Category: Reblogged

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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”

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.

“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
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
2013 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace calls you: July 29 to Aug.4

UPDATE: Please notice that the official dates are changed from July 29 to Aug. 4, Sunday.

The July 29 to Aug. 3 program with the cultural festival in the Jeju City on Aug. 3 is same. But people will gather in Gangjeong on Aug. 4 to create a human chain between the east and west tips of the naval base construction area (1,500 km) from noon to 12 pm. Click here for more details on Human Chain on the day. Dir. Cho Sung-Bong, a movie director, currently works on the acclaimed documentary on Gangjeong titled, “The Gureombi Wind Blows,” will take air camera shots on human chain scene using unmanned helicopter and will put all the names of participants in the movie’s ending credit. Even though you may not be able to physically join the march and human chain. please send us international solidarity messages(up to 100 words)/photos/videos through gangjeongintl@gmail.com by no later than July 20. All the messages will be publicly shared. Please see the bottom for the details of optional programs after the human chain on Aug. 4.

Click the poster for a larger version.

* Internationals who can physically join the march and want to contribute the march with one’s talent/work, please see the below translation.

* Internationals who want to support the march by sending solidarity messages of up to 100 words and/or photos and/or videos, please send those to Gangjeongintl@gmail.com no later than July 20 (Please see the 2012 event here, and solidarity messages, here)

* For all questions and suggestions on the matters including those not explained in the below, please contact gangjeongintl@gmail.com

* Thank you to be with us!

2012 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace (Image: Choi Hye-Young)

2012 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace (Image: Choi Hye-Young)

# A translation of most part of an original Korean script

Proposal for co-sponsoring and participation

in the 2013 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace

By the Coordinating Committee for 2013 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace

June 7, 2013

Summary (translated) of introduction letter

The Opposition struggle against the Jeju naval base project hits its 7^th year. [..]

Since the Presidential election last time, the response measure by the prosecutors and police has been transformed into consistent drastic policies. The navy is openly enforcing construction(destruction) despite people’s criticism on illegal construction(destruction). Some make propaganda that the struggle to stop the naval base project is in fact finished as the Park Geun-Hye Government that has asserted on the justification of the Jeju naval base project was launched. [..]

Everyday is a continuation of hard struggle in Gangjeong nowadays. The police make routine of arrest and the prosecutors who are in line with them are oppressing the opposition struggle with unreasonable issuing of arrest warrants and bombs of fines. [..]

However, we cannot give up. It is because we trust that the peace of Gangjeong is the peace of Korea and our struggle to stop the Jeju naval base project is to be the voice for the peace of the northeast Asia and world. It is also because we know that the way we are walking now would be a step to stop the ‘gochak’ (meaning ‘detaining by encircling’) of destructive military domination and resuscitation of anti-human state violence. [..]

Now, we, succeeding the year of 2012, want to propose to gather people’s voice for peace once again.

We are to gather the voice to inform the injustice of the Jeju naval base project and to appeal for peace to be saved, while we walk around of the spots of Jeju for five nights six days during the hot summer.

Please join the 2013 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace in which we feel pain together, walk together, and talk on our peace together!

Please be a part of one strong voice for peace, again!

Details of proposal

Please become a co-sponsoring groups for the 2013 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace

□ The role of co-sponsoring group

▶ Registartion of more than 100,000 KRW (about 90~100 USD), which is for co-sponsoring of the event

▶ Each representative of co-sponsoring group is chosen as a member of the Peace Representative Board. One has to join march for more than a day

▶ Encourages its members to join the march and organizes support material and fund.

▶ It is planned that each co-sponsoring group is individually named in poster, web poster and media.

▶ The groups that have been confirmed of co-sponsoring and that are in discussion as of June, 2013:

The Gangjeong Village Association,

Jeju Pan-Island Committee for the Stop of Military Base and for Realization of Peace Island (31 groups)

National Network of Korean Civil Society for Opposing to the Naval Base in Jeju Island (11 groups)

Open Network (Inc.)

Gangjeong Friends

Gangjeong peacekeepers

Professors’ Association for the stop and re-examination of Jeju naval base construction

Korean Writers’ Association

□ Contact

Go Gwon-Il, chairman of the Gangjoeng Villagers’ Committee to Stop the Naval Base Project

Boo Jang-Won, Director of coordination, Jeju Pan-Island Committee for the Stop of Military Base and for Realization of Peace Island

Kim Duk-Jin, National Network of Korean Civil Society for Opposing to the Naval Base in Jeju Island

# For internationals, please contact Gangjeong village international team: gangjeongintl@gmail.com

□ Plan on Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace

I. Summary

(1). Purpose

– It is to disclose the betraying behaviors of the navy and government that enforce construction (destruction) under the false cause of ‘national security’ and Woo Keun-Min Island government that connives those and in line with them. And it is to gather the public fury on it (* The election on the Island governor is in 2014. Currently the public support on the Island governor Woo Keun-Min is low)

-It is to form a public discussion on the possibilities of militarization of Jeju by the Jeju naval base project and of occurrence of military conflict in the northeast Asia. It is to expand to the public the need of continuation of the struggle to stop the naval base project.

-It is to share the mutual relationship among state, human rights, democracy, we remembering that state violence during the 4·3 uprising is recurred during the current enforcement process of the naval base project .

(2). Title of the event

2013 Gangjeong Grand March for Life and Peace, “Let’s meet [also can be translated gather] together! Let’s walk together! Peace for Gangjeong!”

(3). Sponsor and Host

-Sponsor: The Gangjeong Village Association, Jeju Pan-Island Committee for the Stop of Military Base and for Realization of Peace Island (31 groups), National Network of Korean Civil Society for Opposing to the Naval Base in Jeju Island (11 groups) etc.

( It is expected that the titles of groups will be added in the future)

-Host: The Gangjeong Village Association, Jeju Pan-Island Committee for the Stop of Military Base and for Realization of Peace Island (31 groups), National Network of Korean Civil Society for Opposing to the Naval Base in Jeju Island (11 groups)

(4). Program

Eve festival: 7 pm, July 28 (Sunday), 2013, Village Ceremony hall, Gangjeong Village

Grand March: July 29 (Mon) to Aug. 3 (Sat), 2013: For five nights six days

Nationwide citizens’ cultural festival to demand the revocation on the Jeju naval base project: Aug. 3 (Sat), 6pm, Tapdong square, Jeju City(tentative)

Human chain between the east and west tips of the naval base project area in Gangjeong: Aug. 4 (Sun), 12 to 2 pm, Gangjeong

(5). Participation purpose

The total number of man-days participation is expected 2,000 to 3,000 (except for the participants in the cultural festivals)

( 6). Ways of March

-People will be divided by east and west teams. The pilgrim will be focused on the inner roads of towns.

-There will be explanation on main histories, ecology, and environment of each region

– Some figures concerned with Gangjeong will be asked to join the march as the members of the Peace Representative Board.

( 7). Slogan

-Main slogan: “Let’s meet [also can be translated as gather] together! Let’s walk together! Let’s shout together! Peace for Gangjeong!”

-March slogan: Will be collected by group proposal or public solicitation, TBA

II. Guide on participation

(1). Application-phone, fax, email, internet registration

Internationals may contact the Gangjeong Village International team for application: gangjeongintl@gmail.com

# All applications will be collected into the briefing room of the Gangjoeng Village Association

(2). Participation fee

1) Per one person

– 1 day participation: 10,000 won (T-shirt not included)

– 1 night 2 days~ 2 night 3 days: 30,000 won (including T-shirts)

– 3 night 4 days~6 night 7 days: 50,000 won (including T-shirts)

# No Fee. Children elementary school-aged and under (T-Shirt not included)

# All meals, one bottle of water per day, wristle (to protect from hot sunlight)

2) Bank account for participation fee and support fund

: Nonghyup 351-0603-6444-93 (Beneficiary: Gangjeong Village Association)

Internationals can pay in cash on the very day(s) of participation.

(3) Accommodation

In principle, commmon tent

However, bringing individual tent is OK

An individual should prepare for one’s sleeping bags etc.

(4) March course

– It will be about 20 Km march a day.

– As possible as even road, considered of family participants

– On the last day (Aug. 3), march as possible as all spots of Jeju City

– Detailed course will be known later.

(5) Individual participant preparation

– Sleeping bag, washing stuff, hat, individual tent(choice) etc.

III. Organization of march team

(1) March team

Peace Representative Board (5 to 10 personnel for each day), march chiefs (full and daily), overall management on march, march director(practical business), support team, medical team, guide team, record team, administration team

(2) Briefing room

Director, registration team, meal team, meal-supply team, finance team, public relation team

IV. Main event program

(1). Eve festival

– Date: 7pm, July 28(Sun), Gangjeong Village Ceremony hall

– Basis: sharing the meaning of peace and gathering the will to stop the naval base project

– Main content: resolution speech, sharing meanings, introduction of participants, concert, peace ceremony.

(2). Press conference at the start

– Date and time: 8:30 am, July 29 (Mon), Gangjeong soccer field

– Content: Statement for citizens and demand on the revocation of the naval base project

– Introduction on some figures and speeches

– Main content: Speech by representative, statement, ceremony to gathering the sea water of Jeju, photo

(3).Cultural festival in the summer night

-Date: Aug 1 in Kimnyong (east team)and Aewol (west team)

– Content: Encouragement of local residents’ participation

(4). March program

– Public solicitation on photos, writings from the 2012 march participants, prize and recognition is given (Please contact gangjeongintl@gmail.com for subscription)

– Peace postcard to oneself: read in the festival and mailing

– Collecting sea water in the main march regions: Water will be collcted in cermony in the festival.

-etc.

(5). Cultural festival to revoke the Jeju naval base project

-Date/ Time: 6 pm, Aug. 3(Sat). Topdong Square, Jeju City (planned)

(6) Peace human chain: noon to 2 pm, Aug. 4 (Sun), Gangjeong village, in front of the Jeju naval base project committee building complex ( from Gangjeong stream in th east to the Gangjeong port in the west)

* Human chain is the end of official event of the whole march

(7) Optional program in Gangjeong on Aug. 4 (Sun)

7 pm: Korean traditional yard square in front of the Gangjeong Village Ceremony Hall

After 2 pm: Taste on the Peace of Gangjeong (free trip on the places of the village, Gangjeong stream water leisure)

June 15, 2013
Morning with the Mayor | Organizing Notes

Reblogged with permission from: MORNING WITH THE MAYOR | by BRUCE K. GAGNON *

On my first trip to Gangjeong village Mayor Kang (just behind me in dark jacket) took me to see the place where the fresh water stream flows into the sea. This was to be one end of the massive Navy base now being built in the village. At that time I was able to see the undisturbed beauty of the coastline.

I arrived in Berkeley, California last night about 7:30 pm and was able to join a group of conference participants at a Chinese restaurant where they were having dinner together. When Gangjeong village Mayor Kang saw me he rose and gave me a big hug. At that time there was no translator available so we didn’t get to have much conversation.

This morning at breakfast Mayor Kang arrived with a Korean professor from the university. The mayor had just come from doing an interview for Democracy Now which is supposed to air on Monday. Koohan Paik (Hawaii) was on the radio with the mayor. Koohan has been a great Jeju supporter and made it possible for the mayor to speak at this event on behalf of the village.

During breakfast the mayor told me that when I first came to visit Gangjeong he remembers me talking about space technology. He told me that he now understands much better what I was saying. He said he believes that the US is bringing the South Korean government into the military space program as a junior partner to help control China. I was happy to hear that he has put all the pieces together.

A translator took the mayor and I for a long stroll through the vast University of California campus. We went to the top of a huge bell tower that enabled us to see the entire San Francisco bay area. While we were looking out over the bay I told the mayor how much their non-violent resistance has inspired people all over the world due to their strong spiritual grounding. He told me that they made a conscious decision to act in that way to help them deal with the obvious depression and sadness that comes from the Navy base construction project. He said that if they were going to resist then they had to find a way to stay connected to what was good in nature and in each other. He offered to teach me the dances…

*Reblogged posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Save Jeju Now

May 31, 2013
A Jeju Kind of Weekend Here in Maine | Organizing Notes

Reblogged with permission from: A JEJU KIND OF WEEKEND HERE IN MAINE | by BRUCE K. GAGNON *

On Saturday Regis Tremblay held the first public showing of his new 80-minute film about Jeju Island called The Ghosts of Jeju at the Brunswick, Maine public library. At least 70 people turned out and much to the delightful surprise of everyone, at the end of the documentary, the audience rose as one and clapped along with the lively music that played as images of protesting South Koreans flashed across the screen. People loved the film and some of the comments included things like: This is the best documentary I’ve ever seen. High praise indeed.

Then early this morning members of PeaceWorks and Maine Veterans for Peace gathered in Topsham for the annual Memorial Day parade that passes through that town, crosses the river, and ends in Brunswick where the crowd along both sides of the road is always quite big. We carried the yellow “No Navy base” flag from Gangjeong village with us – particularly since the theme of the Topsham-Brunswick parade this year was 60th Anniversary of Korean War Armistice.

So this weekend we held the struggling people on Jeju close to our hearts.

*Reblogged posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Save Jeju Now

May 27, 2013
Non-violence in times of war: Protest and resilience in Jeju, South Korea

Re-blog from the Intrepid Report

Photo by Cho Sung-Bong/ People take meals during protest in front of construction gates. For more photos of protest by Cho Sung-Bong, see here.

Non-violence in times of war: Protest and resilience in Jeju, South Korea

by Carole Reckinger

April 16, 2013

In the midst of warmongering and a worsening of tensions between North and South Korea, a group of peace activists is continuing its non-violent struggle against the construction of a naval base on the island of Jeju, South Korea.

Tensions between North and South Korea are not new and the importance of building the base have been repeatedly put forward by the South Korean government as playing an important role in coastal defense. It claims the naval base must be completed and put into service as soon as possible in order to react quickly to any further military provocations by North Korea.

Since 2007, the small fishing village of Gangjeong has led a non-violent resistance against the construction of a naval base right next to a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Despite 94% of the villagers having opposed the base in a referendum, the government has not respected the wish of the people concerned and seems to be buckling under the pressure of corporate conglomerates and the weight of the United States’ wish for an increased presence in the Pacific.

In November last year, I spent a month in Gangjeong village. Day after day, I observed the disproportionate police reaction to the non-violent blockade of the entrance to the construction site and. The most striking feature of the protest was the protesters’ resilience. Young and old and from a multitude of social backgrounds, despite their bruised bodies, the odds stacked against them and the risk of high fines or imprisonment, they kept returning to the front of the gate to fight for what they believe is right. But since tensions have been rising with the North, police crackdown has become more severe and more protesters have been arrested.

‘Professional troublemakers’

From the time the construction of the base was announced, activists, Catholic priests and nuns, Protestant pastors, law professors, teachers, artists, writers, families and students from all around South Korea have joined the villagers’ protest. In order to hinder and delay construction, protesters file lawsuits and press for a reconsideration of the project nationwide, but also regularly block the entrance to the construction site with their bodies, chain themselves to anything available and go on hunger strikes. The fight against the naval base currently mobilizes more than 125 non-governmental organizations across South Korea and more than a hundred abroad [1].

The reasons for which activists from across South Korea and abroad oppose the base are manifold. They include calls for environmental protection, social justice, demilitarization and non-violence. Support for the anti-base movement at the national level is limited, one reason being that the mainstream media has not picked up the topic. When it has, it has portrayed the activists as troublemakers and has tried to discredit them. In times of heightened tensions with the North, calls for demilitarzation, peaceful resolution of conflict and the protest against military bases are heavily criticized, and the Gangjeong protesters are insulted as undermining the security of the state and being pro-North Korean agitators.

The protest demographics, however, invalidate accusations of professional trouble-making as the movement is composed of housewives, taxi drivers, teachers, farmers and students, from all ages and social backgrounds. Many activists in Gangjeong, are members of pro-disarmament and peace groups/networks, and clearly oppose a militarization of the ‘Peace island.’ When Jeju last hosted a military base in 1948, 30,000 people were killed, 40,000 houses burnt down and 90,000 people made homeless (with a population of 300,000 at the time), as the government sought to quell an uprising led by a small group of alleged communist insurgents.

Only in 2003 did the South Korean government apologize. President Roh Moo-Hyun called the massacre, which became known as the April 3rd incident, a “violation of human rights by the state.” He declared Jeju the “Island of World Peace.” But the official peace rhetoric was short lived. Only four years later, the same President finalized plans for the naval base on Jeju. “We do not understand why South Korea, with more than 100 military installations, still needs another military base,” says the mayor of Gangjeong. “We are not convinced by the argument that this naval base will enhance the security of our country” [2].

The ROK Navy already operates seven naval bases in South Korea and the Republic of Korea Armed Forces is the sixth largest army in the world. [3] Since the end of the Korean War, South Korea has a joint military partnership with the United States through the US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty. South Korea relies on its security partnership with the United States to protect itself from external threats, most notably North Korea.

A new tactic of discouragement

In the midst of the growing tension between North and South, demilitarisation and peace messages will not be given much space in the national discourse and the mainstream media. The risk is high that security arguments will be used to crack down on the peace workers and smother the years old struggle to an end.

During the long years of dictatorship, dissent and civil disobedience would have been met with bloody repression. Today, the government is not in a position to use such deadly violence on its people and uses other tactics. Since the start of the construction, around 700 arrests have been made with 500 indictments and 22 people imprisoned. However, following the presidential election of Park Geun-hye in December 2012, fines against the protesters have been soaring. The total amount of fines for anti-base protest has reached approximately US$450,000 in addition to damage compensation fees of approximately US$280,000. Between January and mid-February 2013 alone, around 100 people went on trial and were sentenced to combined total fines of US$90,000 [4]. This seems to be the government’s newest tactic to discourage protesters from taking part in the protest. This is a much more discreet but just as effective method of repression.

It is clear that in the eyes of the government, the local community’s livelihood and the natural and human resources on which it depends come second to geo-strategic and corporate economic interests. The current North-Korean military threats will further undermine the nonviolent protest against the militarization of Jeju and the government seems prepared to use all levels of state power to go ahead with the project, from massive executive reinforcement to legal and political measures. With all the media attention focused on the war rhetoric, the fight of the Gangjeong activists is at risk of being forgotten.

Notes

1. Information retrieved from www.savejejunow.org
2. Personal interview conducted 19 November 2012 in Gangjeong, South Korea
3. Quoted in Republic of Korea Armed Forces, Wikipedia entry, Retrieved from www.wikipedia.orghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Korea_Armed_Forces
4. Gangjeong Village story (feb 2013), severe judicial oppression fought with healing hands

April 18, 2013
Solidarity from Maine, US and AWC_Japan

The two below messages are forward from Carolyn, Maine, US and Y. Nakamura, AWC_Japan. 1. Solidarity from Maine, US (April 15, 2013) “It is a link to one of the radio stories I produced in February about Gangjeong. This one aired last week.’ ‘Gangjeong village’s struggle against a navy base – produced by WERU volunteer Carolyn earlier this year, after she returned from a trip to the area [..]’ http://archives.weru.org/weru-news-report/weru-news-report-20130409 ‘I’m sending along a photo of a banner we’ll bring to area demonstrations. Love and miss you.’ ( By Carolyn)

Photo by Carolyn/ Solidarity from Maine, US

Source: Times Record/ The Times Record, April 15, 2013, reported the news on Gangjeong struggle in a page of its printed version.

Friends in Maine, US, thankfully delivered the Timed Record newspaper prints. along with the Nuclear Resister March newsletter. Mayor Kang Dong-Kyun in his office.

2.. Solidarity from AWC_Japan (April 15, 2013)

Photo by Y. Nakamura/ Solidarity from Japan(April 15, 2013)

Photo by Y. Nakamura/ Solidarity from AWC_Japan

‘Regarding rising military tension over Korean Peninsula, AWC-Japan held a protest action against ongoing massive US-ROK military exercise at US consulate in Osaka today, April 15, 2013. At the same time, we denounced Japanese government’s warmongering and racist propaganda against DPRK. We are planning to hold similar action at US embassy in Tokyo. No war on Korea! No to US-Japanese military alliance! US troops out of Asia-Pacific!’ ( By Y. Nakamura)

April 16, 2013
The Stations of the Cross on Jeju

Remembering the sufferings of April 3rd massacre. . .These are scenes from a performance held just before Easter on Mar. 29 at Jeju April 3 Peace Park. Members of the Catholic Youth Pastoral Committee enacted the Stations of the Cross, followed by Jesus Christ before his crucifixion. The site commemorates the victims of the Apr. 3 Jeju massacre, which started in 1948. . . . Bishop Peter Kang U-il and many Catholics of Jeju island attended this performance on Good Friday during the Passion week (Post by Regina Pyon)

Re-post from Hankyoreh, April 4, 2013

Scenes from a performance held just before Easter on Mar. 29 at Jeju April 3 Peace Park. Members of the Catholic Youth Pastoral Committee enacted the Stations of the Cross, followed by Jesus Christ before his crucifixion. The site commemorates the victims of the Apr. 3 Jeju massacre, which started in 1948. (by Cho Yeon-hyun, religion correspondent)

April 5, 2013
Why Women Must End the Korean War

Re-posted from the Foreign Policy in Focus

By Christine Ahn, March 8, 2013

As women around the world gather to celebrate International Women’s Day, a light needs to be shone upon the Korean peninsula where a tinderbox situation is about to erupt into a full-blown military conflict.

In response to the U.S.-led UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea for testing its third nuclear weapon last month, the DPRK has threatened to both nullify the 1953 armistice agreement that halted the Korean War and preemptively strike the United States. The North Korean foreign ministry said in a statement: “Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, we will be exercising our right to preemptive nuclear attack against the headquarters of the aggressor in order to protect our supreme interest.”

While escalations of tension are nothing new, what they are revealing is that a major game changer is needed to break the silent stalemate between the United States and North Korea. And it’s going to take more than Dennis Rodman’s trip to North Korea. It will require the United States to take greater responsibility and leadership to end the Korean War, as well as a feminist, anti-militarist approach to achieve peace and justice on the Korean peninsula.

Why the U.S. Must Take Responsibility to End the Korean War

In 1948, after the close of the Second World War, the United States, with a nod of agreement from the Soviet Union, divided the Korean peninsula. During the war, the United States led the United Nations Command in waging a brutal scorched earth air bombing campaign across the Korean peninsula, particularly in the north, where U.S. bombs leveled 80 percent of northern cities and destroyed agricultural dams—actions considered war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention ratified that year.

The Korean War was incredibly vicious. More bombs were dropped in Korea than on all of Europe during World War II, and U.S. President Harry Truman threatened to drop another atomic bomb. And it was during the Korean War that napalm was first used against civilians. Within three months of the war’s outset, 57,000 Korean children were missing and half a million homes were damaged or destroyed.

One year into the war, U.S. Major General Emmett O’Donnell Jr. testified before the Senate, “I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name…There were no more targets in Korea.”

It wasn’t until some 4 million people had been killed that the Korean War came to an unresolved end on July 27, 1953 with a temporary armistice signed by the United States, North Korea, and China. South Korea was not a signatory because it had ceded military power to General Douglas MacArthur. A permanent peace agreement has never materialized, which means the war is technically still on. Sixty years later, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) remains the world’s most heavily militarized border, with South Korean, North Korean, and U.S. troops poised for war amid over 1.2 million landmines.

We are facing, once again, perilous times as tensions escalate in the Asia-Pacific. Most western governments and the mainstream media point to North Korea’s third nuclear test and perceived belligerence as the cause of the escalation when in fact there are two major initiatives fueling this militarized response.

First is the so-called “pivot.” In 2011, the Obama administration announced a plan to transfer significant military resources to Asia and the Pacific, including expanding bases, surveillance, and equipment. The Pentagon has committed to deploying 60 percent of its air and naval forces to the region, including sending U.S. troops to Vietnam, the Philippines, and Australia. Without a doubt, the “pivot” is exacerbating tensions in a region that has still not resolved conflicts from the last century.

Second are the perennial U.S-ROK joint military exercises against North Korea. North Korea justifiably views these war games as acts of provocation. The annual U.S.-ROK “Key Resolve/Foal Eagle” war games, usually staged in March, and “Ulchi Freedom Guardian” in August typically last for months and involve tens of thousands of U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of South Korean troops. In the exercises, U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, and Space Command forces simulate overthrowing North Korea’s leadership, occupying Pyongyang, and reunifying the peninsula under U.S. and South Korean control.

When I think about the impact of all this militarization, I think about the elderly rice farmers in Pyongtaek who used their bodies to defend their community from being bulldozed to accommodate the expansion of a U.S. military base. I think about the tangerine farmers and women sea divers of Gangjeong village on Jeju island struggling day and night to stop the construction of a U.S.-backed Korean naval base. This is what the militarization of the Korean peninsula looks like, and the only road to peace runs through Washington.

Why women’s leadership is crucial

Women’s organizing to end the Korean War is strategic for three key reasons.

First, the war has a disproportionate impact on the lives of women. As feminists, we know that nationalism, patriarchy, and militarism intersect. The militarization of the peninsula naturally leads to greater masculinization of society, which increases violence against women, including sexual violence by U.S. servicemen and the reallocation of resources from social welfare towards the military. But the partition also has very real consequences for North Korean women, especially those seeking a better life outside of North Korea.

According to estimates by aid workers, 80 to 90 percent of female refugees from North Korea are trafficking victims. At a women’s circle in South Korea, one 19-year-old escapee talked of being raped four times during her journey—once by the Korean Chinese man who promised to find her work in China, a second time by the Chinese man who hid her from the authorities, a third time by the South Korean coyote who brought her into the country, and a fourth time by the South Korean CIA. This she had to endure so she could survive.

Second, given our relationships with our families, children, and community, women have a reality check that is seldom there for men. Not only can women can bring into greater focus the experience of women and girls in militarized societies and armed conflict, we can provide crucial insights into the day-to-day consequences of the ongoing war on peoples’ lives.

Finally, the deadlocked situation calls for game changers. As a group of people outside the structures of power, we have to use our ingenuity to go beyond conventional paths outlined and dominated by patriarchal institutions. Women are not cowed by limited notions of solutions; we use our imagination and creativity to break through repressive structures.

Lights on the Water

Once, in the fall of 2009, I woke up in the middle of the night. Instead of continuing to toss and turn, I decided to switch on my computer. On the homepage of the New York Times read the headline, “North Korea Opens Dam Flow, Sweeping Away 6 in the South.” North Korea had lifted the floodgates of a dam on the Imjin River, sending a tidal wave south and killing six South Koreans, including an 8-year-old boy. The water level had doubled, which meant North Korea’s farms could flood and wipe out the season’s harvest. To avert this perilous situation, North Korea allegedly released the water without any advance notice.

This is so ridiculous, I thought to myself. Why can’t these two countries — that speak the same language, eat the same food, and share over two millennia of history — just communicate? Why couldn’t Kim Jong Il just have picked up the phone and given South Korean leader Lee Myung-bak a heads up?

After being thoroughly depressed about the situation of the two Koreas, I finally fell back to sleep. And then I had the most vivid dream, which I’ve held onto as hope for the future of a united Korea. In my dream, I was wading in a river alongside other Koreans. It was before the break of dawn and we were anxiously waiting for Koreans from the north. And just over the crest of the horizon, a light glowed. It was a group of people holding candles wading down the river. As we met in the river, there was an overabundance of joy and intense embrace. But I kept going forward up the river, bypassing this emotional scene to find the source. I came upon a ceremony of women huddled around a huge kettle stirring thick black liquid and pouring ladles of it into little pails carried by children. It was at that moment when I awoke and realized, aha, it will take Korean women on the peninsula and throughout the Diaspora to bring about peace and reunification for Korea.

Now I have no idea what was in that black liquid, but what I do know is that peace and reunification on the Korean peninsula must be advocated without supporting any particular nation-state. We don’t want the reunification of two highly patriarchal, militaristic societies. Our immediate task is to talk about the unfinished war’s militarization of the Korean peninsula and the consequent violence against women, children, and the future. We need to confront head-on the military buildup that is destroying livelihoods, communities, and the natural world.

So what can we do? We are powerless in the face of the military industrial complex, and we are cynical in the face of over 60 years of unfinished war. I don’t have the solutions, but I do have some dreams.

Imagine if people severed the barbed wires along the DMZ and transformed it into an ecological park. Imagine if the elderly could board a bus that would take them to visit their families in cities in the north, like Kaesong, Nampo, or Pyongyang. Imagine if the resources allocated to buying drones or to launch a satellite were instead spent on education, childcare, or support for single mothers. Imagine if North Korean farmers could access all the materials they needed to yield abundant harvests.

Central to all of this is ending the Korean War, with the United States signing a peace treaty with North Korea. But it will take more than signing a document to end over half a century of enmity and mistrust—it will take a new approach to achieving security. This is why it will take women’s leadership, because women realize that genuine security means having health, education, and freedom to live without fear and want. From Ireland to Liberia, women have stood up to end violence and conflict. We can and must do the same for Korea.

March 31, 2013
Report from UK: Benjamin Monnet’s SOAS Speech

Image: UK Gangjeong solidarity Team

Report on Benjamin Monnet’ s SOAS speech on March 21

By Andrew, UK Gangjeong solidarity team

This month SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) University of London, hosted Benjamin Monnet to talk about the struggle against the Jeju naval base, sponsored by the ‘Save Jeju Island’ student society. Benj, as he is known to his many friends, lived in Gangjeong village for ten months, joining the resisting the naval base and bringing the issue to the attention of international media. He was a valued and loved member of the village peace community, but last year was deported suddenly, violently and illegally by a South Korean government clearly worried by his non-violent acts to defend the Gureombi from detonation.

He arrived in London from his hometown in France the day before his talk and came straight to SOAS, meeting other students involved in the ‘Save Jeju Island’ society. Immediately he was engaging with students, inviting them to the event and helping our team put posters around the student union. A real ‘hands on’ guest speaker! We shared a delicious Indian curry provided free by Hari Krishna devotees on the campus. Benj, who is now based in Nepal, said the food made him feel at home.

Image: UK Gangjeong solidarity team

The talk the next day was attended by twenty five students, from the UK, South Korea, Japan, Norway, Italy and Tahiti. Benj’s desire was to ‘generate some inspiration’, and he did so speaking in his warm, calm French accent. But behind this softly spoken man there is a strong passion for justice, and for harmony among all people and nature. There is anger too at the destruction and injustice taking place at Gangjeong. He showed film of the navy’s ramming of Save Our Seas team kayaks, in which he narrowly missed being killed ( * See the English article, here), and described, when asked by audience members, the events leading up to the deportation that has separated him from his partner, and the people and place he loves. But he was careful to not make himself the focus of a talk about that is fundamentally about the struggle against greed and militarism. He is uncomfortable with the ‘activist’ label – “I’m not sure what I am, but I know I am human and I have a heart”. Without saying it directly, he was challenging the audience to examine their own hearts in relation to the Gangjeong issue.

Video by Jeju Sori TV on March 8, 2012

Benj is keen from the outset that his talk should be a dialogue, not a monologue, and encourages a relaxed atmosphere where people are free to contribute and question. Many students express despair about the ongoing construction. ‘Is it really possible to stop the base?’ ‘What about all the work that’s already completed?’ He dismisses the defeatism behind such questions with a smile. ‘Of course it’s possible. Where there’s a will there’s a way – but we need your help. Don’t worry about the work that’s already done, that can be removed. Korean people work fast!’

Image: UK Gangjeong solidarity team

There is a lively discussion about North Korea, but Benj makes sure people know that the base is related to China. He says that in terms of kilo wattage, the US will have the equivalent of 12,000 Hiroshima bombs on Jeju Island. ‘One was enough, huh?’ A Korean student expresses strong support for the naval base as he thinks it is about self defence. Benj listens patiently and respectfully, but then challenges the student. ‘If I point a gun at your head, is that self defence? Is this how you should treat your neighbour?’ It’s a response that he makes several times when he meets young Koreans in London who have the same view about national defence. ‘Some people are a bit shocked when I pretend to hold a gun to their head’ he remarks, ‘but sometimes we need to shock people. Some people are sleeping, and they need to be woken up!’

Many people were reluctant to leave after the event, and stayed continuing discussions. Benj warmly suggested everyone go together for dinner, so ten of us went to ‘Naru’, a Korean restaurant near the university. We enjoyed making new friendships over delicious food. Being with many Korean students, and engaging with the friendly staff made Benj visibly happy. ‘Oh I’ve missed the energy of Korean people!’ he said, beaming with a big smile.

Image: UK Gangjeong solidarity team

Unfortunately his planned visit to Wales to meet with British peace campaigner Angie Zelter, who was also arrested with Benj at the time of his deportation, and who is now barred from entering South Korea, could not go ahead due to heavy snow. Benji used his extra time in London to meet with an independent film maker, who had attended his talk, and who is working on a documentary on South Korea. He also made contact with a professor in another UK university who was keen to invite Benj to speak about the Jeju naval base. While at SOAS we met political rapper ‘Lowkey’, who asked lots of questions about the situation in Jeju, and the US military in South Korea, and took away Gangjeong Village news letters.

On a personal level, I was happy to spend more time Benj and deepen our friendship. We had lots of interesting discussions, and some pretty funny ones too. Over another Korean dinner, and some very good makkoli, we celebrated the great news that Yang Yoon Mo had ended this 52 day hunger strike in jail, and agreed this should encourage us to work harder for the ‘Free Yang Yoon Mo’ campaign.

It was great to have Benji with us in London. He definitely generated inspiration, and he continues the fight for Gangjeong, waking people up so they might join us.

Image: UK Gangjeong solidarity team

(Thanks so much, UK Gnagjeong solidarity team for the report and photos)

March 27, 2013