the pristine ocean.

Around the crime scene, a sanitary cordon of buoys and construction curtains.

It is the scene of a heinous rape-murder.

Oliver gets up on the edge of the boat.   Part lecture, part possession, part jeremiad, he points to the shoreline and launches into a full blown soliloquy.

“This base will host US destroyers, aircraft carriers, Aegis missile batteries, nuclear submarines.  It’s part of Obama’s pacific pivot, a chain of offensive bases from Myamar, Phillipines, Thailand, Korea, Okinawa, a necklace of bases to choke off the pacific.  It’s being put in place to threaten China. Even as we speak, war materiel is being shifted from Iraq, Afghanistan to the pacific”.

“We have to stop this.  All this is leading up to a war, and I’ve seen war in Asia.”  His voice trembles.  “I do not want another war here.   I’ve seen war in Asia, and we cannot have another war here.  We have to stop this thing”.

He turns to the Shaman, invites her to put a hex on the base, to invoke Gods higher than those of empire, profit and militarism. .

Oliver then gestures himself, hurling passion, heart, grief, onto the shoreline.

We all scatter our prayers, curses, tears, to the waves and the setting sun.

Everyone is silent, as we head back to the shore.

“It is a given that those who would struggle for peace, must first know the meaning of devastation”.

– By K. J. Noh who is a long-time activist and member of Veterans For Peace

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/ (blog)

August 23, 2013
3rd Jeju DMZ Peace Island Meeting to be Held in Moseulpo

Korean banner for the 3rd meeting.

Tomorrow, August 15, 2013, the 3rd meeting of the movement to demilitarize Jeju “Jeju, the Demilitarized Peace Island” will meet. This meeting open to everyone will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Moseulpo, on the southwest cost of Jeju.

Moseulpo is an important place in the history of military and anti-militarist struggles on Jeju. During the Japanese colonization, the residents were forced to large caves out of the coastal cliffs of Mt. Songak to store torpedos to be used for attacks on allied forces in WW2, a part of Japans broader massive military build up of Jeju in anticipation of a stand off that fortunately never happened. Nearby is the abandoned Alddreu Airfield, also set up by the Japanese military for bombing China.

Caves along the cliff face of Mt. Songak.

Later during 4.3 and Korean War, Moseulpo, like most of Jeju was also the site to several massacres including the Massacre at Seotal Oreum. In 1950, The Moseulpo Police had arbitrarily detained 344 people in the police station, a fishing storage, and a potato storage. 211 of the detained were eventually slaughtered without any legal process and secretly buried. 20 people were killed on July 16 and 193 on August 20. 41 other people went missing.

Later from 1987-1989, the Korean government attempted to build an air-force base on Mt. Songak, but strong local resistance won after a two year struggle and the plans were scrapped. However, the Korean Ministry of National Defense still owns land in the area and recently there was has been rumors that they again plan to build an airfare base there, perhaps on part of the old Alddreu Airfield (part of which has been declared a national heritage site). Meanwhile, the ROK MND has a small radar base in Moseulpo, formerly the U.S. owned Camp McNabb (for 53 years until it was taken over by Korean in 2005.

Moseulpo Radar Base, formerly U.S. Camp McNabb.

In light of this history of oppression and resistance, Moseulpo is a key location for the movement to demilitarize Jeju.

Peace loving people from across Jeju and Korea will come together to tour the historical sites, hear about the successful struggle against the air-force base and discuss and plan the demilitarization of Jeju. Join us!

Contact gangjeongintl@gmail.com for for details.

August 14, 2013
Gangjeong in the International Dialogue Conference on “Seeking Peace from Oceanic Perspectives” in Taipei, Taiwan

On August 3rd, the International Dialogue Conference on “Seeking Peace from Oceanic Perspectives” was held in Taipei, Taiwan. Emily Wang was one of the speaker in the secession of “An Oceanic Deconstruction of Geopolitics” to share about Gangjeong and the idea of Inter-Island Solidarity for Just Peace.

Distribute the Gangjeong Newspaper

People were writing the messages to Gangjeong

The following is the speech draft of Emily Wang.

————–

By Emily Wang

My name is Emily Wang. I am an island peace activist from Taiwan Island and also I’ve ever lived and worked for peace on Timor Island for 1 year, and Jeju Island for almost 2 years, and I just got deported by the South Korea government in April 2013 due to my involvement in the Peace Movement in Gangjeong Village, Jeju Island where a major naval base is being built up. Thanks to the deportation, I got depressed for a while because I had to leave my friends and family. But also it gives me a chance to move forward in my next steps as an island peace activist.

Today’s topic is “An Oceanic Deconstruction of Geopolitics”. I would like to begin by sharing about “islands”, and I think the long suffering of many islands will provide an inspiring source to deconstruct geopolitics and for the peace in our region.

One of the crucial challenges of many peaceful and beautiful islands face is the trend of military expansion and militarization, largely by the U.S. Military. This has led to conflict, suffering, and environmental destruction in such places as Okinawa, Hawaii, Diego Garcia, Sprately Islands, Jeju (Korea), Guam, and others.

The situation which the islands face has been getting worse since the US launched the “Asia Pivot” strategy. Many islands are going to be further militarized, for example in North East Asia, Jeju and Okinawa. Besides Northeast Asia, there is other bad news to worry about. For example, The Philippines’ government now plans to invite back the US military they once kicked out to use their base again. The US is strengthening its partnership with these countries and following the strengthened partnership, these countries self-colonize themselves from the center to further marginalize and victimizes the small islands.

These islands are like “LilyPads” in the ocean used to allow military bases encircle the land to prepare for possible war in the future. Compared to a huge base, lots of small bases are spread across these lily pads, a strategy that is more flexible, attracts less attention, and allows for easier defeat of grass-roots resistance. In the past continuing until now, we have seen many islands face hardships in resistance due to the isolation of these small islands. Therefore, we need to develop inter-island solidarity for just peace among vulnerable islands and their peoples, for the protection of their lands, cultures, and traditions, as well as to find common strengths and resources for peace and just life. “Just peace” is our pursuit. We want to stop the current on-going militarization and while preparing other islands to prevent this possibility in advance. These struggles are not NIMBYs. One success shouldn’t come through another island being victimized.

I was a peace school teacher in Timor Island in the past, and recently I visited Timor again to share this idea of inter-island solidarity for just peace. During this visit, I heard that the US had a plan to use Timor-Leste’s Atauro Island for a base, while promising to build lots of infrastructure for this newly-independent country. So far, the government rejected, but this worry remains in my mind. Now, I am at the Northeast Asia GPPAC meeting, but I am also talking about another beloved island far away. These islands are too spread out, too small, and have so far mostly faced lonely struggles. I think especially for islands, we should not let national sovereignty divide the continuance of ocean.

In Northeast Asia, we dream of first starting with a Peace Island Triangle consisting of Okinawa, Jeju and Taiwan. What I mean by peace island is demilitarized peace islands. No bases, no militaries, no conscription, no state violence, and no domestic colonization or marginalization…

A long time ago, Jeju, Okinawa, and Taiwan were embraced by the ocean and developed unique cultures. Then influence and exchange came from the main lands or big islands. Mostly islands have been “marginal” places for the “center” of the main lands or big islands, but islands as their own center have gone on their own paths from generation to generation. Then western imperialism struck our region and most of the world. Still Islands often had distinct experiences from the main lands under imperialism.

Okinawa, Jeju, and Taiwan were colonized by Imperial Japan and become the stepping-stones for the expansion of Imperial Japan. In the final moments of World War Two, Imperial Japan further fortified these islands in expectation of invasion by the US Allied Forces, dragging these marginalized islands into the war as the frontline to protect the centers of power. It brought disastrous ground battles in Okinawa and air raids in Taiwan. Jeju was highly militarized through forced labor as well but following the battle in Okinawa, did not see war at that time. However they later faced the terrible extended 4.3 Massacre.

Due to the geographic location of the island, during Japanese colonization, perhaps 200,000 Jeju people at one time or another were moved back and forth between Jeju and Osaka, the foremost industrial city in Asia at the time. There they found jobs and, for some, better education than was allowed in Korea. Frequent ferries, some organized by Jeju transportation cooperatives, carried people to Osaka from eleven ports around Jeju. In Osaka, some Jeju residents were active in organized labor and Japanese socialist and communist organizations even in leadership positions. Some 60,000 people returned from Japan to Jeju within a short time of the Japanese surrender in August 1945. The experienced and educated returnees played an important leadership role in the emerging governmental structures on Jeju.

However, soon the division of the Korean Peninsula by the United States and the Soviet Union turned Jeju into a battlefield for subsequent cold war conflicts on the peninsula. In 1948, with U.S. and U.N. support, South Korea held elections that established a separate state in the south, thus solidifying Korea’s division. When the US tried to install a Pro-US government in the south with a separate election, the Jeju people bravely stand up to protest and boycott this election and the division of Korea. When U.S. backed leader Syngman Rhee took power following the elections, he initiated a massive “Red” cleansing campaign targeted the Jeju general population. Thousands of people were killed. It is estimated that 70 percent of entire island’s villages were razed to the ground and 30,000 people—ten percent of the island’s population—were murdered.

For years, any mention of the massacre could lead to imprisonment and torture. Relatives of those who had been labeled as Communists were prevented from taking public service positions or jobs in many companies. Many are still afraid to talk about what happened. For 50 years, successive governments in Seoul silenced the Korean people’s memories of systematic murder, rape and torture. It was not until 2006 that the late President Roh Moo-Hyun officially apologized for the massacre and designated Jeju “Island of World Peace”. As one exits the Official 4.3 Peace Park Museum, a sign reads: “The Jeju April 3rd Incident will be remembered as a symbol of the preciousness of peace, unity and human rights.” But the government’s memory is short. Plans for a major naval base on Jeju had been in the works since 2002 at different locations, but opposition from local residents’ halted construction several times. The struggling of the islanders to defend their lives, lands, community is again leading to them being painted as “Reds”.

This sad history once led the people to dream of making this island a Peace Island, but we realized that without continuous non-violent efforts to realize this goal and to carry on peace education, even the islanders themselves can erase these precious memories through public education and mainstream media. Also, we learned that without walking together with the international community, our peace cannot be a just peace.

I am an islander. I’ve talked much about the victimization of islands but it is not because I hate people from mainlands or big islands and I don’t deny the suffering of mainlanders as well. The reason that I promote island peace building is because I want to build peace as who I am. Actually, my island, I mean Taiwan, itself is also a “big island” which marginalizes and victimizes smaller islands like Lanyu, where our government shamefully secretly throwsaway nuclear waste. Unlike Okinawa, Jeju, and Taiwan which have relatively long histories through the storms of power-shifting between surrounding powers, Lanyu had long been a self-governed island without interruption from outside until its colonial encounter with Imperial Japan and the Chinese Nationalist government. Social activism on the Island began from the suffering of this small island. I expect Lanyu, the Chinese name, or Ponso no Tao, as its called by its indigenous islanders can become a light to connect Taiwan to the Peace Island Triangle.

Only if peace and justice become a common goal among us, can we break our current boring and rigid situation, and blossom our creativity through peace-building.

The suffering islands are our hope. We should hold hands together with these islands regardless if you are foreigners or mainlanders. I want to emphasize that talking about Islands and Islanders is not to make division. I just want to remind us that there are some people who are embraced by the ocean but sadly this embrace by the ocean turned into the isolation by the ocean. These are issues that we should face together. I hope that islands will not only again be embraced by the ocean but also be embraced by the surrounding big lands.

I truly hope we don’t make a stupid fake peace in our region by holding hands with the US while refusing to face the historical issues that caused our region to become one of the most militarized in the world. There are many things we islanders can do as we dig through the layers of our history and seek to find a common future peace across the ocean, between the islands within it.

Thank you for listening.

August 3, 2013
Gangjeong Village Story: Monthly News from the Struggle | July 2013 Issue

In this month’s issue:
Arrest of Dr. Song and Brother Park, August 4th Human Chain, Timor and Lanyu Solidarity, Peace Pilgrimage, Prisoner and Trial Updates, Dr. Song’s article from Prison, Art Activism, and more!

Download PDF

July 30, 2013
Please join us! A Gureombi Human Chain in Gangjeong on Aug. 4!

Please spread!

At the end of 2013 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace (July 29 to Aug. 4), there is a huge and memorable human chain event for two hours in Gangeong village from noon to 2 pm on Aug. 4!

The human chain is a succession of people’s daily human chain in front of the Jeju naval base construction(destruction) gate after daily Catholic mass and Gangjeong dance in protest to stop the Jeju naval base construction.

Two more prisoners of Dr. Song Kang-Ho and Br. Park Do-Hyun! All four prisoners including Yang Yoon-Mo (the court added him fines of 2 million KRW on June 25, which means he would spend 39 days more of prison labor. Because of that, he would be released in May, 2014, not April, 2014) and Kim Young-Jae (the court dismissed people’s appeal for bailing on him on July 8) ! The daily struggle to stop the Jeju naval base project is being continued in Gangjeong.

Peace-loving internationals, even though you may not be able to physically join, please join our human chain in spirit! HOW?

_ You may hurry to mail us some souvenir such as your t-shirts or whatever that can represent you with your name/ messages put on those. We will put those in our human chain. Please see the photos and videos below. OR

_You may send us solidarity messages(up to 100 words)/ photos/ videos no later than July 20. Please see last year’s here.

_Contact: gangjeongintl@gmail.com

We especially encourage all the peace-loving internationals who have been forcefully deported by ROK government or being threatened to be deported to join us! (To see the status of deported internationals, see here)

All the names will be put at the ending credit of Director Cho Sung-Bong’s documentary, “Gureombi Wind blows.” Dir. Cho plans to take air shot of huge human chain event on the day.

Noon on Aug. 4, 2013

Jeju naval base main construction gate -naval base project committee building complex gate-Peace Center at the Sageori( four way intersection)-Gangjeong port

People in happy faces are to go ALL to Gangjeong to Join the HUMAN CHAIN to HUG GUREOMBI ROCK!

(translation of poster)

Photo fwd by Choi Hye-Young. people’s daily human chain in front of the Jeju naval base construction(destruction) gate. Let’s see all in Gangjeong on Aug. 4. All of you can join us in spirit!

Photo by Kim Dong-Won/ Gangjeong is endangered. A peace keeper hung a photo of a villager in his childhood. We dream every life visible and invisible to join our grand human chain event on Aug. 4! For more photos, see here.

Photo by Kim Dong-Won/ Every t-shirt or whatever souvenirs you mail to us can represent you. The t shirt is owned by a peace keeper who struggles daily. In that way, we want to represent all the prisoners, deported internationals whom we want to be together in our huge human chain event. For more photos, see here.

People’s promotion video: Please join our human chain to stop the Jeju naval base project on Aug. 4!

Video by Peace Nomad (source)

Stop the building of war base!

Boycott Samsung, the most criminal company for the Jeju naval base project!

Stop the oppression on international peace workers!

Free all the conscientious prisoners in Gangjeng!

As of July 11, 2013

Yang Yoon-Mo (No. 301, 161st day in prison)

Kim Young-Jae (No. 435, 91st day in prison)

Dr. Song Kang-Ho(No. 409, 11th day in prison)

Br. Park Do-Hyun (No. 535, 11th day in prison)

Please write letters to the Jeju Prison, 161 Ora-2 dong, Jeju City, Jeju, the Peace Island, Korea

Photo by Kim Koon, July 11, 2013

July 11, 2013
Will S. Korea’s New Naval Base Provoke China?

Re-blog from here.

Will S. Korea’s New Naval Base Provoke China?

By  Andrew Yeo
July 10, 2013

On Jeju Island, a small paradise off the southwest coast of South Korea, protests have occurred on a near daily basis for almost three years.

Although somewhat unusual for an island known for its popularity as a tourist destination for honeymooners, a segment of local residents, joined by domestic and transnational activists, remain staunchly opposed to the construction of a South Korean naval base on an “island of peace.”

Among several their several grievances, opponents of the base argue that its construction may trigger a naval arms race in the region, while increasing tensions with China.

Most South Koreans have dismissed these concerns  as either a classic not-in-my-backyard type protest or a politically motivated agenda driven by leftist activists and opposition party members. An August 2011 piece in The Diplomat about the Jeju base, for instance, dismissed opponents’ concerns about the purpose of the naval base and its ties to broader U.S. military objectives in the region. As farfetched as activists may seem in their protests, however, their concerns are worth considering amid the worsening strategic environment in Northeast Asia.

The South Korean government began discussion about a potential naval base on Jeju Island in the 1990s, and during the Roh Moo-hyun administration (2003-2007) the base was approved as a way for the ROK military to transform itself into a more self-reliant defense force – that is, one less dependent on the United States.

Currently, the base remains consistent with South Korea’s future plans to modernize its military by building a blue-water navy by 2020.

The base also helps secure South Korean national interests amid China’s growing maritime ambitions. Given South Korea’s reliance on exports and imports, the vast majority of which are transported by sea, South Korea cannot afford to have its sea lanes disrupted. And, contrary to claims by some opponents of the Jeju base, the base is not a de facto U.S. base but unequivocally a South Korean one.

Where opponents are on more solid ground, however, is in drawing a link between the base and U.S. strategic interests in Asia. Although the U.S. military must first make a request and have it accepted by the South Korean government, it is reasonable to assume that the U.S. Navy will eventually gain access to the base. After all, the emerging U.S. force posture in the region is aimed at securing access to allied bases rather than committing to any large-scale, permanent ones. And, given the importance of the U.S.-ROK alliance to South Korea, there is no reason to believe that Seoul would reject a request for port access.

This is what makes the base so potentially destabilizing for its detractors as they believe that giving the U.S. access to the base will provoke China. Of course, South Korea does not want to antagonize China, or see tensions rise between Beijing and Washington. Unfortunately, state behavior in international relations is often driven by (mis) perceptions. In this particular case, Chinese perceptions of the U.S.-ROK alliance are what worry peace activists. They fear that the Jeju base will trigger a regional naval arms race.

Protests or no protests, construction of the Jeju Naval base is in full swing and quickly becoming a reality. The conflict scenarios which concern activists are often built on worst case scenarios and tend to fall on the alarmist side.

Nevertheless, as base construction proceeds, policymakers should consider some of the broader geostrategic implications of the base. Although China has registered any major objections to the base as of yet, mid-level bureaucrats have referenced base construction in relation to the China-ROK territorial dispute over the Socotra Rocks.

South Korean policymakers therefore need to reassure China that the base exists solely for defensive purposes, and tread carefully if it chooses to negotiate basing access rights with the United States. Beyond enhanced South Korean diplomacy, Beijing, Seoul, and Washington may want to include the Jeju base in future trilateral dialogues.   As long time peace activist Joseph Gerson argues, the aim is to seek “common security” among East Asian actors rather than pursue “zero-sum resolutions to the region’s conflicts.”

Andrew Yeo is an Assistant Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He is the author of Activists, Alliances, and Anti-U.S. Base Protests.

July 10, 2013
Solidarity from UK on July 4

‘Independence FROM America’ 4th July at Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, England. This US military spy base is managed by the discredited NSA and linked to Missile ‘Defence’ and drone killings.

Organisers CAAB (Campain for the Accountability of American Bases) showed Regis Tremblay’s film ‘The Ghosts of Jeju‘ and flew the No Naval Base flag in solidarity with the struggle at Gangjeong.’ (writing and photos forwarded by Andrew, UK)

Peace flag photo from the Menwith Hill, UK
“Flying every week at demo at Menwith Hill x” (Sent by Lindis Percy on June 18) . “The person in the photo is Martin Schweiger – a medical doctor who comes straight from work each week to the demo. He is also a Quaker, activist and….CAAB! The winter was hard with a lot of snow, then a lot of rain but now…summer time! It can be very rough up there.”

July 10, 2013
Gangjeong, a peace pivot, for the 60th remembrance year of the Korean War Armistice

Upon the year marking the 60^th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice, people’ steps for peace amid the escalating war threat in Korea are marking their ways such as through petition, peace tour and peace pilgrim.

One of those steps have been the Peace Tour, organized by about 60 people of domestic and international scholars on the Korean War and civic activists, from June 28 to July 1. Another step of peace pilgrim started on July 4, which ends on July 27, the 60th anniversary date of Korean War Armistice. The latter was organized by an international grand peace march group composed of organizations such as the Citizens’ Act to Oppose War and to Realize Peace and the Jeju headquarter of the South Committee for the Practice of 6.15 Joint statement.

The former ended its peace tour in Gangjeong on July 1 while the latter started its peace pilgrim in Gangjeong on July 4. Gangjeong is now one of people’s ‘pivots’ to face against Obama’s ‘Asian pivot:’ A peace pivot, a peace outpost to realize the peace in Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia.

The 2013 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace, from July 29 to Aug. 4 with its eve festival on June 28 will succeed people’s such peace aspiration.

1. Peace Tour: Marking the 60^th Anniversary of the Korean War Armistice (June 28 to July 1)

Source: PSPD/ The ending day of Peace Tour, June 28 to July 1

The former, the Peace Tour hosted by the Organizing Committee for Peace Tour marking the 60^th Anniversary of the Korean War Armistice were composed of the Institute for Korean Historical Studies, Human Rights Foundation “Saram,” People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy(PSPD), The Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea(ASCK), and The May 18 Memorial Foundation.

The Peace Tour that started with keynote speeches by Fr. Mun Jeong-Hyeon and J. T. Takaki, in the former KCIA site in Namsan, Seoul, went through Korean division sites such as Jeokgoonmyo (enemy’s Cemetery), Story Firing Range, Gwanghwa Peace Observatory; US base sites such as Pyeongtaek, Daechuri; and war and dictatorship massacre sites such as Nogeun-ri, Geochang, Gwangju.

Seminars were held three times during the tour: 1. Division, Life: 2. US Military and the Korean peninsula; 3. War and Massacre.

In the tour’s last spot in Gangjeong, a Peace Declaration concluding tour was read in front of the naval base project committee building complex. Please see here for the whole statement and following resolutions (Please mouse down until you see the English part)

Here are some excerpts:

[..]On the 60th anniversary of the armistice, the “peaceful solution” called for in Article 60, Section 4 of the Armistice Agreement has yet to be realized. Instead, without a peaceful resolution, the physical and psychological pains from the war persist to this day.

[..]Gochang and Jeju Island, we visited the sites of extreme state violence not just in wartime, but also in the years leading up to and after the Korean War; and in Gwangju, we saw that similar violence was repeated under the Armistice system. Witnessing the construction of a new naval base in Gangjeong, we were reminded of how the state of war between North Korea and the U.S., and between the two Koreas, provides justification for future conflicts, with islands in the Asia Pacific, including Jeju, serving not as bridges of cooperation, but as frontline bases.

Source: Save Jeju Now/ The Peace Tour team had a talk meeting with the Gangjeong villagers and peace keepers in the evening of July 1.

2. An international peace march to realize the ‘Peace Agreement’ (July 4 to 27)

Photo by Save Jeju Now/ International peace pilgrim’s launch ceremony in front of the Jeju naval base construction(destruction) gate. For more photos, see Voice of people

About 20 people of the international peace march group started 25 days’ great march after their launch ceremony for the ‘international great peace march to realize the peace agreement, upon the 6oth anniversary of Korean War Armistice,’ in front of Jeju naval base construction main gate in the morning of July 4.

They demanded ‘prompt conclusion on the peace agreement,’ and ‘resumption of posed talks and negotiations with North Korea.’

They saying that, “under unstable cease fire regime, you cannot stop the horror of war and cannot realize peace,’ claimed that ‘peace agreement should be definitely concluded to completely finish the war in this island.”

They also added that talks and negotiations such as six party talks, NK-US talks and ROK-NK talks should be promptly resumed for the peace of Korean peninsula.

The march spots include sites of pain from war and massacres , including cobalt mine in Kyungsan, Nogeun-ri, Choongbook, and Jiri Mt. (source)

Photo by Save Jeju Now on July 4, 2013

July 10, 2013
THE KIRUNA CONFERENCE STATEMENT

The below is a re-blogging from here and here. The statement includes a content on Gangjeong.

To see the report from High North Space Conference, see here.

To see ROK’s involvement on the Arctic development, see here.

For more details on the Kiruna conference, see here.

PROTECTING THE HIGH NORTH, DEMILITARISING OUTER SPACE AND REMOVING THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION

The International Conference on the High North and International Security was held in the city of Kiruna, Sweden, on 28-30th June 2013. Representatives from a wide spectrum of civil societies and public movements from a number of Scandinavian, European, Asian and Latin American countries, Russia and the United States of America attended and agreed the following:

Conference members recognize:

that we are facing major threats to our survival through the continued pretence that security can be obtained through aggressive foreign policies and military action;

that the ultimate consequences of these policies is the continued development and threatened use of nuclear weapons and the exploitation and militarization of environments that should be protected for the benefit of all humankind – such as the Arctic and outer space;

that the High North is being used by an expanding NATO as a military practice ground in which to rehearse future war fighting strategies and to test and develop new killing technologies;

that the US has established a satellite ground station in the Svalbard islands in Norway which is used by the military and therefore violates the Svalbard or Spitzbergen Treaty that requires that the archipelago is not used for military purposes;

the rapidly increasing deployment of space based military systems and the global network of ground based stations (including radars, downlink and surveillance facilities) that support and supplement them;

that the uncontrolled and irresponsible use of outer space has resulted in that environment being littered with debris that could eventually render it impenetrable;

the destabilizing effects that the deployment of space based, ground based and sea based missile defense systems have on undermining international stability and that they are risking the possibility of reaching further agreements on nuclear disarmament;

that all states who have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should honour its Article VI and “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control”;

the negative consequences stemming from the stationing of US tactical nuclear weapons in a number of European nations;

that US President Obama’s focus on his “pivot to Asia”, the sending of missiles and warships to the region and the encouragement of the construction of support bases in the region (such as the one threatening the lives of the Gangjeong villagers on Jeju Island, South Korea), is aimed at containing China and is increasing international tension.

We therefore call on all governments, political parties, members of civil societies and public movements all over the world to share these concerns and urgently request them to call upon:

the leaders of the Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to arrange an urgent meeting on the revival of stalled arms control processes and to embrace all key areas, including nuclear weapons, missile defense and conventional weapons stationed on the ground, at sea, in the air and in outer space;

the members of the United Nations to firmly work towards the adoption of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, leading to nuclear disarmament, and we call upon the nuclear weapon states not to obstruct the discussion of the Nuclear Weapons Convention in the General Assembly of the UN;

all nations possessing or about to possess missile defense components should recognize their destabilizing nature and seek instead, through diplomatic processes, to reduce international tensions and work towards a situation where cooperation, mutual trust and understanding;

all space-faring nations should engage immediately in high level talks on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space and the adoption of outer space as a de-militarized zone;

all states to respect and renew their commitment to protect the unique and vitally important regions of the Earth, such as the Arctic and Antarctic, and reconfirm that they are not the property of any one nation, and never should be, but are to be protected as a common heritage for all humankind and never used for military purposes.

The money and material assets that will be gained from the above steps and other arms control and disarmament measures should not then be redirected to other military projects but used instead to help convert our militarized societies to peaceful ones that work for the betterment of the social and economic well being of all people – for human rather than state security – and for dealing with our common problem of climate change.

As declared at the conference in Kiruna, Sweden,

29th June 2013.

July 8, 2013
“Commie?’ Gangjeong villagers whose hearts were broken and infuriated by the words of ROK Vietnam War Veterans

For more photos on the event, see here.

Photo by Save Jeju Now/ Ultra right wing veteran group arrived at the main construction gate.

Photo by Save Jeju Now: Mayor argues with Koo Seul-Hwan, director of the Seogwipo Coast Guard

Photo by Save Jeju Now/ mayor barely stands up after mess.

On July 1, Son Jeong-Mok, Vice-chief of the Joint Naval Operation visited Gangjeong for ‘reconciliation,’ saying he wants to talk with both of pro and con base villagers. However, on the very day, two people, Dr. Song Kang-Ho and Br. Park Do-Hyun were illegally taken away and arrested on the sea when they monitored illegal construction (destruction), by the coast guards who should do the very job of monitoring on illegal construction (destruction). A world being reversed too grotesquely.

It was around 1 pm when the people ended the press conference in protest to the illegal arrest of two in the morning and had a break following Catholic mass and human-chaining in front of construction gate. A large size VIP white bus that reads ‘Choongnam branch of the Vietnam War Veterans Association’ (an ultra-right wing group) suddenly stopped in front of main gate and then it vomited its tens of members in a pale green uniform t-shirts.

It was even heard that a thug(so called company ‘security’ guy) said to them that it is not the main entrance but the main gate of the naval base project committee building complex is. Mayor Kang Dong-Kyun who happened to see them strongly protested to their unwelcoming visit to his village. Then some veterans rushed to him and rudely touched their hands to his body, slandering him as “commie”-such astonishing and dangerous situation! It was such suspending and anxious situation from the worry of possible injuries of people!

Please imagine. Not only mayor Kang himself, but many Gangjeong villagers, and Jeju island people have suffered from the unreasonable and violent label of “commie family,” put on them while their innocent members of families and relatives were falsely accused as “commies” and killed during the 4 ·3 incident. The truth is that they were only innocent farmers or fishermen. Now the Gangjeong villagers who merely aspire to save their hometown suffer from the dual bridles that connect the past and current, being called as “Pro-North Korean” as if a nightmare is revived.

The ghosts of Won Sei-Hoon and the Vietnam War veterans’ such unreasonable and violent remark is a kind of ideological oppression to break down people’s will for peace and democracy. It could be called as ‘psychological military operation.’ During the 4·3 and Vietnam War, the oppressors labeled people as “commies,” and mass massacred them, as if they are following ‘textbook.’ However, the Vietnam War veterans seem not to know that they are also the victims of history by the manipulated ideology. The traces of ROK veterans’ atrocities in Vietnam are still vivid.

In Gangjeong, it is a thing to put nail to the villagers’ hearts that already suffer from the destruction of Gureombi Rock and sea which are like mother’s bosom. Further many villagers feel pain for the news of arrest of two on July 1.

The protest by villagers, including mayor who insisted truthful apology from the veteran who committed such slander, facing the veterans and policemen who attempted to hide the man of remark and to pacify incident, was strong. According to Fr. Kim Sung-Hwan, Koo Seul-Hwan, Security director, and Yang, Intelligence director of the Seogwipo Police Station threatened villagers who were to enter inside bus for protest that they would ‘accuse’ them and said to them they should not do ‘illegal activity.” Fr. Kim points out though, “However they just leave the illegal construction (destruction).”

The policemen eventually forcefully removed villagers who were protesting in front of bus to demand apology and were to make bus enter inside the naval base project committee building complex. The villagers fought hard till 3 pm when the incident ended. Following the arrest of two on the first day of July 1, July 2 was another hard day for the people in Gangjeong. The village siren rang again. Mayor who happened to be surrounded by the policemen fell on the ground and could not be seen of his appearance for a short time, to people’s concern.

The positive thing is that many villagers appeared. The people in the field could more confirm‍ their solidarity will and human love. The people who crave for justice are beautiful and shining.

Maybe the traitors of history forgot the fact that the people rise up for democracy and justice if there is oppression!

As of July 8, 2013,

Yang Yoon-Mo(prisoner No. 301), 158th day of imprisonment and

Kim Young-Jae(prisoner No. 435),88th day of imprisonment.

Dr. Song Kang-Ho and Br. Park Do-Hyun, 8th day of detention in the Jeju Coast Guard. The court made decision to imprison both on July 5.

Release all the conscientious prisoners!

Immediately stop war base build-up of environmental destruction and infringement of human rights!

July 8, 2013