Korean peace education Project

Factsheet: WEST SEA CRISIS IN KOREA

Tue, 7 Dec 2010 06:16:40 -0800

Updated: December 6, 2010
Factsheet: WEST SEA CRISIS IN KOREA
Contested Waters: Background to a Crisis
1. On November 22, 2010, military troops from the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) and the United States began joint war-simulation exercises, dubbed “Hoguk” [“Defend the State”], a massive endeavor involving 70,000 soldiers, 600 tanks, 500 warplanes, 90 helicopters, and 50 warships. It was slated to take place over a period of nine days.

2. South Korean artillery units located in the West Sea Islands, just seven miles from the North Korean coast, engaged in firing exercises on November 23, 2010, for four hours. According to the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, the units on those islands, including Yeonpyeong Island, fired 3,657 times, or over 900 shells per hour, into contested waters claimed by both Pyongyang and Seoul near the Northern Limit Line (NLL). Drawn unilaterally by the US Navy in 1953, the NLL is not internationally recognized and has never been accepted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea).

3. The South Korean military has stated that its live-fire drills began that day at 10:15 am, describing them as routine test-firing aimed not toward North Korea, but rather in a west-southwest direction. North Korea regarded these firing drills as part of the larger Hoguk military exercises and issued repeated warnings to South Korea, demanding a halt to the war games and warning that it would retaliate if South Korean troops fired live artillery shells into its territorial waters.

4. North Korean reports stated that, at approximately 1 pm, the South Korean marines began firing longer-range artilleries, more powerful than the mortars and other weapons that had been used earlier during the firing drills. South Korea’s artillery firing continued until 2:30 pm. North Korean artillery units responded by firing on a South Korean artillery base on Yeonpyeong Island. The South Korean marines responded by firing back at North Korean bases on the coast across from the island.

5. On Yeonpyeong Island, a site with South Korean military bases and a fishing community of 1,300 residents, North Korean artillery killed two South Korean marines and two civilians, who were military contractors building new barracks on a military installation. The attack left eighteen others injured. North Korea did not disclose its casualties so far, but one South Korean report indicates that one North Korean soldier was killed and two others were seriously wounded.

6. President Obama dispatched the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington (carrying 75 warplanes and a crew of over 6000) and other warships to conduct additional joint war exercises with the South Korean military beginning November 28th.

7. Amid the recent hostilities, modest mitigating gestures have emerged, though compromised by a confrontational war footing in the region. North Korea issued a statement calling the civilian deaths “very regrettable,” but it also criticized South Korea for creating what the North called “a human shield by placing civilians around artillery positions and inside military facilities." On November 29th, South Korea canceled a series of scheduled artillery drills from Yeonpyeong Island, offering no explanation for the change. The massive US-ROK joint war exercises did resume in the Yellow Sea (or West Sea), but they have taken place outside the immediate zone of the artillery exchange, staged approximately 125 miles south of the NLL.

Naval Skirmishes Amid an Ongoing State of War
〈 The Korean War has never formally ended. Only a temporary armistice suspended the military hostilities in 1953, but peace treaty talks in Geneva broke down in 1954. Millions of Koreans remain separated from their family members due to the continued state of war and division in Korea.

〈 Without a permanent peace treaty, the two Koreas have not agreed upon a mutual recognition of maritime borders, and they lack the formal diplomatic channels that could help prevent the escalation of border clashes both on land and at sea, particularly in the contested waters off Korea’s west coast. According to Leon Sigal, former editorial board member of the New York Times, “Those waters have been troubled ever since…1953, when the US Navy unilaterally imposed a ceasefire line at sea north of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) on land. North Korea has long objected to this Northern Limit Line (NLL), which is not recognized internationally. It wants the MDL line extended out to sea” (Arms Control Today, Nov 2010).

〈 Naval firefights over the NLL have intensified in recent years. In June 1999, one such skirmish led to the sinking of a North Korean vessel, killing “at least 17 and as many as 80 North Korean sailors.” [Reuters, Jan 26, 2010] In June 2002, “A clash between South and North Korean naval vessels in the Yellow Sea [sank] one South Korean frigate and [killed] six South Korean sailors and an estimated 13 North Koreans.” (Reuters, Jan 26, 2010) In 2009, both sides threatened each other with a third West Sea skirmish.

〈 Prior South Korean administrations made progress in resolving the mutual claims over contested waters, but those diplomatic efforts were abandoned by the current Lee administration, which has taken a hostile stance toward North Korea.
• In October 2007, an inter-Korean summit meeting between Roh Moo-Hyun, the previous South Korean president (2003-2008), and Kim Jong Il yielded a declaration that committed both sides to concrete measures toward improving inter-Korean relations. Both pledged to negotiate a joint fishing area and agreed to a proposal to create a “peace and cooperation zone” in the West Sea, which was aimed at transforming the heavily militarized waters into a maritime region for economic cooperation.
• Yet, within months, President-elect Lee Myung-bak rescinded the October 4 Declaration and later abrogated the inter-Korean accord from the historic 2000 summit, which had provided a common approach for both North Korea and South Korea to work toward reconciliation and eventual reunification.

〈 Relations deteriorated further in 2009 when North Korea protested South Korea’s decision to fully participate in a US-led naval interdiction initiative, which North Korea regarded as a violation of its national sovereignty. In response, North Korea renounced all diplomatic and military agreements with South Korea.

〈 In November 2009, “a North Korean patrol boat crossed the NLL into the contested waters—precisely what the 2007 summit had sought to forestall—and a South Korean vessel fired warning shots at it. The North returned fire and the South opened up, severely damaging the North Korean vessel and causing an unknown number of casualties.” [Sigal, Arms Control Today, Nov 2010]

〈 In March 2010, the Cheonan, a 1,200-ton South Korean navy corvette, was severed in half and sank in the waters off Baengnyeong Island, the northern-most of the West Sea Islands in the contested waters near the NLL. Forty-six South Korean sailors died in the sinking.
• The Joint Civil-Military Investigation Group (JIG), a multinational commission led by South Korea, concluded after nearly two months of investigation that a North Korean torpedo sank the Cheonan. This interpretation has been accepted, with few exceptions, as incontrovertible fact by most mainstream media outlets.
• However, the plausibility of the JIG’s conclusions has been challenged by rigorous scientific and empirical analyses by scholars such as physicist Seunghun Lee (University of Virginia) and political scientist Jae-Jung Suh (Johns Hopkins University) as well as by independent investigations carried out by the South Korean news organization Hankyoreh and civic groups such People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy. They have uncovered tampered evidence and a long list of factual inconsistencies.
• For a detailed synthesis of the multiple independent investigations into the Cheonan sinking, see the Hani.tv documentary, “Beneath the Surface” (http://bit.ly/cheonan).
• Perhaps the most compelling evidence that casts doubt upon the JIG’s findings is the fact that, despite the tragic loss of 49 lives, nearly all of the 58 surviving crew members escaped serious injury, and the ship’s internal instruments remained intact. In contrast, scientists have modeled that a torpedo explosion would have sent crew members “flying like bullets” into the surrounding equipment, fracturing bones and likely resulting in fatalities from the explosion’s concussive force. Yet, autopsies revealed that all of the Cheonan victims died of drowning, not from the injuries they sustained. As Lee and Suh explain, “the ship’s and crew’s condition is not consistent with the damage expected of an outside explosion” caused by a torpedo, which would have produced a tremendous shock wave (Asia-Pacific Journal, July12, 2010).

〈 In an article published in July that assessed the evidence regarding the Cheonan sinking, historian Mark E. Caprio (Rikkyo University, Tokyo) wrote: “Confrontational conditions have existed along the Korean peninsula since its division at the end of World War II in 1945. The exceptionally aggressive attitude taken by the present ROK regime increases the potential for more tragic incidents—planned or accidental—between the two Koreas, which may also pull in allies on both sides. The US-ROK refusal to participate in negotiations until Pyongyang apologizes for an incident it insists it did not commit, and their decision to pressure the DPRK by holding massive new joint war exercises and by inflicting still more economic sanctions, demonstrates macho but also greatly increases the possibility of more Cheonan-like incidents, and in the gravest scenario a second Korean War.” (Asia-Pacific Journal, July 26, 2010)

A New Cold War?
Some analysts have perceived the emergence of a “new Cold War” in Northeast Asia. President Obama has identified South Korea as “a cornerstone of US security in the Pacific region,” a characterization that he has also used to describe Japan. Meanwhile, South Korea, Japan, and the US have refused to return to negotiations with North Korea, as the North Korean leadership has recently strengthened ties with counterparts in China.
Since 1945, the US has maintained a continuous military presence in South Korea, with an estimated 28,500 US troops currently stationed in South Korea. Sixty-five years later, the US still retains wartime operational control over South Korean forces, and the US and South Korean militaries routinely conduct joint war-simulation exercises near the DMZ and within contested waters off the Korean peninsula. These combined drills are an overt show of force, displaying the sophistication of US and South Korean military technology. North Korea condemns the military exercises as provocative because it regards these maneuvers as a possible smokescreen for a real attack.

Voices of Reason

“We demonize [Kim Jong Il] as a “nut case,” but I have talked to Russians, Chinese, South Koreans and Americans who have met with him at length, and all say he is extremely intelligent. What Kim wants is sustained, serious talks with the US, leading to a comprehensive peace treaty….Our problem is that every time we elect a new president, we seem to feel that we have to start from scratch with North Korea.” – Donald P. Gregg, US ambassador to South Korea (1989–1993) and National Security Advisor to Vice-President George H.W. Bush

"... One item should be at the top of the agenda, however, in order to remove all unnecessary obstacles to progress, that is the establishment of a peace treaty to replace the truce that has been in place since 1953.One of the things that have bedeviled all talks until now is the unresolved status of the Korean War. A peace treaty would provide a baseline for relationships, eliminating the question of the other’s legitimacy and its right to exist.” – James Laney, US Ambassador to South Korea (1993-1997) and President Emeritus of Emory University

“Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States, it is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty to replace the ‘temporary’ cease-fire of 1953.” –Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States

For more information and to join the National Campaign to End the Korean War: www.endthekoreanwar.org

Message to Ambassador Bosworth from Korean Americans on Peace

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 08:15:45 -0800

Christine Ahn of our National Campaign to End the Korean War has produced this short video that reminds us of the human toll of the division in Korea. Watch it and share it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bq6YlWkob4 Please support us at www.endthekoreanwar.org.

Does South Korea Want Renewed Military Tension with North Korea?

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:39:04 -0700

Selig Harrison | July 29, 2009
(Originally published July 22, 2009 in The Hankyoreh and by the Korean Policy Institute)
To the White House officials who prepared the first draft of the June 16 Washington communiqué issued by Presidents Obama and Lee, the words seemed like routine rhetoric. "The alliance," said the communiqué, "aims to establish a durable peace on the Korean peninsula leading to peaceful reunification on the principles of free democracy and a market economy."
However, this was not routine rhetoric. The phrase "free democracy and a market economy" was a direct and potentially disastrous assault on the fundamental principle of the coexistence of differing systems, leading to reunification through confederation that was enshrined in the June 2000 and October 2007 North-South Presidential summit declarations.
To North Korea, this reversal meant that the goal of Washington and Seoul is once again the absorption of North Korea by South Korea. So it was not surprising that a government mouthpiece in Pyongyang, Tongil Sinbo, bitterly attacked the communiqué as signaling "reunification through absorption" as the goal of Washington and Seoul.
"This was definitely a change in our position," commented a State Department official concerned with Korea. "Our previous position was what George Bush told the National Assembly in 1992, which is the U.S. people favor 'peaceful unification on terms acceptable to the Korean people,' and this formulation does sound like absorption," the official said.
I asked where in the U.S. government the change had come from, or whether it came from the ROK side. He replied, "Ask the NSC." This was a reference to the National Security Council, where Deputy Chairman Denis McDonough has been supervising Korea policy since the Obama Administration took office. McDonough has no previous Korea-related experience prior to joining the Administration.
Even before the summit, Lee Myung Bak had made a big mistake when he casually announced after his election that he was not committed to the two North-South summit declarations and would "review" them. To my surprise, few in the South have appeared to recognize that this reversal would strengthen the hardline forces in North Korea and endanger the reduction of North-South tensions made possible by the two summits. Vice-Chairman Kim Yong Tae of the Supreme People's Assembly communicated to me in Pyongyang in January, "This has changed everything, and now we are back to where we were 15 or 20 years ago, back to the days of the military dictators in the South, back to regime change."
"Free democracy" means to North Korea that South Korea, with its population of 48.3 million in 2009, would dominate North Korea, with its population of 23.4 million, if Korea-wide elections were held in a reunified peninsula based on "the principles of free democracy." Kim Dae-jung's basic premise in his confederation plan, which made possible peace with North Korea, was that North Korea and South Korea would have co-equal representation in a confederal setup, and that North Korea would keep its system while growing economic contacts would bring the two systems closer together.
Significantly, on September 11, 1989, Roh Tae Woo paved the way for Kim with his proposal for a Korean Commonwealth. The new plan explicitly accepted the principle of equal representation in a projected transitional, twenty-member council of ministers and a one-hundred-member council of representatives.
"The council of ministers," Roh told the National Assembly, "would be co-chaired by the prime ministers of North Korea and South Korea, and would be comprised of ten minister-level officials from each side. " Roh also said, "Under the council standing committees could be created to deal with humanitarian, political, diplomatic, economic, military, social, and cultural affairs." He envisioned the council of ministers of North Korea and South Korea would discuss and adjust all pending North-South issues and national problems.
Kim Il Sung's death in 1994 rekindled the hopes of hardliners in Seoul and Washington for a collapse of North Korea. Kim Young Sam's pronouncements made clear that he envisaged a collapse followed by South Korea's absorption of North Korea. In his August 15, 1995, Independence Day address at Chonan, he declared that a reunified Korea would be "another ROK." Referring to the "miracle of the Han River," he said, "As an extension of all this, we should now create a new ROK—a reunified Fatherland enjoying democracy and prosperity." Angered by what he considered excessive U.S. concessions in its 1994 negotiations with Pyongyang on the nuclear issue, Kim told the New York Times on October 7, 1994, that the North Korean regime "is on the verge of an economic and political crisis that could sweep it from power," and US. compromises on the nuclear issue "might prolong its life."
In his book Betrayal, Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz wrote, "He expected the collapse during his Administration." Gertz reproduced the text of a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul to the Secretary of State echoing this assessment and reporting that Kim had "launched covert actions to facilitate a collapse."
Does South Korea want to go back to the days of Kim Young Sam and Park Chung Hee and face renewed military tension with North Korea? To reverse the present dangerous trend toward a revival of cold war confrontation, Lee Myung Bak should be pressed to reaffirm the two North-South summit declarations, avoid a repetition of the "free democracy" language of the Washington declaration and categorically repudiate the goal of absorption.
The views presented in this column are the writer's own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.
Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the former director of the Century Foundation¹s Project on the United States and the Future of Korea. Specializing in South Asia and East Asia for fifty years as a journalist and scholar, he has visited North Korea over ten times and on two occasions, met with the late Kim Il Sung. He is the author of six books on Asian affairs and U.S. relations with Asia, including Korean Endgame: A Strategy For Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, published by Princeton University Press in May 2002. Dr. Harrison serves as an advisory board member of the Korea Policy Institute (KPI).

US Military Bases in South Korea

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:17:23 -0700

People have asked me why I work on these issues in Korea. As a peacemaker it has all the issues. Divided families, outdated rhetorical justification for the division, ignoring of the will of the divided nation, and most importantly for our nation the chance to examine the US role in the world and how militarism leads not to peace, but to resentment and increased hostility.
Most people don’t realize that the US has over 800 bases worldwide at the cost in peace time of over $100 billion. The operations in Korea, outside of Iraq (Remember Bush said he wanted Iraq to be like Korea), are some of the largest. Imagine a country like South Korea, half the size of Minnesota, having more than 28,000 US soldiers and nearly 100 posts and bases. Watch the great interview with Korean Scholar (and all around nice guy) John Feffer wherein he says “if you can imagine Central Park suddenly being a military base in New York City—. And that was also the location of a former Japanese military base, which—of course, the Japanese were occupiers of Korea in the first part of the 20th century, so this continuity was not always appreciated by Koreans.” Watch his full interview below. he also addresses the aggravation to peace of the annual US/ROK joint military exercises.
It’s time to return Korea to the Koreans and bring our troops home!

The Untold Story Behind Human Rights Violations in North Korea

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:20:39 -0700

In this article the authors point out wisely that “Those of us in the U.S. who care about the human rights of North Koreans might ask ourselves what role the U.S. has played over the course of six decades in the suffering of North Koreans and in the current cross-border movement. And rather than wring our hands about a mysterious man half-way around the world, we might take responsibility for our country's foreign policy and work to help change it.”

Christine Ahn and Thomas P. Kim* | June 16, 2009 - Korea Policy Institute www.kpolicy.org

Lost in the flurry over North Korea's detention of U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee is the story they sought to cover: the plight of North Korean women refugees in China. Eighty percent of recent North Korean migrants in China are women. According to "Lives for Sale," a recent report by Lee Hae-Young based on interviews with 77 North Korean women living in China, most of these women fled North Korea in search of a better life, only to find themselves sold to Chinese farmers and laborers. Possessing few or no legal rights in China and faced with the prospect of prostitution, forced marriage, and sexual slavery there, the freedom of these Korean women is directly related to what is happening in North Korea, and what might happen should they be able to return home.

North Korean women in China are highly vulnerable to exploitation, yet what consistently fails to be covered is "why are they leaving their home country?" The Washington Post found that Lee's report, mentioned above, "is a part of a growing body of research conducted inside China that shows that North Korean defectors are mostly women from working-class and rural backgrounds who fled because of hunger and poverty, not political oppression." This finding is corroborated by a 2004 South Korea government (Ministry of Unification) survey of over 4,000 North Koreans living in South Korea. The survey found that 75% left North Korea for economic reasons or to join their families in the south, and only 9% left because of political repression. A similar survey conducted by Refugee International in 2005 found that only two of the 63 defectors they interviewed left North Korea for political reasons. Historically, we can observe that people leaving North Korea was largely unheard of for the first four decades of its existence, until the 1990s, when the state had difficulty delivering basic economic and social goods. This is not to say there is no political oppression in North Korea. There are numerous stories of refugees who endured experiences unimaginable to most of us. However, the evidence indicates that it was the economic decline North Korea began to experience in the 1990s, not political oppression that is the main factor driving North Koreans over the border.

The notion that the flight of North Koreans to China is due to political oppression has been asserted as a rational for discontinuing aid to North Korea since it would only prolong the existence of the regime and therefore the suffering of the population. But if indeed economic hardships are the primary reasons for the migration, as the evidence suggests, then the discontinuation of aid will only exacerbate the suffering of the population and encourage more to leave. This would be a terrible mistake.

If we are serious about addressing the conditions of North Koreans and supporting their increased access to a wide range of political, economic, and social rights, we have to understand the root causes of North Korea's famine and poverty.

Like most industrialized countries of all political stripes around the world, the North Korean government spent decades over-relying on chemical inputs in agriculture and paying insufficient attention to soil replenishment. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist trading bloc in the late 1980s dealt a heavy blow to North Korea's industrialized, petroleum-dependent agricultural sector. Tractors had no gas, and farmers lost a key compound in fertilizer. As North Koreans struggled to recalibrate their economy in the 1990s, the country found itself at the epicenter of devastating, once-in-a-century droughts and floods. But even before agricultural policy mistakes, Soviet collapse, and El Nino, the country of Korea was divided by the postwar Truman Administration, leaving most of the nation's agricultural lands in the South while the North is faced with a mere 14% arable land.

Nevertheless we persist in attributing the cause of North Korea's famine to an "evil dictator" who must be dislodged before the country can get back on its feet. But this is far from the truth according to Theodor Friedrich, Senior Agriculturalist for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In Pyongyang, in 2004, one of us asked him if an "evil dictator" was the cause of the famine. He responded that, to the contrary, what he observed was that because of North Korea's exceptional centralized food distribution system and collective spirit, a great many lives were saved. Agricultural expert Urs Wittenwiler, who spent five years in North Korea with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, says that in most parts of the country, the food situation has stabilized and what North Korea needs is development aid and investment.

Recognizing their limited options for economic recovery under the political status quo, North Korea has, since at least the early 1990s, been actively seeking to normalize relations with the United States. In response to the collapse of its state-centered economy, the government introduced economic reforms to attract foreign investment. Veteran Korea scholar John Feffer tells his audiences that "markets have become a dominant feature in North Korean society," and that contrary to the assertion that North Korea is trying to suppress them, the government acknowledges their importance and seeks to control them through taxation and staffing. Feffer believes that "the North Korean government appears today to have no fundamental ideological opposition to markets or capitalism." Long-time North Korea specialist Kathi Zellweger of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation says, "I feel very strongly that [the North Koreans] are trying to open up the country. They are trying to attract business. They are trying to send more delegations outside to do business, to learn about business." Yet despite North Korea's efforts to liberalize, "no investor is interested in North Korea as long as there are sanctions."

Many human rights groups have joined the U.S. State Department in calling for greater sanctions against North Korea, pointing to its success in South Africa and Burma. But there are huge differences between North Korea and those countries. Feffer and Martin Hart-Landsberg point out that "no domestic group within North Korea supports sanctions, as did the African National Congress in South Africa and the National League for Democracy in Burma, both of which saw the sanctions as strengthening their respective domestic struggles for democratic transformation."

This brings us, of course, to the round of U.N. sanctions imposed on June 12th as a "punishment" for North Korea's second nuclear test. Like Cuba after its revolution, North Korea has never experienced a time when it has not been heavily sanctioned by the United States. As with Cuba, the impact of U.S. sanctions on the average North Korean has varied depending on global events, weather conditions, and political alliances. U.S. sanctions have probably had a greater negative impact on the average North Korean since the 1990s when the state was seeking more direct aid, development aid, technical assistance, and opportunities for meaningful trade. And make no mistake—the North Koreans know what the sanctions are for. According to respected Korea scholar and reporter Selig Harrison, "the North Koreans understandably see them as a regime-change policy designed to bring about the collapse of their regime through economic pressure."

While sanctions may not be "intended to restrict legitimate activity and trade and should not have an adverse affect on the already hard-pressed people of North Korea," as British Ambassador Philip Parham claimed with the announcement of more U.N. sanctions, research clearly demonstrates that economic sanctions do indeed hurt the most vulnerable populations. For example, according to a 2000 Lancet article, during the decade-long United Nations-imposed sanctions on Iraq, the mortality rate of Iraqi children under age five more than doubled.

When Barack Obama was elected President, Korean Americans, Koreans on the peninsula, and all advocates for the reunification and economic justice on the Korean peninsula dared to dream that decades of enmity between the U.S. and the North Koreans would end. Sadly, the Obama administration is, so far, at least as bad as the one it replaced. Just last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the administration was considering placing North Korea back on the State Department's terrorist list. This ignores the point that there is no credible reason to put them on the list. In a recent interview with the Korea Policy Institute, longtime Korea expert Leon Sigal said, "I know of no evidence of recent terrorist acts by North Korea nor have I heard of anybody making such an allegation credibly."

On June 12th, the U.S. succeeded in pressuring the U.N. Security Council to place even more sanctions against North Korea, including restricting new loans, grants, and export credits. Tightening the noose around North Korea via sanctions and further isolating it has not worked before and will not work this time to improve the human rights of the people living in North Korea. What sanctions may do is force more Koreans, especially Korean women, to cross a dangerous border to face a highly exploitative system that has developed in the area to take advantage of these vulnerable people. North Korea has been tarred with the label of human rights abuser. Those of us in the U.S. who care about the human rights of North Koreans might ask ourselves what role the U.S. has played over the course of six decades in the suffering of North Koreans and in the current cross-border movement. And rather than wring our hands about a mysterious man half-way around the world, we might take responsibility for our country's foreign policy and work to help change it.

Christine Ahn is a policy analyst with the Korea Policy Institute and member of the National Campaign to End the Korean War. Thomas Kim is the executive director of the Korea Policy Institute.
FULL ARTICLE at http://www.kpolicy.org/documents/policy/090616christineahnthomaskimuntoldstory.html

Free Speech in a Sea of Seoul Blue

Sun, 31 May 2009 07:56:59 -0700

When I arrived to the top of the City Hall Metro steps I was blocked by a sea of blue police helmets. Young kids really. Decked out in the costume primed for street warfare, in outfits that were a cross between a serious lacrosse player and Iron Man. Behind the caged face guards you could catch their expressions of “How did I get here?” Few seemed to have the anger and personal agenda of the US riot patrols (ala www.committingpoetry.com), as most are consigned to the job for just two years as an alternative to South Korean compulsory military service.
I have never seen so many police in one place. Their buses had encircled Seoul Plaza - the historic gathering place for prior successful anti-government rallies - no one got in or out all week except on the day of the funeral. The units moved around in clumps, ever letting anyone effectively assemble.
As in America there days, the designated free speech zones were set miles away- far from the visible City Center and historic mecca for candlelight vigils and the street battles of democratizations. The police quite consciously moved each squad from corner to corner - often in step and chanting like soldiers at boot camp. They would veer around baby strollers or couple arm in arm. Until they grew tired of my filming from the island strip, we were allowed to stay in place or move about unimpeded when we could get around their dense lines.

Here is a brief report I did on site. Thanks to Joe Cha for filming.

They seemed to go intensely around anyone who seemed to be upset with their intimidating show of force. A step ladder was used to rise up over the crowd so that they could take photos or at times video of those in that crowd daring to speak up. The message was clear - no assembly - no speech.
While filming on the island someone suddenly called my name. There was John Cha - whom I had met earlier this year in Berkeley. We had spent a great evening with many other Korea activists at a dinner when the Commissioner was speaking. John is working on a book on separated families - the personal stories behind the politics. It was a familiar face and welcome relief among the sea of blue intimidation.
After being ordered off the island (shades of Albuquerque, but without the gun in my face), John and I and his son Joe headed back to Insadong close to my hotel where he knew of a local knock on the door drinking hole called aptly Pyunghwa mahn deul ki - Making of Peace. There I downed a whole pitcher...of water...while we swapped Korea stories. His son Joe was from San Francisco and knew of my stepson Sam’s work so I shared pics of his latest show ( http://arrestedmotion.com/2009/05/openings-sam-flores-exhibitionsubliminal-projects/) and he told me he had a Flores T-Shirt with him on that trip. Small world.

Bury my heart at Gyeongsan

Sat, 30 May 2009 07:53:51 -0700

Yesterday the country gathered to honor President Roh (Pronounced Noh by Koreans.) As you can see in the papers, it was a mass gathering with a sea of yellow (his campaign color) filling the streets outside the invite only funeral within the old palace’s walls.
Inside some tension arose wen a courageous Assemblyman, Back Won Woo, rushed at current President Lee shouting “Don’t lay the flowers. How dare you come here. You must apologize! You have murdered him in political retaliation.” As he was being taken away he cried out ”President Lee must apologize to President Roh.” And when Lee approached Roh’s family to offer his condolences, Roh’s son turned his face away. The cry heard throughout the week from his supporters filtered into the speech by his former prime minister saying “we’re sorry we abandoned you. We’re sorry we left you alone.”
It’s true the mass movements that ushered him into office had been relatively silent as his successor’s prosecutorial agents went after Roh with a vengeance. people in the movement, often stymied or frustrated by the new conservative government, realized they had let him down. Yet, Roh chose some degree of self-imposed exile at his southern house/farm and, thought becoming an active blogger, appeared to enjoy being out of the limelight of public office. Of course as with any politician his period in office was not always 100% in line with his supporters who often had trouble with his sending troops to Iraq, the dispossession of farmers from Pyongtaek for the U.S. military relocation and the signing of the Korean Free Trade Agreement. Yet, he boldly engaged the North and called on Washington to enter a peace treaty - something that fell silent in the Bush years.
I did not stay in the sea of people around the he funeral and would only return to Seoul Plaza at dusk. This would be the only time that a rally was allowed to take place on the historic plaza, as by nightfall hundreds of police buses would encircle the plaza and block access.
Instead the TRC took me a couple of hundred miles south to the Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine - of the ten (and largest to date) excavations sites from massacres by South Korean soldiers during the early Korean War. While not directly attributable to U.S. Soldiers, it was part of a mass execution of lefties policy carried out with U.S. knowledge. More than 100,000 died in this fashion according to the government sponsored TRC.
The Japanese had built the mine in 1937, but it had ceased operation by 1944. Today it is located behind a nursing home and borders a country club and gold course, with a small lake where people float by in boats not knowing or acknowledging that just below lie the bones of thousands of victims of horror. In fact several deep holes on the golf course were filled in during its construction and it was well-known in the area that all of these mine shafts and holes had been filled with bodies arriving by the truckload.
Two members of the local aggrieved families group accompanied us down the mine shaft. But first they took us into see some of the bones that have been gathered. Before the TRC took over, the family groups had gotten others to support their excavation. Many of the bones were used as examples to lobby hard for establishment of the TRC. In fact, one of the members with us had gone to New York with 8 others in 2001, when our group, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), whoa re holding the conference next week in Hanoi, helped put on a Tribunal on US War Crimes in Korea. (See Report at our site www.nlg,org/korea). They had raised the money for all their expenses and brought some of the pre-TRC evidence to reveal some of the hidden truth about the war.
I slowly circled the shed with its assorted trays of skulls, femurs, bullets and teeth. Only the femurs can be used for an accurate count. I have had my share of sites of grief. I have been to Hiroshima and felt its painful imprints. In South Africa I listened to stories of great torture and unspeakable crimes, and visited Mandela’s cell and the the stone quarries of Robbin island. In the North of Korea I felt the fire-charred walls of the bomb shelter in Sinchon, where women and children and other civilians were burnt to death when US troops placed dynamite and gasoline down the air vents of the shelters. Yet, here the trays and trays of bones brought home in graphic terms how “civilization” has shelves and shelves of tears. As my boys sing in their Generation Prodigy song: “Sad eyes are leakin’ tears. Too much pain the world today.”
I will never forget the skull with the clear bullet hole, amazingly preserved, like a message from the past - pleading with us to end the madness.

Upon opening the door to the mine a huge icy breeze shot out - as if in one of those horror films where suddenly you can see your breath just before the candle goes out. The locals used to call it the “ice cave” and in the heat of summer some would picnic at the opening oblivious to the horrors just below the surface.
We donned large rubber boots as water flows along the floor. Traveling deep into the mine, hands raised to guide us along the low lying ceiling, I glanced back and saw the light of the entrance fade in the distance. Two flashlights lit the path ahead.
When we reached the center we could see the vertical shaft where many of the bodies were dropped. A pond concealed the bones that were protruding from the wall below, as they were a few weeks from excavating the next more extensive layer. Some bones were found near the entrance which tells them that some people may have tried to crawl out after being shot and dropped. Our guide, a Ph’d anthropologist who heads the TRC excavation teams, used a stick to separate off the algae in the water to try and show us the bones below.
Gratefully we emerged into the bright light of the day and I took note of how the pine trees along the hillside seemed more alive and vibrant than when we entered. As we spoke with the family members the birds in the trees started singing a beautiful melody.
Back at their local office I met a woman who’s lost both her parents in the mine massacres. At ten she was an orphan. I held her hands as we walked up the stairs. She had lost her husband as well at age 30. Children of alleged leftists were denied work and hounded. But she still had such an infectious smile.
She told me she was all alone and that this struggle for justice was all she had. She wishes to honor the dead through an apology or acknowledgment and some form of reparations. It was clear that the aggrieved families bond had become her surrogate family.
It was here that the bones became live with flesh and broken hearts. On the train home I would listen to the rest of the guys’ “Sad Eyes” song and it was so healing :
You can’t erase,
what’s before today.
But you can change
so tomorrow’s not the same.
Whatever it is in life,
can’t sleep at night,
there’s time to make it right.

Truth and Reconciliation

Fri, 29 May 2009 07:49:11 -0700

Yesterday I had my formal visit to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. My work as a chair of the International Monitoring Project of the South African Truth and Reconciliation had been life changing. The effort to collectively heal the trauma of a nation trough truth telling and participation of all sides of conflict was genius. After being in a hearing where victims and perpetrators describe their motives, pain, regret and fears changed the way I performed as a lawyer - returning to integrate healing into my efforts on a much deeper level.
The TRC KOREA has a staff of over 250 people, but with a sunshine provision that phases it out next April (unless extended for two years which is unlikely under the current conservative post-Roh government). While their investigation reveals nearly 500 sites of mass graves, they have only so far been able to excavate at 10. With thousands of petitions from aggrieved families hoping for some truth and justice, they simply have not had the time to complete this important work. It’s like the sand in the hour glass from the Wizard of Oz - or perhaps like the one in Japan that I got with my tea telling me when it would be steeped. That one was movin’ fast.
However, what they have accomplished is so impressive and shocking. The fact that it became the first of its kind is Asia is very important, as the region has done little formally to deal with the often brutal past, be it Japanese Imperialism or the Korean War. Even more impressive is how it came to be. A courageous group of aggrieved families that I have been meeting camped out at the Diet and engaged in a major grassroots movement for several years to gather the bones (literally) and present them with their call for justice. This they did from Seoul to New York. Their efforts resulted in the creation of the TRC. (Check out the TRC work at www.jinsil.go.kr).
I met with Commissioner Dong-Choon Kim, Ph.D. (Standing Commissioner, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Korea). He and I had met and had a great dinner gathering of Korean activists in Berkeley back on April 1st when he spoke on “Uncovering the Hidden History of the Korean War. (I had filmed the talk and if you want to watch his description of what they are finding watch the film I put together at http://vimeo.com/user1683292 .
We also met with the International Liaison Kim Eun-Bok, and an investigator working on the Massacres that involved American Soldiers. I spoke about ways in which we could help from the international community and offered to develop some programs for students and lawyers to work on gathering documents from the US government. We also discussed the “Post period” of the TRC wherein they hope to have the government still support a private Foundation to continue some of the work, particular with a focus on reconciliation activities (monuments, museums, further outreach and a chance for more participants, as they actually had a small window that closed a couple of years ago to take petitions.) I remembered the impact of the public televised hearings in South Africa in breaking the denial and helping the nation heal some of the trauma. I urged them to find a way to record some oral histories from the aggrieved families and others to use in various ways. A possible project for us in the US could be to get some film students to take an internship for a month in Korea and also in the Korean American community to record the oral histories of the victims and US and ROK veterans and have it available for future TRC activity, scholars and filmmakers.
The US Investigator indicated that he was most interested in finding US pilots who had flown certain missions early in the war when mass bombing took place from US forces in the South, killing many civilians. I suggested that Veterans for Peace and some other Vet groups could run some simple ads in their outreach material calling upon veterans to become part of the healing efforts in Korea from the War by stepping forward and giving some statements that can help the Reconciliation process. Perhaps some carry a heavy load from what they saw or did in Korea and wish to contribute something to the situation before they die. The words of my Father-in-Law - he had been an officer in Korea during the war - sometime before he passed away, that “you would not believe some of the things that went on”, rang in my ears. He had never told my wife the details. Perhaps still living soldiers can speak about their experiences and it can have a healing effect on both sides of the sea.
The afternoon brought me first to film several interviews (as I have a desire if funding can emerge to do a short film on Korea and why we are where we are) and then to Dongguk University, a Buddhist founded campus, where I was scheduled to give a talk sponsored by some of the aggrieved families. It was an elaborate affair with greetings from the Dean of the Law School and others. When I arrived they had my paper on the RIght to Peace in Korea translated into Korean for the audience and above my head was a huge banner about the talk. I had casually suggested the topics I could speak upon and there they were in big white letters: South Africa TRC Experience and Legal Accountability for Civilian Massacres by the US during the Korean War. (Read my remarks at http://www.ubuntuworks.com/ubuntuworks/NLG_KPP.html)
After the talk and some heartfelt questions and comments about why they continue to seek justice, we adjourned to a dinner that they had planned for me...at a vegetarian restaurant. It was such a sweet gesture, as they had known of my eating needs. There we sat around a long table as each of them went around and gave a few comments of appreciation and about their visions for truth and reconciliation. We set up a formal contact to be in touch as I return to the US and set up an international legal team to help them secure some redress or more information from the US government.
Tomorrow is the mass funeral for President Roh Moo Hyun. A million people will be in the street. I will join it later in the day as I head to the Southern tip of Korea and down a mine shaft that held thousands of bodies from a massacre. Continuing to do the work that Roh represented is my tribute.