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It is evident that a nuclear-armed North Korea is exceedingly detrimental to U.S. and allied security interests. It also appears obvious that a military attack on North Korea is highly unlikely to succeed in eliminating Pyongyang’s nuclear capability. Given the configuration of North Korean military forces, military action surely would entail unacceptable destruction to Seoul and adjacent areas of South Korea. Given Chinese support to North Korea, sanctions alone cannot succeed. However dim the prospect for success, the only realistic option is to pursue dialogue and negotiations with North Korea to try to persuade the regime to give up its nuclear weapons and its production facilities to produce them. It clearly would have been preferable, and certainly more feasible, to reach agreement with North Korea before it succeeded in exploding a nuclear device in 2006. While North Korean intransigence and irresponsible behavior deserve much of the blame for the impasse, it also should be recognized that counter-productive U.S. actions towards North Korea undermined U.S. credibility and at the very least provided Pyongyang with ostensible justifications for its unwillingness to reach agreement to abandon its nuclear weapons program. It therefore may be useful to review prior U.S. negotiating strategies and tactics to illustrate lessons that should instruct future efforts to try to achieve North Korean agreement to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. Diplomacy with rogue regimes is not appeasement. When nations have conflicting positions on important matters of national interests, especially national security, it is prudent to attempt to negotiate agreements that can result in benefits to both sides. Engaging in dialogue or diplomacy with an opponent should not be regarded as unacceptable because it would “reward bad behavior.” Negotiations with North Korea were publicly characterized as such by high-level administration officials during President George W. Bush’s first term in office. This position in effect eliminated the only feasible opportunity to provide North Korea with positive incentives to give up its nuclear weapons program. Serious overtures responsibly delivered should not be summarily rejected. In the fall of 2002, Donald Gregg, former ambassador to South Korea during the Bush I presidency, and Donald Oberdorfer, former Washington Post reporter, delivered a message from Kim Jong IL to the White House: “If the United States recognizes our sovereignty and assures non-aggression, it is our view that we should be able to find a way to resolve the nuclear issue …. If the United States makes a bold decision, we will respond accordingly.” Not only did the administration ignore this and other overtures, but shortly thereafter it persuaded South Korea and Japan to join in stopping the delivery of fuel oil to North Korea as required by the 1994 Agreed Framework. Signed in October 1994, the Agreed Framework required Pyongyang to stop its nuclear weapons program in return for two nuclear power reactors and fuel oil from the United States until the reactors were completed. Soon after the message was ignored and deliveries of fuel oil terminated, North Korea ordered the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to leave the country, announced abrogation of the Agreed Framework and withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and began separating plutonium from its spent fuel rods. Inexplicably, the Bush administration did next to nothing in response to these actions. It is not sensible for either party to insist on preconditions to talks that are in fact the desired final outcome. During President Bush’s first term, it was the administration’s policy that a precondition to negotiating any concessions to North Korea was the “complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement” of its nuclear program. Needless to say, this demand was a non-starter, and it delayed any chance of progress in persuading North Korea to eliminate its nuclear program. Commitments made during negotiations should be scrupulously honored to demonstrate good faith and permit further progress. As part of the 1994 Agreed Framework that froze the North Korean nuclear weapons program, the U.S. committed, among other measures, to reduce barriers to trade and investment with North Korea within three months; to organize a consortium with South Korea and Japan to build two light water reactors in North Korea, the first to be completed by 2003; and to work toward normalization of relations. It was not until June of 2000 that the U.S. partially lifted its economic sanctions in a meaningless gesture to allow trade in consumer goods; the first indication of movement toward normalization of relations was Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s two-day visit to North Korea in October 2000; and concrete for the foundation of the first light water reactor was not poured until August 2002. In 2001, North Korea had threatened to re-start its reactor if the U.S did not provide compensation for the lengthy delay in building the first of the two light water reactors. In February 2008, four months after the conclusion of the Phase II agreement in Six Party Talks, a U.S. delegation to North Korea headed by former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sig Hecker, issued a report of its findings. The report concluded that North Korea had received only a small fraction of the promised fuel oil and equipment to repair its electrical grid; the U.S. had not removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, as promised; and North Korean companies were still barred from commerce with the U.S. under the Trading with the Enemy Act, despite promises to remove that restriction. The report stated that North Korea was willing to carry out its obligations to disable key nuclear facilities once these issues were resolved. The psychological aspects of pronouncements and actions during the negotiating process should not be ignored. Gratuitous threats and insults can impede progress in negotiations, especially with a defensive country like North Korea with its poor economy and resultant sensibilities. In January 2002, President Bush anointed North Korea as a charter member of the “axis of evil.” The classified Nuclear Posture Review, leaked in March 2002, stated that the U.S. reserved the right to employ nuclear weapons “preemptively” against North Korea and four other states to prevent their developing nuclear weapons. This in effect provided North Korea with an additional incentive to develop a nuclear deterrent. On 13 March 2002, North Korea responded that it would not remain a passive onlooker to these threats, but would take strong countermeasures against them. In July 2002, in response to a North Korean request for a meeting of foreign ministers, President Bush refused, calling Kim Jong IL a “pygmy” and a “spoiled child at the dinner table,” comments hardly designed to foster North Korean receptivity and cooperation. Name calling is no substitute for diplomacy. It is essential to focus on the main objective of negotiations and not allow lesser tactical considerations to block progress. The fourth round of Six Party talks produced a milestone Joint Statement, signed on 19 September 2005, which included provisions for “coordinated steps … in a phased manner in line with the principle of ‘commitment for commitment, action for action’.” The U.S. affirmed in the statement that it would respect North Korean sovereignty, yet took action immediately thereafter to freeze about $25 million in North Korean deposits in Banco Delta Asia in Macao, which it accused of laundering ill-acquired North Korean funds. Regarding the action as an attack on its sovereignty, North Korea suspended its participation in the Six Party talks. Pyongyang stated in April 2006 that it would return to the Six Party talks if the U.S. lifted its freeze on the funds in the Macao bank, but the U.S. instead tightened financial sanctions on North Korea. On 3 October 2006, Pyongyang warned that it would test a nuclear weapon; six days later, it conducted its first nuclear weapons test. This action prompted the U.S. to be more forthcoming. Six Party talks resumed in February 2007 after a 16 month hiatus with parallel US-North Korea talks on the issue of frozen funds. The Six Parties signed an agreement on ways to implement the September 2005 Joint Statement and established five working groups to deal with various issues of concern, while the U.S. agreed to resolve the funds issue in 30 days as part of the parallel talks. On 10 April, the U.S. agreed to release the money; and finally, on 25 June, North Korea announced that the funds had been received. Freezing the funds accomplished nothing except impeding negotiations for some 20 months. Vacillation and unilateral changes to agreements undermine a nation’s reputation and credibility in the negotiating process. In October 2007, a joint statement was released on mutual commitments to be fulfilled during Phase II of the Six Party talks with North Korea. Among other actions, North Korea agreed to disclose full information on its plutonium program, but there were no provisions in the Phase II agreement for verifying the declaration. In May 2008, North Korea released extensive documentation of its plutonium program, as promised; and in June, the North submitted to Beijing a declaration of its nuclear inventory. Though questioned by some, North Korea’s claim that it had separated only 38 kilograms of plutonium was in the range of U.S. estimates. The U.S. then began steps to remove North Korea from its list of terrorism sponsoring states while Pyongyang imploded a cooling tower at its plutonium producing Yongbyon nuclear plant. In a speech on 18 June 2002, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted U.S. intent to unilaterally alter the Phase II agreement by insisting on verification of the North Korean documentation before the U.S. would fulfill its Phase II commitments to de-list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism and relax sanctions on North Korea under the Trading with the Enemy Act. In the following month, the U.S. proposed a stringent draft verification protocol covering all elements of North Korea’s nuclear programs, including uranium enrichment, and repeated its unwillingness to fulfill its Phase II commitments until the verification demands were met. On 1 October 2008, the U.S. submitted a less intrusive draft verification protocol; but several days later, the U.S. reversed itself again by insisting on the earlier and more stringent version as a condition for continuing the delivery of energy aid also promised in the Phase II agreement. Following delivery of heavy fuel oil in December, South Korea and Japan joined the U.S. in suspending fuel oil deliveries. In April 2009, North Korea formally withdrew from the Six Party talks, ejected U.S. and International Atomic Energy Agency monitors and threatened to bolster its nuclear deterrent. On 25 May 2009, North Korea conducted its second nuclear test. It is impossible to know whether U.S. failure to adhere to its commitments was the proximate cause of subsequent North Korean actions, but it certainly provided North Korea with a justifiable pretext. Where should we go from here? It still appears obvious that the only way to contain, reduce and eventually eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs is through dialogue and diplomacy. No progress can be made with a continuation of a strategy of “strategic patience,” which is a formula for doing nothing to resolve the problem. At the same time, the U.S. must defer to its ally South Korea, which has been the victim of North Korean attacks on its warship Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, killing a total of 50 South Koreans. Seoul has proposed direct talks with North Korea before it will agree to the resumption of Six Party talks. China has stated that Six Party format should be resumed after inter-Korean talks followed by bi-lateral talks between Washington and North Korea. Yet it appears that the U.S. may be falling back to the policy of setting preconditions on North Korea before re-engaging in dialogue. On 16 April 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-Hwan called on North Korea to “demonstrate its genuine determination in denuclearization with actions,” without specifying what would be required. In March of this year a senior Obama administration official went so far as to state, without attribution, that since North Korea’s top priority is bi-lateral discussions with the U.S., we should refuse to accommodate any such request – a formula for blocking resumption of the Six Party talks. It is clear that North Korea has engaged in a series of dangerous and provocative actions that caused the death of innocents and threatened peace on the Korean peninsula. Yet it also must be acknowledged that American actions in many cases have been counter-productive and have not helped to defuse dangerous situations or to lead to a negotiated solution on North Korea’s nuclear program. It is important for the United States to open the channels of communication not only to pursue the objective of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula but also to prevent the tensions between the two Koreas from escalating into an armed conflict. Strategic patience is a formula for continued deadlock and danger. *Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr. (USA, ret.) is Chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation where his work focuses on nuclear nonproliferation, missile defense, Iraq, Afghanistan, military policy, nuclear terrorism, and related national security issues. Gard has written for well-known periodicals that focus on military and international affairs and lectured widely at U.S. and international universities and academic conferences.

In a matter of weeks, Congress could vote on the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. If passed, the Korea-U.S. FTA is predicted to have profound consequences on jobs, workers’ rights, environmental protections, the U.S. trade deficit, banking and financial services, healthcare, agriculture, and both governments’ ability to pass public health and anti-discrimination laws. Yet here in the United States, there is almost no word about it in the media and no public debate. Large corporations and the South Korean Embassy have been spending millions of dollars to lobby for the FTA while the U.S. people, a majority of whom opposes such deals, are not even aware that the largest trade deal since NAFTA could be passed before mid-summer. It is critically important that we take the time now to learn about this agreement and act. The Korea-U.S. FTA was negotiated in 2006 and signed in 2007 by Presidents Bush and Roh. It was renegotiated by the Obama and Lee administrations in December 2010. Negotiations were closed to the public while hundreds of corporate advisers were invited in to shape the deal. Because it was signed under Fast-Track authority, Congress has almost no opportunity to engage in meaningful debate about the FTA’s provisions, but must vote up or down within a fixed period of time. The Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, like most FTAs, fundamentally does two things: it reduces tariffs; and it restricts the ability of governments to regulate corporate activity. While many of the largest corporations in both countries stand to gain, Korean corporations will profit more from tariff reductions, whereas U.S. corporations will benefit by weakening democratic checks on them. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the Korea-U.S. FTA will cause a loss of 159,000 jobs in the United States. Even the U.S. International Trade Commission, a federal agency, predicts that the deal will worsen the U.S.’s global trade deficit. Despite this, the Obama and Lee administrations have been pushing strongly for this agreement. The South Korean government has been actively lobbying members of the U.S. Congress and funding a massive public relations campaign to convince Korean Americans that the FTA is good for Korea and good for America, plastering Facebook and the Korean media with ads, and putting pressure on Korean American public figures to speak out in support of the deal. In fact, the FTA is good for neither Americans nor Koreans. It is good only for a narrow group of transnational corporations, but will be disastrous for workers, consumers, small family farmers, the environment, and democratic process—in both countries. This article addresses the likely impact of the FTA, if passed, in Korea. Farmers Many of us remember Lee Kyung Hae, the Korean farmer and Parliamentarian who took his life in protest at the 2003 WTO meeting in Cancun. Lee climbed up the chain-link fence intended to keep protestors away from the official talks and stabbed himself in the heart. He was wearing a sign that read “WTO Kills Farmers.” Lee’s death became a rallying cry for millions of peasants experiencing the same onslaught caused by so-called free trade, and galvanized them to fight even harder against the WTO. Korean farmers are so militant because for them, this is a struggle between life and death. This FTA—because of the stark differences between Korean and U.S. farms—will drive most farmers to ruin. Korea has only 4.2 million acres of farmland, compared with the US’s 434 million. The average farm size in Korea is 1.2 acres, compared with the U.S.’s 71 acres. The National Family Farm Coalition, an alliance of American small family farmers, opposes the deal because only large U.S. agribusiness corporations will benefit. Meanwhile, the Korean Peasants League estimates that if the FTA is implemented, Korean agricultural production will decrease by 45 percent and force roughly half of Korean farmers off their land. Korean farmers stand to lose their land, livelihoods and lives, and Korea stands to lose its rural farming tradition and culture. Workers and financial deregulation Korean workers are famed for their militancy around the world. It is important, however, to understand the conditions facing most workers in Korea, which drive them to be so fierce. Of all OECD countries, Korean men and women work the longest hours. In Korea, 87% of men and 77% of women work over 40 hours a week. While labor laws are on the books, they are widely and casually disregarded. One of the most dangerous parts of this FTA for people in general and workers specifically is its investment chapter. The deal was negotiated in 2006, at the height of the deregulatory fervor that brought on our current economic recession. The deal grants unprecedented freedoms to investment banks and financial corporations to manipulate the economy. In the late 1990s, many in our Korean American community immigrated to the U.S. because of the Asian financial crisis that ravaged Korea’s economy. Koreans not only lost jobs and savings, they lost significant labor protections while their quality of life and work prospects drastically declined. Even as Korea’s overall economy eventually improved, the lives of ordinary Koreans did not. More people became irregular workers, earning half the salary of regular workers and without benefits or pensions. In 2000, 40 percent of Korean workers were irregular workers; by 2008, that number had grown to 60 percent. Of that irregular workforce, 67.5 percent are women workers. Korea also has the largest gender wage gap of all OECD countries. Most labor economists say that this FTA will only intensify these trends and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, at a time when both governments are cutting social welfare programs. Furthermore, neither the U.S. nor Korea has ratified ILO Conventions 87 and 98, which are core international labor standards guaranteeing the freedom of association, the right to organize, and the right to collective bargaining. The Korea-U.S. FTA contains a “rule of origin” provision, which allows up to 65% of the foreign content of many manufactured goods to be eligible for tariff-free treatment. This 65% rule means that many jobs will not go to Korean or U.S. workers. Instead, transnational corporations will seek to outsource production to neighboring countries with lower wages and weaker labor standards, such as China and Mexico. The majority of Korean manufacturers are small-scale businesses, and already the subcontracting practices between them and large chaebols (conglomerates) are unfavorable. Furthermore, the FTA’s investment chapter bans “performance requirements,” which means that governments can’t mandate that a certain percentage of local workers be employed or that materials be sourced locally. Environment The FTA has also been used to dismantle Korea’s environmental and public health laws. During talks, Korea agreed to a side deal, which basically overturned its 2000 genetic engineering labeling law that kept genetically modified organisms (GMOs) out of Korea’s food supply. By 2008, Korea had approved 102 GMOs for import as feed or food, 70 percent from the U.S. firms Monsanto, Dupont and Dow Chemical. The Korean government also agreed to lower national emissions standards to accommodate the import of less fuel-efficient and more polluting U.S. vehicles. At a time when the Obama administration should be advocating for more progressive energy policies that restrict greenhouse gas emissions, it is undermining other nations’ efficiency standards. The FTA would also make the passage of future environmental conventions related to international trade more difficult because both countries must agree to them. Democracy Finally, if passed, the FTA has and will continue to seriously undermine democracy in both Korea and the United States. In Korea, perhaps the most egregious example is the dismantling of Korea’s universal healthcare system. U.S. pharmaceutical companies are eager to seize the opportunity to break open Korea’s $8 billion pharmaceutical market, of which they have already cornered $2.6 billion. The FTA has the potential to destroy Korea’s public health care system: It would force open Korea’s list of reimbursable drugs to include non-generics; it would establish an “independent” body with industry representatives determining which drugs can get be reimbursed and influencing which already existing public-health laws can be overturned; and it extends patents, making it more difficult for generic medications to reach the market and easier for U.S. pharmaceutical companies to sue generic drug manufacturers, even after a patent expires. All these changes combined would likely make Korea’s health care system completely unaffordable and pave the way for it to become increasingly privatized. U.S. drug prices won’t be affected since pharmaceutical prices are already set by insurance companies, but if signed, the FTA will certainly reduce our chances in the U.S. of ever getting universal healthcare and negotiating government-set price controls. What has been the resistance to the FTA in Korea? The resistance peaked in 2008 after the current President Lee Myung Bak, a former Hyundai CEO, agreed to overturn Korea’s limited ban on U.S. beef, which was put into place after American cattle was contaminated with mad cow disease in 2003. This sparked massive protests—over a million Koreans took to the streets, including teens and housewives—unprecedented since the pro-democracy demonstrations in the 1980s. Despite widespread public opposition, the Lee administration is still pursuing the FTA. In a recent poll conducted by Hankyoreh newspaper, more than half of those surveyed opposed the FTA. Only 36% had a favorable opinion, and 70% felt it was inappropriate that the Korean government renegotiated the trade deal in December, just days after the Yeongpyongdo military crisis with North Korea. Sixty percent were “concerned that Korean government policies will be diminished.” And they are right. Korean legal scholars have found that the FTA violates 169 Korean laws. To silence the opposition, the Lee administration has turned to authoritarian practices reminiscent of past dictatorships. It has used violent police force against peaceful assemblies, banned public assembly against the FTA, and issued arrest warrants for more than 170 civil society leaders who organized against the FTA. The Lee government has also blocked anti-FTA advertising from airing on TV while running its own pro-FTA commercials. Korea’s National Human Rights Commission has found that the government’s tactics are inconsistent with the Korean Constitution. FTAs are fundamentally undemocratic and undermine farmers, workers, small businesses, and the right of people through governments to enact laws that govern their health and environment. This is why the Korea-U.S. FTA is opposed by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the AFL-CIO; by the Korean Peasants League and the National Family Farm Coalition; and by thousands of grassroots and advocacy organizations in Korea and the United States. Finally, we should note that FTAs are intended to consolidate corporate power, and if the Korea-U.S. FTA passes, it will make the passage of the other FTAs much more likely. We need to come together to fight this FTA and the Colombia and Panama FTAs as well. For more information and to take action:     · Korean Americans for Fair Trade     · Korea Policy Institute     · Global Trade Watch     · Citizens Trade Coalition *Christine Ahn is Executive Director and Seung Hye Suh is a board member of the Korea Policy Institute. Both are active in the national network Korean Americans for Fair Trade.

Every so often, we are reminded that the Korean War is not over. Typically, jolts to the memory come in the form of heated spectacles or near-spectacles that flash into view and then fade away. Last year, we witnessed the sinking of a South Korean warship and an artillery exchange off the coast of North Korea. More recently, it has come to light that the South Korean military mistakenly fired upon a South Korean commercial airliner believing it to be of North Korean origin. For war-weary readers, these international headlines, while alarming, do not have the tug-and-pull of the latest news about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, hot zones of current U.S. intervention. We might be tempted to reason: hasn’t volatility long been the substrate of intra-Korean relations? What does this constant “code-red” in Korea have to do with us, anyway? As historian, Bruce Cumings, points out, the Korean War marked “the palpable birth of interventionist policy abroad and a state apparatus to go with it.” Inaugurating permanent war as a feature of our foreign policy, the Korean War serves as an ominous model for our current wars in the Middle East and North Africa. We are, to be clear, still at war with North Korea, yet stateside, we have little first-hand grasp of the impact of the unfinished war. Moreover, signs that the war is still actively being waged are not always visibly “hot.” To wit: last week, we learned that the House of Representatives voted to bar humanitarian food aid to North Korea. Ed Royce (R-CA), the policy’s architect, has stated, “the aid we provide would prop up Kim Jong-il’s regime, a brutal and dangerous dictatorship.” Quoting a North Korean defector—a source of intelligence about which we, post-9/11, should be cautious—Royce has argued that giving food aid to North Korea “is the same as providing funding for North Korea’s nuclear program.” Royce doesn’t mention that the defector in question, Kim Duk Hong, offered the following recommendation during the Bush years: “If we really want to destroy Kim Jong Il, we should be brave. We shouldn’t be afraid of war.” The intention, here, is plain: through hard or soft means, regime change. In stark contrast to advocacy for emergency food aid from the UN’s World Food Program and Mercy Corps, respected humanitarian relief organizations with longstanding on-the-ground programs in North Korea, this House amendment cynically leverages food to crush the North Korean regime. Having suffered devastating frosts and floods, with an estimated 50-80% of all winter crops lost, North Korea has taken the unprecedented step of asking the international community for food for its people. The current situation, according to David Austin of Mercy Corps, has gone from “chronic to acute,” with North Koreans resorting to “alternative food,” an admixture of wild grasses, twigs, straw, and corn gruel, to create a semblance of fullness in their stomachs. As WFP and Mercy Corps attest, food aid can be tracked from entry into North Korea to arrival at the household level. Indeed, the UN’s policy clearly specifies “no access, no aid.” Never a cause célèbre to begin with, however, humanitarian food aid to North Korea has been hampered by U.S. aversion to Pyongyang. We must be clear on this point: the miasma of unfinished war should not cloud our conscience. Following a recent visit to North Korea, former President Jimmy Carter—who has described the deleterious impact of U.S. sanctions against North Korea as “fifty years of deprivation” in which “the people [have] suffer[ed] the most”—spoke out about the necessity of a moral distinction between politics and humanitarianism: “to deliberately withhold food aid to the North Korean people because of political or military issues not related is really indeed a human rights violation.” Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, the head of Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian relief agency, also predicted that “there is going to be starvation, malnutrition. There will be death.” He reminded Americans that North Koreans “want to have peace yet we know so little about them.” This June 25th marks sixty-one years of war with North Korea. After the “good fight” of World War II, no war that the U.S. has waged abroad has been triumphant, let alone popular. If these wars have stimulated the economy, the benefits have not been evenly or broadly felt. At a time when we are mired in several hot conflicts around the world, we must urgently envision peace as the only sustainable and ethical long-term option. To be clear: the people of North Korea are the collateral damage of any regime-change policy that wields food as a weapon. This is a pyrrhic victory of the worst kind. *Christine Hong is a KPI fellow and a professor of Asian American and critical Pacific Rim Studies at UC Santa Cruz and a steering committee member of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea.

With the passing of HR 2112 last week, prohibiting U.S. food assistance to North Korea, the U.S. House of Representatives has cruelly voted to use food as a weapon. The only thing that can result from such an action is increased suffering for millions of North Koreans — including many children who are already malnourished. North Korea, which was slowly recovering from natural disasters and the famine of the mid-90s, was hit by a devastating winter and heavy rains. According to Bernd Göken, of the German relief organization, Cap Anamur, who visited this spring, “The people are starving. They have nothing left to eat.” Representative Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who drafted the measure prohibiting food aid, imagines that starving North Korean children will somehow bring down the government and its weapons programs. But this kind of food politics does not work. During the worst part of the mid-90s famine in North Korea, when hundreds of thousands were dying, the U.S. delayed providing food aid seemingly in hopes that the government would collapse. The Kim Jong Il government is still there, with no signs of collapse. There is a desperate need for direct diplomacy and negotiations with the North Korean government over their nuclear weapon systems and the state of war that continues to exist. But withholding food aid from the people of North Korea is not the answer. As former President Jimmy Carter said after his recent visit to Pyongyang, “to deliberately withhold food aid to the North Korean people because of political or military issues not related is really indeed a human rights violation.” This cynical bill, which lethally politicizes humanitarian aid, now goes to the Senate, and it is up to leaders there to do the right thing–namely, to furnish food aid to those who desperately need it. *JT Takagi is a KPI Board member and also works with the National Campaign to End the Korean War.

Update: On June 29, the National Assembly passed the coalition bill with 188 yes votes, 0 no votes, and 4 abstentions signaling unanimous support for mother/adoptee-led reform. According to Korea Joongang Daily, the bill’s main opposition included “adoption agencies and prospective adoptive parents, who were concerned the law would discourage adoption.” However, the bill’s passage affirms mothers and adoptees as primary stakeholders in adoption policy and experts on their own lives. This sea change in South Korea’s approach to mother-adoptee rights will gain even more momentum with the bill’s full implementation, which will put South Korea on track to begin reconciling its painful adoption record. South Korea is on the verge of changing its reputation as the world’s leading baby exporter to a world leader in grassroots adoption reform. The first-ever birth mother, unwed mother, and adoptee co-authored bill is moving toward a National Assembly vote with government sponsorship. Under current South Korean law, prospective adoptive parents don’t need to undergo criminal background checks. Moreover, agencies counsel unwed mothers, whose children comprise almost 90 percent of adoption placements, to sign illegal paperwork consenting to adoption even though their children are still in their wombs. The new bill proposes urgent revisions to change these realities and stipulates a court process for adoption, a cooling off period for child surrender without duress, and the documentation of identities, among other provisions. “What makes this reform effort distinctive is that [it] is neither the result of a top-down process nor a powerful adoptive parent lobby,” says Tammy Ko Robinson, coalition member and professor at Hangyang University. “This bill is co-authored and informed by those of us who have been directly affected by this law.” The bill is a coalition effort that includes Adoptee Solidarity Korea (ASK), Korean Unwed Mothers and Families Association (KUMFA), and several other groups. “[The revision of the special adoption law] is an opportunity for South Korea to fully enter the 21st century as not just an economically developed nation, but as a socially developed one,” says ASK representative Kim Stoker. “It’s time for the government to end its outdated attitude toward international adoption and make concrete steps toward protecting the rights of its children and the mothers who give birth to them.” The Baby Trade With the world’s longest and oldest overseas adoption program, South Korea has sent an estimated 220,000 children to 14 receiving countries. Korean adoptees thus comprise the largest global child displacement in history, more than double the Chinese adoptee diaspora. According to Kevin Ost-Vollmers, former staff of Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota and Children’s Home Society & Family Services, “The number [of overseas adoptions] is declining; however, the fact is that many Americans adopt Korean children. The money received by the Korean agencies is significant.” Despite promoting domestic adoption since 2005, South Korea remains a top five sending country to the United States accounting for almost 13 percent of all 2010 overseas adoptions. Adoptions from South Korea generate $35 million annually with a single overseas adoption today averaging $15,000. By contrast, the Korean government provided an unwed mother in 2009 with only 50,000 won (about $48) per month to care for her child. The money from one overseas adoption would pay an unwed mother’s family subsidy for 25 years of her child’s life. Although the total revenue generated from an estimated 220,000 children is unknown, today’s prices suggest $3.3 billion as a rough sketch. A fuller picture would include unreported cash donations to strengthen inter-agency relationships leading to continuous child referrals, as well as the cost savings associated with exporting the children’s and their families’ social welfare needs. South Korea spends only 6.9 percent of its GDP on social welfare — the least among OECD nations. It allocated only 0.09 percent of its 2009 fiscal budget to support its children. The Human Costs Current law privileges expediency over mother and child rights and provides meager oversight of adoption providers. The Korean government is sometimes not even involved in adoption, and sales of children have taken place over the Internet. Need seems to justify speed. Mission to Promote Adoption in Korea argues that there are annually thousands of homeless orphans in desperate need of families, but behind 9 out of 10 adoptions, there are unwed mothers whose families are torn apart. Caught in adoption pipeline, many of these mothers do not want to surrender their children but have little choice. Hyong-sook Choi, a founding leader of KUMFA and mother of a four-year-old son, describes coercive agency counseling practices: “In the instance of one facility that provides support for unwed mothers’ counseling, for rearing and for raising . . . about 82 percent [of unwed mothers choose family preservation], while only 37 percent of unwed mothers who give birth in facilities run by adoption agencies decide to rear their children.” South Korea has the world’s lowest birthrate with unwed mothers constituting only 1-1.25 percent of live births. Four out of five unwed mothers are aged 25 and over. Some of the KUMFA mothers are business owners or college graduates. As one mother mentioned to me, “[this cultural stigma] cuts off mothers’ arms and legs.” It further reduces unwed mothers to wombs creating orphans. “Adoption agencies often say that adoption is ‘giving birth to an abandoned child through one’s heart,'” says Choi. “What kind of mother can send her child easily? Our hearts are broken when we hear that.” Unwed mothers also tell of not being allowed to see their children because social workers arrive shortly after birth to take them away thus preventing mothers from changing their minds. When mothers attempt to get their children back, they are charged healthcare and foster care expenses— costs for which the agencies receive government subsidies. Mothers oftentimes are unable to pay this child ransom. Some birth mothers have said that agencies require fathers’ signatures in addition to theirs on documents rescinding adoption consent— a stipulation that was not needed for child surrender. When birth mothers have asked for information about their children, agencies have refused, claiming that doing so violates the adoptive family’s privacy and telling birth mothers to wait until adoptees turn 18. However, there are no laws sealing or regulating adoption files, which are technically agency private property. The agencies could burn the records if they wanted. Leanne Lieth, an artist and founder of Korean Adoptees for Fair Records Access, explains the challenges impeding adoptee information seeking: “Access to our Korean records is dependent upon whether the adoptee knows that there are duplicate or original records in Korea, that those records may have additional information . . . and that the adoptee has the will and tenacity to investigate across continents and languages with the often uncooperative and hostile Korean international adoption agencies. This process is arbitrary, inconsistent, and can drag out for years.” In 1995-2005, the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family reported that 78,000 adoptees initiated a birth search, but only 2.7 percent reunited. Birth searching has revealed structural abuses such as falsified “orphan identities” as well as kidnapping by the orphanage. Parents return to claim their children only to discover that the orphanage forwarded them on to the agency. However, South Korean law disallows a third party transfer of parental rights, and before 2008, only a father could add or remove children from a family registry. Turning a child into a paper orphan violates her/his basic right to identity as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. “Let us acknowledge that each and every human being deserves to know about themselves and that their information should not be held hostage by a private interest,” says Lieth. “This is our human right. It should be our civil right.” Counting on Now Over the almost 60 years of South Korea’s adoption history, 220,000 adopted and forgotten children equal 220,000 birth mothers equal 220,000 families separated by deeply-rooted discrimination, not always by choice. By making the new adoption bill law, South Korea can begin reconciling its painful adoption past by changing its current systematic placement of Korean children through the erasure of their identities and coercion of their mothers. In this way, South Korea can work to set new precedents in adoption justice. If South Korea seizes this opportunity, it will be due to adoptees, birth mothers, and unwed mothers not giving up on South Korea despite South Korea giving up on them. “We still have to see, but I’m hopeful that the plenary vote will indicate a collective realization,” says Professor Robinson. “During the next 50 years, why not focus on developing a model for others to emulate in how to protect its children’s rights as citizens with families?” The future belongs to South Korea to pioneer. May it begin now to count all of its diverse families as equal and beyond price. *Jennifer Kwon Dobbs is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, a Korea Policy Institute fellow, and an assistant professor of English and director of American Racial and Multicultural Studies at St. Olaf College.

In May, three former U.S. soldiers admitted to dumping hundreds of barrels of chemical substances, including Agent Orange, at Camp Carroll in South Korea in 1978. This explosive news was a harsh reminder to South Koreans of the high costs and lethal trail left behind by the ongoing U.S. military presence. “We basically buried our garbage in their backyards,” U.S. veteran Steve House told a local news station in Phoenix, Arizona. A heavy equipment operator in the Army, House said he was ordered to dig a ditch the length of a city block to bury 55-gallon drums marked with bright yellow and orange labels: “Province of Vietnam, Compound Orange.” House said that the military buried 250 drums of defoliants stored on the base, which served then as the U.S. Army Material Support Center in Korea. Later they buried chemicals transported from other places on as many as 20 occasions, totaling up to 600 barrels. “This stuff was just seeping through the barrels,” said Robert Travis, another veteran now living in West Virginia. “There was a smell, I couldn’t describe it, just sickly sweet.” Immediately after wheeling the barrels from a warehouse at Camp Carroll, Travis developed a severe rash; other health problems emerged later. He said there were “approximately 250 drums, all OD (olive drab) green… with a stripe around the barrel dated 1967 for the Republic of Vietnam.” A third soldier, Richard Cramer of Illinois, said that his feet went numb as he buried barrels of Agent Orange at Camp Carroll. He spent two months in a military hospital and now has swollen ankles and toes, chronic arthritis, eye infections, and impaired hearing. “If we prove what they did was wrong,’ says Cramer, “they should ‘fess up and clean it up and take care of the people involved.” The three veterans are now seriously ill. Steve House suffers from diabetes and neuropathy, two out of 15 diseases officially linked to Agent Orange. “This is a burden I’ve carried around for 35 years,” House, aged 54, told Associated Press reporters. “I just recently found out that I have to have some major surgery… If I’m going to check out, I want to do it with a clean slate.” The Missing Barrels A deadly herbicide, Agent Orange is widely known for its use during the Vietnam War when the U.S. military sprayed an estimated 10 million gallons on forests and rice fields. In Korea, the U.S. military used Agent Orange along the de-militarized zone to defoliate the forests and prevent North Koreans from crossing the border. “The United States Army has acknowledged that pesticides, herbicides and other toxic compounds were buried at Camp Carroll,” writes New York Times reporter Mark MacDonald. Although the chemicals and about 60 tons of contaminated soil were purportedly dug up and removed, “the Army is still searching its records to discover what became of the excavated chemicals and soil.” According to a February 25, 2011 report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Far East Command, the U.S. military has discovered evidence of a burial site within Camp Carroll measuring 83 feet long, 46 feet wide, and 20 feet deep. It confirmed contamination on the base with high concentrations of highly carcinogenic perchloroethylene (PCE), pesticides, heavy metals, and components of dioxin. According to Hankyoreh, the report also cites testimony from a Korean employee, Gu Ja-yeong, who worked at Camp Carroll and participated in burying drums, cans, and bottles containing chemicals in 1974 and 1975. The report recommends monitoring once or twice a year and removing the soil from the burial site because ground-water chloroform levels were 24 times the South Korean standard for drinkable water. Chloroform is a carcinogen that can cause liver, kidney, and nervous system problems. Two earlier environmental studies of Camp Carroll, commissioned by U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK), were not shared with the South Korean government until the recent whistle-blowing by the U.S. vets. In 1992, a Woodward-Clyde report confirmed the burial of toxic chemicals. “Many potential sources of soil and groundwater contamination still exist at the base and the presence of contaminated groundwater has been documented,” the report stated. “From 1979 to 1980, approximately 6,100 cubic feet (40 to 60 tons) of soil were reportedly excavated from this area and disposed offsite.” Samsung C&T reported on a second survey in 2004. This also found soil samples from the base contained pesticides and dioxins: “Hazardous materials and waste, including solvents, petroleum oils and lubricants, pesticides, herbicides and other industrial chemicals have been used and stored onsite for over 40 years.” The Korea Herald reported, “more than 100 kinds of harmful chemicals including pesticides and herbicides were buried.” Hankyoreh reported that the Samsung survey found “quantities of highly carcinogenic trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE) at 31 and 33 times the standard levels of potable water, respectively.” The 2004 report estimated that it would cost $98.3 million to remove all the contaminated soil from Camp Carroll. Both the 1992 and 2004 reports state that a significant amount of soil had been excavated, but they differ as to when this actually happened. According to the Korea Times, the 2004 report concluded, “The fate of the excavated drums is unknown”. So what happened to the buried chemicals? Camp Carroll is located in Waegwan, about 20 miles north of Daegu. “If Agent Orange was dumped in 1978, the drums may have already eroded. And the toxic substance could have contaminated the soil and underground water near the area,” said Chung In-cheol of Green Korea United. “The U.S. camp is situated just 630 meters away from the Nakdong River,” says Chung, “which is the water source for major cities like Daegu and Busan.” Cancer rates in the Chilgok area near Camp Carroll were up to 18.3 percent higher than the national average between 2005 and 2009, according to Statistics Korea’s website, and mortality rates for nervous system diseases were above the national average. Soil and Water Contamination Environmental contamination on U.S. bases in South Korea has been a source of contention between Washington and Seoul. Since 2001, South Korea has spent $3.4 million to clean up 2,000 tons of oil-contaminated ground water near Yongsan Army Garrison and Camp Kim. The South Korean military is now conducting environmental tests at 85 former U.S. bases that were returned to South Korean control between 1990 and 2003. With the latest revelations, the South Korean public is calling for a full-scale assessment of the environmental damage of all U.S. military facilities in Korea. Under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the two nations, the United States has no responsibility to clean up the land it uses for bases. Some advocates are seeking a revision of the SOFA to hold Washington responsible for the contamination it causes. After House spoke out, the USFK and the South Korean government assured the public that they would research his claims, though they disagreed about the method of investigation. The USFK preferred to use ground-penetrating radar (GPR) while the South Korean government insisted on sampling the soil and underground water. According to Hankyoreh, GPR can test for foreign matter such as canisters containing harmful materials, but it cannot verify soil or water contamination. “The South Korean government has repeatedly stated that this kind of investigation is incapable of resolving the questions harbored by the population,” said a Ministry of the Environment official. The joint ROK-U.S. team is using ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity devices at 41 sites since the news broke in late May. According to a team official, the USFK is not just worried about dioxin, but other toxic and carcinogenic materials, which soil and water tests can detect. Indeed, investigation of an underground stream and groundwater near Camp Carroll has shown traces of PCE, a known carcinogen that attacks the nervous system and can cause reproduction problems. The Chilgok regional government sealed the well upon learning from the joint Korea-U.S. team that the amount of PCE exceeded the level for acceptable drinking water. Lessons from Vietnam Agent Orange contains the deadly chemical dioxin, a byproduct of industrial processes involving chlorine or bromine. Decades after its use in Vietnam, there is still great controversy about its effects on human and environmental health, despite the fact grandchildren of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians have been born with abnormalities attributable to their ancestors’ exposure. In 1995, Arnold Schecter and Le Cao Dai of the Vietnam Red Cross published research findings showing “that high levels of dioxin contamination persist in the blood, tissue, and breast milk of Vietnamese living in sprayed areas.” Schecter tested soil and human tissue samples from people living near the former Bien Hoa U.S. military base where 7,500 gallons of Agent Orange were spilled in 1970. In 1998, Hatfield Consultants published the results of a four-year study of soil and water samples in the A Luoi valley near the Ho Chi Minh trail and the site of three former U.S. Special Forces bases where Agent Orange was stored and sprayed. Working with Vietnamese scientists, Hatfield found “a consistent pattern of food chain contamination by Agent Orange dioxin… which included soil, fishpond sediment, cultured fish, ducks and humans.” They found dioxin levels in some breast milk samples to be dozens of times higher than maximum levels recommended by the World Health Organization. Although Vietnamese officials and scientists believe that many thousands of people are victims of Agent Orange, “remarkably little has been proved with scientific certainty,” Robert Dreyfuss wrote in 2000. The Institute of Medicine reports “strong evidence that exposures to herbicides is associated with five serious diseases, including Hodgkin’s disease and a form of leukemia… and ‘suggestive’ evidence that herbicides might cause birth defects and cancer.” A major factor limiting serious research into dioxin contamination is the high costs. According to Dreyfuss, it cost $600 to $1000 to test one single soil or tissue sample for tiny traces of Agent Orange dioxin. Since 1981, U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War who were exposed to dioxin have been entitled to register with the Veteran Administration’s Agent Orange Registry. Of the nearly 3 million U.S. soldiers who served in Vietnam, approximately 300,000 veterans are on the list and entitled to free annual health exams. In a 2003 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, David Perlman wrote that more than 22,000 vets have successfully claimed disability and are entitled to “free long-term treatment for a variety of disorders that are ‘presumptively’ caused by exposure to dioxin.” Compensation has ranged from $104 to $2,193 a month. U.S. veterans have attempted to sue the manufacturers of Agent Orange for compensation. In 1984, seven U.S. chemical companies agreed to settle a suit brought by U.S. veterans in 1979. In making this settlement, the companies refused to accept liability, claiming that the scientific evidence did not prove Agent Orange was responsible for the medical conditions alleged. By 1997, 291,000 U.S. veterans had received a total of $180 million dollars over a period of 12 years. “My brother was given $362, and me, I was given $60,” recalls U.S. veteran George Johnson. “My brother has never been able to have kids.” South Korean veterans who served in the Vietnam War also attempted to sue Agent Orange manufacturers. In 2006, the Korea Times reported that the “Seoul High Court ruled that Dow Chemical and Monsanto should pay $63 billion won ($62 million) to a group of 6,700 Korean veterans… who first filed lawsuits against the company in 1999.” However, this ruling is largely symbolic since the Korean authorities cannot force the companies to comply. Why Act Now? When asked why he came forward now, Steve House said, “I’ve wanted the government to take care of this nightmare I’ve had to live with for the last 30 years. I don’t want to poison kids or anything, and I don’t want to hurt GIs.” For House and other vets, also at issue is the question of medical compensation. According to the U.S. Veterans Affairs website, “Veterans who served … in or near the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) anytime between April 1, 1968 and August 31, 1971 and who have a disease VA recognizes as associated with Agent Orange exposure are presumed to have been exposed to herbicides. These Veterans do not have to show they were exposed to Agent Orange to get disability compensation for these diseases.” Veterans like House, however, who were exposed to Agent Orange after this time period, or in other parts of Korea outside of the DMZ, are not considered eligible for disability compensation. Although more information is likely to emerge from the joint U.S.-R.O.K. investigation in the coming weeks, both the U.S. and Korean public must ask and demand answers to many urgent questions. What happened to the barrels of Agent Orange and contaminated soil at Camp Carroll? How much dioxin and other contaminants have leached into the soils surrounding Camp Carroll and other U.S. military bases? Will the U.S. government provide medical assistance and financial compensation to the veterans who handled a substance that was known to be toxic in 1978? Who will compensate Koreans who may have been exposed to these contaminants? Based on the experience of thousands of U.S. vets and civilians who live around U.S. bases — in this country and overseas — even routine military operations can have serious long-term costs to human health and the environment. Without adequately addressing its toxic legacy in South Korea, the U.S. military continues to take fertile land to expand and create new bases, as it did in seizing rice paddies from farmers in Pyongtaek. The ROK-U.S. naval base now under construction on Jeju Island will have a devastating impact on the island’s marine ecology, affecting fishermen and women sea divers who depend on the clean sea for their livelihood, and the Korean people who rely on the ocean for seafood. The blind rhetoric of national security must no longer trump human security, certainly not when the U.S. military isn’t even willing to provide adequate medical care to its own veterans and protection to the Korean people they are purportedly in Korea to defend. *Christine Ahn is the Executive Director of the Korea Policy Institute and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, and Gwyn Kirk is a member of Women for Genuine Security and a contributor to FPIF.

Since early 2011, major peoples’ revolutions have swept through North Africa and the Middle East. Most recently, the revolts engulfed Syria and Libya, leading to enormous violence in both countries and a NATO-led bombing campaign in the latter. By far the most important to the United States was the uprising in Egypt, where the military took advantage of a popular insurrection to stage a coup against Hosni Mubarak, a 30-year U.S. ally whose military forces and intelligence services had — and continue to have — extremely close ties to Washington. In August, Mubarak will face trial for corruption and murdering protesters during the uprising that engulfed Cairo’s Tahrir Square for 18 days in January. He could face the death penalty if convicted. But not a single analyst or journalist of note mentioned what remains one of the most significant rebellions against a US-backed tyrant of the past half-century: the student and worker uprising in South Korea in 1979 and 1980, which was mercilessly crushed by the Korean military with the US support. Korea didn’t even make the list of near-revolutions: in mid-February, PBS published a list of “30 Years of Uprisings” that had “brought down governments and transformed societies” or were either “dissipated” or “crushed.” The list included Iran, the Philippines, the Baltics, China’s Tiananmen Square, the 1997 Kosovo Rebellion against Serbia and the 1998 Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela — but unaccountably skipped South Korea as well as Taiwan. The deletion is perplexing. The South Korean democratic uprising of the 1980s was a transforming event in Korean history. It began with the assassination of dictator Park Chung Hee in October 1979 at the hand of his own CIA director, and culminated in an armed peoples’ uprising in May 1980 in the city of Kwangju against the reimposition of military rule by Lt. General Chun Doo Hwan, who put down the rebellion with great force. With Kwangju as its symbol, the uprising climaxed seven years later (1987) in a national revolt that, like Egypt’s, brought millions of ordinary citizens into the streets and forced the military to finally relinquish power. In the end, the Korean citizens’ movement created one of the most vibrant democracies in East Asia and changed the dynamics of the Cold War in Asia by giving voice to a democratic opposition that called for peace and the end of hostility toward North Korea. The South Korean experience was also a textbook example of how a US administration deals with the toppling of a dictator who has long been friendly and subordinate to US economic and security interests, and how it handles the delicate task of ostensibly supporting “democracy” while taking steps, publicly and covertly, to maintain the essential elements of a system protective of US interests. The United States played a central role in Kwangju by granting permission to Chun to deploy a Korean Army division from the Joint U.S.-South Korean Command to Kwangju to crush the rebellion. The Carter administration’s strategy as it responded to the Korean events first came to light in a trove of 4,000 declassified documents I obtained over a period of years in the 1990s under the Freedom of Information Act. I released those documents in 1996 and wrote about them in the Journal of Commerce, the daily newspaper where I once worked, and the Korean weekly Sisa Journal. Those papers, some of which were further declassified in 2005 with the help of the National Security Archive in Washington, provide a perfect lens to illuminate how the Obama administration may have responded to the events in Egypt this year. Egypt, Like South Korea, A cornerstone for US Policy Let’s begin this analysis by retracing the recent events in Egypt and its peculiar relationship with the United States. Egypt has long been a cornerstone of US strategy in the Middle East. Associated Press, includes “instruction in human rights, the principle of civilian control of the military, the US Constitution and other elements of democracy.”) Like South Korea from 1961 to 1987, every Egyptian president since the 1950s has emerged from its military. It currently receives about $1.3 billion per year in US military aid, second only to Israel, and the Pentagon has some 625 personnel stationed in the country to assure peace along the border with Israel and to coordinate weapons sales from General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and other US weapons suppliers. Throughout the crisis of January and February 2010, these military relationships were the paramount driving force in US-Egyptian relations. When the peoples’ uprisings in Cairo’s Tahrir Square reached a climax on January 26, the Egyptian High Command, led by Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan, the chief of staff of the Armed Forces, was in Washington meeting with US counterparts at the Pentagon; the visit was cut short as the Egyptian Army began taking up positions in Cairo. While denying formal discussions of the unfolding events, Pentagon officials made clear they had broached the subject several times. As Gen. James Cartright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, New York Times it was hard to ignore the televised footage from Egypt – and therefore he could not discount “hallway” conversations between Egyptian and US commanders. As the street protests and confrontations with Mubarak supporters intensified over the following week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen held regular, sometimes daily, telephone meetings with the Egyptian generals. Off the record, they argued (according to the AP) that these close ties helped the Egyptian military “keep its soldiers from attacking protestors seeking to topple” Mubarak. On February 11, clearly under orders from the military, Mubarak finally called it quits, stepped aside and handed executive power to his appointed vice president (and intelligence chief), Gen. Omar Suleiman. Egypt ever since has been under direct military rule, and a period of relative calm has set in while the restive population prepares for Mubarak’s trial and elections later this year. Many of President Obama’s public comments, such as his February 12 appeal to the Egyptian Army’s “restraint and professionalism” further solidified Washington’s ties with the military in a time of turmoil. Yet the situation was far from settled. Even as Mubarak was fleeing Cairo in the early days of the revolt, the Egyptian army was warning workers and newly formed independent unions against work stoppages in a bid to end the biggest wave of strikes in the country’s history, ranging from state-owned textile mills to the public sector to the Suez Canal. In February, the Army used force for the first time to stop a demonstration in Tahrir Square. Over the spring, with the state of emergency still in effect, Army police arrested thousands of people for taking part in illegal demonstrations and began trying them before military courts. Many protesters claim to have been tortured, with some female activists subjected to “virginity tests” and other humiliations, according to press reports (See especially “Once the Darling of Egypt’s Revolt, the military is under Scrutiny,” New York Times, April 9, 2011). On the other hand, that council has moved decisively to shift the balance of power away from the cronies of the past to the democrats of the present. Many observers agree that it is slowly moving to create an environment for the eventual transition to a civilian democratic system. And activists continue to use that space to press the military to reform Egypt’s security forces, limit executive power and make moves to improve the economic situation for the majority of Egyptians. And in keeping with the popular will, the military is studying the possibility of normalizing relations with Iran, re-evaluating Egypt’s complicated relationship with Israel, and more overtly supporting the cause of Palestinian rights and independence. (see “Egypt’s Evolving Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy in Focus). The situation nevertheless remains precarious. In July, Tahrir Square remains the scene of daily demonstrations and occupations organized by groups demanding the swift prosecution of former Mubarak officials. Anger is particularly strong towards security officials responsible for the more than 850 protesters killed by security forces during the February storm. In the summer of 2011, Egypt may be at the dawn of a new, democratic age — or amidst the calm before a major political storm. So far, apart from the disclosure of US diplomatic cables on Field Marshal Tantawi and other figures dating back to pre-revolutionary times, neither WikiLeaks nor the media have disclosed the behind-the-scenes dealing between the Obama administration, the Pentagon and US intelligence and their counterparts in the Egyptian military and security apparatus. That will fall to future historians and enterprising journalists. But we have a possible model for what could be happening in my FOIA documents on South Korea, which portray US decision-making at the highest level of government and the military at a similar crossroad in the Korean democratic upsurge of 1979 and 1980. In addition to President Carter, the key players in the drama were the late Richard Holbrooke, then Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser. I’ll begin the narrative with a recap of the Korean events; but first, some observations about the comparison. Obviously South Korea and Egypt today share little in common in their demographics and history. One is an East Asian economic powerhouse; the other the largest country in the Arab world. But there are similarities. Both have histories of colonial rule: South Korea (prior to the country’s division) by Japan, and Egypt by France and Britain. Both have powerful military establishments that were battle-hardened from confrontations with strong adversaries – North Korea and Israel. For decades, their respective militaries ruled the nation, and both maintained close ties with the Pentagon, relationships that run deep at all levels, from the high command to their special forces. There was one big difference, however. Unlike Egypt, South Korea’s military was hardened by fighting on the US side, first in the US-Korea War, then in the US-Indochina Wars. But above all, there is a unique command structure. Since 1978, South Korean forces are commanded by a U.S. general with a South Korean as deputy commander, making the ROK the only country in the world in which a foreign general holds such a position. The command structure explained by US Forces Korea And, as in all revolutions, there are strong commonalities. In both cases, the sparks were years of brutal police state tactics, labor repression an economic downturn that hurt and enraged the working class. That is the context for understanding South Korea’s upsurge in 1979 and 1980. THE SOUTH KOREAN POLITICAL UPHEAVAL OF 1979 By the fall of 1979, Park Chung Hee, a general who was trained in the Imperial Japanese Army, had ruled South Korea with an iron hand for 18 years. Although the country’s export-oriented industrial economy had made huge leaps during those years, government decisions to invest in heavy industry, such as steel and shipbuilding, had led to overcapacity at a time when the world economy was slowing down as a result of the Arab oil embargo. In the late 1970s, runaway inflation bit deep into workers’ meager wages, sparking a rise in labor unrest. Park’s “Yushin,” or “revitalizing,” constitution, unilaterally imposed in 1972, allowed Park to rule the country virtually by decree. But with the growth of the industrial labor force and student population, mounting organized opposition challenged the dictatorship. Dissidents were routinely arrested and tortured. By 1978, students, intellectuals and Christians were pressing for a more open political system including direct elections for president. Meanwhile, the oppressive conditions in the low-wage shoe, garment and textile industries led workers to secretly organize unions. As Park’s secret police broke up their meetings and arrested and brutalized their leaders, frustration mounted. In August 1979, tensions reached a boiling point when a group of female garment workers organized a sit-in at the offices of the opposition New Democratic Party headed by Kim Young Sam. After two weeks of tense negotiation, Park ordered riot police to storm the building. Protesting workers and lawmakers were brutally beaten, and one young woman worker was killed, reportedly after being thrown out of a window. Afterward, an agitated Kim Young Sam, in an interview with the New York Times, denounced Park and called on the United States to cut off all ties with the dictator. A few days later, Kim was expelled from the National Assembly. William Gleysteen, the US ambassador, was briefly recalled to Washington to protest Kim’s expulsion. The actions against Kim Young Sam, who later became president, sparked widespread demonstrations in the port city of Pusan, his home town, and the nearby industrial zone at Masan. For the first time, industrial workers joined students in the streets in mass demonstrations. This time, Park sent Army tanks and Special Forces to put down the unrest. In the midst of the turmoil, on October 26, 1979, Park was assassinated by Kim Jae Kyu, the director of the Korean CIA. Kim later explained that he shot the dictator because he feared Park’s brutal tactics would spark a revolution. The military responded to the assassination by extending martial law throughout the country and dispatching troops to occupy Seoul and other large cities. The Carter administration warned North Korea not to intervene and quickly dispatched aircraft carriers and early warning aircraft to the Korean peninsula to back up its threat. These events set the stage for the Korean Crisis of 1979 and 1980. Establishing the Cherokee Communication Channel For Carter and his national security team, South Korea was one piece in a global crisis triggered by the Iranian revolution of 1978 and the collapse of the Shah, America’s key ally in the Middle East. Just two months before Park was assassinated, Iranian radicals had seized the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, sparking the hostage crisis that haunted the administration until, literally, Carter’s last hours in office. Tensions were simultaneously high with the Soviet Union, which had invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Carter’s increasingly hard line was also reflected in South Korea. In June 1979, the president came to Seoul to strengthen U.S.-South Korean military ties. Carter formally announced cancellation of his campaign pledge to pull all U.S. ground forces out of South Korea. Just one week before Park’s assassination, and in the midst of wide-spread unrest in Pusan and nearby Masan, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown was in Seoul meeting with Park’s top generals and unveiling a plan to sell South Korea 36 F-16 fighter jets, deploy new squadrons of A-10 bombers and transfer two artillery battalions to augment U.S. Army helicopter units. The moves, the pro-government Korea Herald reported, would “reinforce deterrence against aggression by North Korea” and “provide tangible evidence of the United States’ steadfastness and resolve.” But Park’s death and the ensuing political chaos in Seoul disrupted the administration’s carefully laid plans. In the months following the assassination, tensions erupted between the martial law authorities in the ROK Army and the democratic opposition. It was led by Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, the symbolic leader of the dissidents who had recently been freed from house arrest. The dissidents and their supporters among Koreans in the United States saw Park’s death as a golden opportunity to push for the complete dismantling of Park’s hated dictatorial system and a return to electoral politics (in the last presidential election, in 1971, Kim Dae Jung narrowly lost to Park and was nearly killed in an automobile accident that most Koreans assumed was planned by the KCIA. Later, he was kidnapped from his hotel in Tokyo and almost executed at sea before the United States, through the CIA, intervened to keep him alive). The growing unrest alarmed the Carter administration, which feared that a political confrontation between the generals and the rising opposition could undermine the military alliance with Seoul and spark another regional crisis for the United States. In this context Carter and his national security advisers created a tight circle of experts to monitor and influence the situation in South Korea. Their classified communications channel was code-named Cherokee. Many of the cables I had declassified were part of this channel and became the basis for my 1996 reporting. A few years ago, I succeeded in further declassifying a dozen more of the Cherokee cables, and I report on them here for the first time. The secret channel was established by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on November 6, 1979, about two weeks after Park’s assassination. The text reads as follows: [passages in square brackets are my explanations]: Secret, Entire Text In order to assure candid high-level exchange of information and recommendations on evolving ROK political situation and how USG can best encourage positive outcome, we are establishing a privacy series with this message. Direct Washington distribution will be controlled by S[ecretary of State] and will include only S[ecretary Vance], D[eputy Secretary Warren Christopher] and EA [East Asia — Holbrooke]. In turn, EA will hand carry to NSC [National Security Council, where the intelligence liaison was Donald Gregg, the former CIA Chief of Station in Seoul] and will, as necessary, inform other key officials. Embassy [in Seoul] should not use this channel for normal reporting of events, but only for those messages requiring unusual sensitivity in handling. In order to distinguish from other NODIS [no distribution — one of the highest classifications possible] traffic on Korea, messages in this privacy series should be slugged NODIS CHEROKEE and begin subject line with the two words “Korea Focus.” With that, the Carter administration began a series of diplomatic cables that became, after they were declassified under FOIA, my own private WikiLeaks of sorts long before the term Wiki was invented or the Internet existed. Many of them were written from Seoul by U.S. Ambassador William H. Gleysteen, a veteran diplomat who grew up in China as the child of missionaries and served in the Ford Administration as Deputy Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Gleysteen, who passed away in 2002, granted me two long interviews in 1996. From the first day of the crisis, he told me, Korea policy was handled by a small group of officials from the White House and State Department. In addition, the CIA and the Pentagon were “brought in at high levels.” The secrecy, “a normal proclivity in a crisis,” was necessary to deal with the complex military, economic and political issues at stake in Korea, he explained. One can imagine a similar network of officials today, under the leadership of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama’s intelligence adviser John Brennan, monitoring — and trying to influence — their military allies in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. In a revealing aside, Gleysteen told me that the Korean crisis of 1980 was one of the few times in his career when inter-agency policy ran smoothly. One reason for that, he said, was because both the State and Defense departments had good access to President Carter, who “was following events as a telegram reader.” At the White House, “you just pushed the Korea button and the door opened,” he recalled. Yet, strangely, the events in South Korea and the horror of Kwangju don’t rate a single mention in Carter’s detailed memoir of his presidency, White House Diary — an omission I find disgraceful for a man who continues to position himself — quite rightly — above all by his accomplishments after leaving the Oval Office — as a peacemaker in Korea and a champion of human rights and democracy. THE CHEROKEE FILES The first documents of interest in the Cherokee series contain the secret minutes of the first meetings between the Carter foreign policy team (led at first by Cyrus Vance, with Brzezinski playing an essential role) and the Korean government (led by figurehead president Choi Kyu-ha and foreign minister Park Tong-jin) after the Park assassination. These meetings established what would become firm U.S. policy over the next year: Ambassador Gleysteen led an effort to help the South Korean generals and the (unelected) civilian politicians running the government maintain political “stability” while counseling the opposition movement to “moderate” their demands for open presidential elections and an end to Park’s emergency decrees, and to keep a lid on public protests. This plan turned out to be chimerical. It was also the height of political arrogance: continuation of the dictatorship without Park, and continued US dominance, was hardly attractive for a well-educated and industrious people who had lived through 18 years of draconian police-state rule and had gained political maturity in the anti-dictatorship movement. Moreover, it was clear to those who crafted the policy that the dissident movement had every right to claim a mandate: as Gleysteen admits in one NODIS cable in March 1980, the opposition would “win decisively” if an open, fair election were to be held at that time. Specifically, said Gleysteen: in a cable entitled “Yet another assessment of ROK stability and political development,” Prevailing opinion is that the NDP [opposition party] would sweep any election conducted in the near future because of a natural reaction to the Yushin period…The NDP’s rather unquestioned advantage is that it would probably win decisively if a popularity contest were conducted in present circumstances, and its great liability is the undisguised distrust of the military leaders (though not necessarily the troops). The first cable on the post-assassination meetings, “Korea Focus — Secretary’s Discussion with Foreign Minister Park Tong-Jin November 3, 1979,” shows the extent of disarray within the Korean government at the time and underscores how the Korean authorities, from the beginning of the crisis, tried to preserve the status quo while recognizing the deep public dissatisfaction with Park’s rule. And they starkly illustrate South Korea’s complete dependence at the time on U.S. military support and strategic assistance. Consider these comments from the foreign minister, which were excised in the first cable I obtained but included when I asked for further declassification in 2005. Speaking of the South Korean population, Park said (italics are mine): Their first concern is the maintenance of national security against the North, and then stability at home in politics and economics. Whatever changes may occur in the future, they want to see them made peacefully and in an orderly manner. They see that there are three evils to be avoided: No political reprisals against those who have worked for President Park under the Yushin Constitution and being identified with the previous system. If the opposition forces take over, this danger exists. A military takeover. The Korean people do not want to see this. The previous Yushin system blindly followed and preserved is also something people want to avoid. How to avoid these is the big question. To help you understand and analyze the situation, Mr. Secretary, let me list a number of influential sectors in our political system: The Armed Forces The forces of the opposition political groups College students and intellectuals The government in power headed by acting president The influence of the United States. Two points to be noted here: first, Korean workers — the vast majority in the country and the people most responsible for the country’s much-vaunted “economic miracle” — did not even merit a mention in Park’s list of “influential sectors.” Second, it is simply stunning to see the foreign minister of a sovereign country admit openly that one of five key sectors in his nation’s political system “is the influence” of the United States. Later, in another exchange, Vance, Holbrooke and Gleysteen informed Park how the United States would exercise that influence. Secretary Vance: All of us have been impressed with the continuity of civilian control. This has been noted in my country and throughout the world Foreign Minister Park: If chaos occurs, the armed forces would be tempted to take over. This would hurt the interests of the country. It is the responsibility of the politicians here to prevent the chaos that might prompt the military to intervene. On the other hand, the opposition forces believe that there is now a new era, and that they will be able to take over the government. Secretary Vance: In any contact that we have with the opposition, we will be careful to counsel moderation. Assistant Secretary Holbrooke: Yesterday, after our conversation with you, I called on General [John] Wickham [the Commander of the U.S.-ROK Joint Command]. He assured me that he sensed no desire on the part of the Armed Forces to assume control. Foreign Minister Park: Well, our armed forces are very large, and there are many factions. Ambassador Gleysteen: You are right to point out the dangers of chaos. You should know that the lower levels of the embassy are already in contact with opposition figures. I will be in contact too. We are counseling moderation. We can be helpful. That same day, Vance and Holbrooke met with Choi Kyu-hah, the figurehead president who took over in the wake of Park’s assassination. The secret summary of this meeting makes clear why the Carter administration desired “moderation” on the part of the opposition so as to maintain the status quo. First was the military situation and the stand-off with North Korea. Vance told Choi that the United States was taking extraordinary measures to ensure that the North stayed out of the situation: Secretary Vance: Let me assure you at the outset that the commitment of my government to the security of Korea will remain firm and staunch. In addition to the statement and military actions that we took after the assassination to tell North Korea that we would not tolerate adventurism, we also made our intentions clear to both the Soviets and the Chinese. To date, there have been no signs of movement in the North, but we have intensified our surveillance and the readiness of our forces as a deterrent. [This unusual reference to US intelligence was edited out of the first batch of documents but included in the 2005 declassification.] My judgment is that the orderly action of the ROK military together with the reaffirmation of our commitment should work to deter aggression. Later in the conversation, Vance underscored another important factor for US policy-makers: South Korea’s value as a market for American exports. At the time, the US Export-Import Bank was considering a massive loan to the Korean government so it could acquire two more nuclear power plants from the US companies Bechtel and Westinghouse — a loan that finally went through a week after the Kwangju massacre. Yet here, just days after the assassination of South Korea’s president,Vance tried to make sure that nothing will disrupt the nuclear deal. It’s hard to find a more blatant example of the State Department acting as a sales agent for US multinationals: Secretary Vance: It is very important to give the people a sense of direction. We recognize the importance of instilling confidence in the international economic community. I thought I would take the opportunity tonight before leaving for the United States to explain in public that we will be continuing close economic cooperation with your country, that the one billion dollar Exim loan will continue…I think that would have a calming effect. A “calming effect”? On who? Obviously this news would make the corporations involved quite happy. But for the average man or woman in the street in South Korea, borrowing $1 billion to buy US nuclear technology was hardly the first order of business as part of a package that would continue to deny a democratic breakthrough. Vance’s carefully laid plans for “continuity” and “stability” quickly floundered. Over the next few weeks, it became clear to many Korean activists and a few foreign journalists (notably the New York Times‘ Henry Scott-Stokes) that President Choi had virtually no influence over events. Instead, they learned that a new power center was shaping up inside the Korean military, led by a small group of Amy intelligence officers who had been close to Park. Their leader was Lt. Gen. Chun Doo Hwan, the head of the Defense Security Command, the military intelligence unit that led the investigation into Park’s assassination at the hands of KCIA Director Kim Jae Kyu. Kim had been very close to the US Embassy and the CIA, and Chun was suspicious that the United States might have played a role in his crime. He also held a virulent hatred for the opposition forces, considering them virtual agents of North Korea. One incident in particular shocked the dissidents, particularly the Christian opposition groups gathered around Kim Dae Jung and members of the Korean National Council of Churches. In late November 1979, a coalition of dissident groups trying to evade the martial law edicts against public meetings staged an elaborate wedding ceremony at a YWCA building, where several hundred people, including Kim Dae Jung, gathered to discuss the current situation and forge a way forward. All were dressed in wedding clothes. Chun got wind of the meeting and dispatched troops from the Defense Security Command (DSC) to break it up. Whooping in with clubs, they beat many and arrested several dozen people. I later heard stories of the brutality from some of those detained, including the Korean husband of an American missionary. He was brought to DSC headquarters, strapped upside down from the ceiling, and beaten for hours on the soles of his feet; he was still recovering when I met him 18 months later in Seoul. Reports of the violent attack soon reached the U.S. Embassy and the pages of the New York Times, which published a detailed story about the wave of “mass seizures” of Christian students and activists, including the arrest of over 100 activists on November 27, 1979 at the headquarters of the National Council of Churches. In this article, the Times referred to the mock “wedding” at the YWCA, reporting that the latest arrests “followed the detention of 96 people after an anti-Government meeting at the Young Women’s Christian Association building.” Reporter Henry Scott-Stokes went on to detail the depth of the crackdown: Informed sources believe that many hundreds of political prisoners actually are in Government custody now. In addition to those arrested most recently, many people were detained after martial law was imposed in the southern port of Pusan and Masan following anti-government demonstrations there a week before President Park’s assassination. The number of detainees is mounting daily as students are picked up here [Seoul] for handing out leaflets and staging small meetings. Some Western diplomats [journalese at the time for U.S. embassy officials] say that the period of calm that followed Mr. Park’s assassination, when no demonstrations were reported anywhere in South Korea, has been succeeded by widespread unrest. “It looks as if things are turning sour,” said one. “It is really sad.” (“100 More Arrested by Korean Military,” New York Times, November 29, 1979). When the Egyptian secret police began mass arrests of pro-democracy activists in mid-February 2011, the Obama administration publicly criticized the actions and urged the Egyptian authorities to end the repression. Anyone reading the Times‘ coverage of South Korea in the fall of 1979, as well as its daily reports on President Carter’s human rights policies, would have expected a similar response from the US administration and its outspoken senior diplomat for East Asia, Richard Holbrooke. But Holbrooke had other fish to fry, as he laid out in a secret NODIS cable to Ambassador Gleysteen on December 3, 1979. He had been meeting with “key” Senators and congressmen “about our strategy,” he explained: Their attitudes, like everyone else’s, are dominated by the Iranian Crisis and, needless to say, nobody wants “another Iran” — by which they mean American action which would in any way appear to unravel a situation and lead to chaos or instability in a key American ally. In other words, the Carter administration would do all it could to keep South Korea “under control” and out of the headlines. But was Holbrooke concerned about the mass arrests, and the brutal crackdown by Chun’s Defense Security Command on Christian dissidents that was causing the “situation to unravel”? Hardly; indeed, the Christians were to blame. Holbrooke continued: In this connection, we are encouraged by many of the things the Korean leadership has done. At the same time, certain recent events have caused us to share your concern over the potential polarization that exists as a result of the actions of what appear to be a relative handful of Christian extremist dissidents. Holbrooke then instructed Gleysteen to give these Christian “extremists” — as well as the Korean generals — a message from the highest levels of the U.S. government: We would like to propose to you a delicate operation designed to use American influence to reduce the chances of confrontation, and to make clear to the generals that you are in fact trying to be helpful to them provided they in turn carry out their commitments to liberalization. What we have in mind is your sending a clear message to Christian dissidents who are now stirring up street demonstrations and provoking the military into the unfortunate reaction [an interesting choice of words for officially sanctioned brutality] that has begun to occur and has put almost 200 people into jail in the last two weeks. The message to the dissidents, which you could deliver through whatever means you felt was most appropriate, should be understood as coming from the U.S. government. It would be that, in this delicate time in Korean internal politics, the United States believes that demonstrations in the streets are a throwback to an earlier era and threaten to provoke retrogressive action on the part of the Korean government. Even when these are in fact not demonstrations, but rather just meetings in defiance of martial law, the U.S. government views them as unhelpful while martial law is still in effect. The purpose of Gleysteen’s “blunt message,” instructed Holbrooke, would be this: To alert them to the fact that they should not automatically count on the same degree of American support now that they might have had a few months ago. Our priority is on the development of a political process. Secondly, and equally important, we would propose that you discuss the message you are going to send to the Christian dissidents with the key military and civilian leadership of the government prior to sending it. This would have the positive effect of showing the leadership that you are definitely trying to help them moderate the situation. It would be difficult to find a statement of more stunning arrogance and stupidity in misreading of the political pulse of a nation in the annals of American diplomacy. Yet this came from a man who, since his death, has been hailed as one of the visionaries of American foreign policy and representative of the country’s highest ideals. In an interview with Ambassador Gleysteen, I showed him Holbrooke’s cable and asked if he’d followed up on Holbrooke’s advice. “No, that was too tricky,” Gleysteen replied. “This was an armchair suggestion from Washington, something we just couldn’t do.” Yet Gleysteen did continue to press Korean dissidents to take a “moderate” approach to the military and avoid confrontation. While warning the military to be tolerant, “on the left, we tried to get the message across to the moderates that they should keep down their inflammatory actions,” Gleysteen told me. This effort was so successful, he said, that by December 1979, “people were beginning to talk about a ‘Seoul Spring'” as Kim Dae Jung was released from prison and other dissidents were freed to take part in political activities. The Korean military group under Chun Doo Hwan had other plans, however. On the night of December 12, 1979, Chun pulled off a spectacular coup within the South Korean armed forces that not only put him in charge of the military but violated the chain of command established by the U.S. and ROK armies. As Ambassador Gleysteen and General Wickham monitored the events from an embassy bunker, Chun ordered his Army classmate General Roh Tae Woo (who would later succeed Chun as president) to pull his Ninth Division from the border with North Korea and attack the Seoul Garrison where the martial law command was located. After a brief firefight, the top martial law commander was arrested; Chun was now in de facto control of the ROK military. The internal coup stunned the U.S. military and the Carter administration, both of which were acutely aware that internal division within the Iranian military had been a key factor in the 1978 collapse of the Shah. But the incident was quickly papered over, sending a signal to Chun Doo Hwan and his military allies that they were virtually untouchable by the United States no matter what they did. The deal — which involved the Carter administration staying silent about Chun’s unprecedented breach of bilateral military protocol as long as the ROK government kept to a vague schedule of political reform — was forged in a December 18 meeting in Washington between Holbrooke and the South Korean ambassador and spelled out in a December 19 NODIS/CHEROKEE cable from Vance to Ambassador Gleysteen. In the meeting, the Korean ambassador supplied the “official” explanation for the “12/12 Incident,” as it came to be called: that it resulted from the “unfortunate resistance” of the martial law commander’s guards to “the officers sent to question the chief of staff about evidence possibly linking him” to Park’s assassination. In response, said Holbrooke: He found the ROKG message reassuring and hoped that it would be possible to carry out the commitment to broadly based political development. He assured Amb. Kim that the USG would not publicly contest the ROKG version of recent events, but we would not wish to see further military changes of command “Korean style”… The ROK can be assured that we stand beside Korea as firm allies, but efforts are now required to restore ROK military unity and to restore the necessary mutual trust between the U.S. and ROK armed forces. This mutual trust had been seriously damaged by the direct action of some generals last week. The “deal” was cemented in early January 1980 in a letter to President Choi from President Carter (this document was declassified in 1986 and made available to me by Don Oberdorfer, a former reporter for the Washington Post and the author of The Two Koreas.) In the letter, Carter promised that the United States would assist the Korean president “as you undertake the important tasks of political reconciliation and constitutional change.” But the letter included a blunt warning about the 12/12 Incident: I must emphasize that I was deeply distressed by the events of December 12-13. Ambassador Gleysteen and General Wickham have made clear to you and senior members of your government why the United States has been so concerned over strife within the Korean Army…I have been particularly disquieted by the breach of the chain of command in the ROK Army…Any further disregard for [the Combined Forces Command structure] and the commitments they embody would have serious consequences for our close cooperation. But in the midst of this bluster, Carter made sure that the Korean president understood that he would help sweep the 12/12 Incident under the rug: “Please be assured that we will work with you to try to minimize the political damage,” Carter wrote. Over the next few months, the Carter administration publicly urged “moderation” on both the military and the dissident movement. But Chun understood very clearly that he was at liberty to maintain “stability” and keep the situation from becoming a political liability for the United States while continuing to amass power for himself and his allies within the Korean Armed Forces. Carter’s letter cemented any doubts that President Choi might have had about who was actually in charge: Chun and his US allies. A Green Light for Chun Doo Hwan Over the spring of 1980, students intensified protests on campus and off, demanding democratization in the country’s universities and pressing for political liberalization and direct elections in street demonstrations. As in Egypt just before Mubarak’s fall, workers throughout Korean industry began wildcat strikes seeking higher wages, better working conditions and free and democratic trade unions. Much of the workers’ rage was directed against pro-government union leaders who worked with employers and the security forces to limit the protests. In one incident, miners in a remote town called Sabuk seized their mine from the owners and took the union “president” and his wife hostage; for the first time since the Pusan demonstrations in October 1979, Chun dispatched Special Forces to put down the protest. For Chun and South Korea’s ruling circles, the situation was spinning out of control. In April Chun took direct control of the Korean CIA. Both the military and South Korea’s most feared intelligence agency were now run by the same man. By May of 1980, the situation had reached a boiling point. Students began mobilizing huge demonstrations in downtown Seoul, demanding that Chun step down and calling on the National Assembly to set a timetable for democratic rule and direct elections. Seoul in those days closely resembled Cairo in mid-February, with hundreds of thousands of people in the streets facing thousands of riot police. As the situation intensified, the Carter administration decided that the unrest had become a threat to U.S. interests in the region and might tempt North Korea to intervene in some way. These conclusions set the scene for the most damning cables in the Cherokee series. On May 8, 1980, Ambassador Gleysteen met with Chun and then traveled to the Blue House — Seoul’s equivalent of the White House — to meet with Choi Kwang Soo, the top aide to President Choi and a key liaison with Chun. Just before the meeting, Gleysteen cabled Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who had been handling crisis management since Cyrus Vance resigned in April to protest Carter’s disastrous decision to send paramilitary forces on a failed mission to rescue the Iranian hostages. Gleysteen noted that “the students are proceeding remorselessly with their challenge to law and order and appear to be doing so with a great deal of coordination and direction.” Meanwhile, “the government is determined to maintain order, if necessary, with troops but is highly conscious of the enormous dangers involved.” Gleysteen concluded: “In none of our discussions will we in any way suggest that the USG (U.S. government) opposes ROKG (Republic of Korea government) contingency plans to maintain law and order, if absolutely necessary, by reinforcing the police with the army.” This message — essentially a green light to use troops from the Combined Forces Command against student demonstrations — was communicated to both Chun Doo Hwan and the Blue House, Gleysteen later told me. The message was well understood in Washington. Within hours of Gleysteen’s cable, Christopher sent a NODIS/CHEROKEE cable back to Seoul commenting on the ambassador’s analysis. Amazingly, Christopher only now expressed interest in what was behind the massive demonstrations in Seoul: We note with concern your conclusion that tensions are now rising and government tolerance perhaps lessening. There have been anomalous aspects to many of these student demonstrations; do you have any indication as to who is stirring the pot and why? But the answer didn’t really matter; Christopher had already endorsed the message that the Korean military had no choice but to crack down on these “anomalous” protests: We agree that we should not oppose ROK contingency plans to maintain law and order, but you should remind Chun and Choi of the dangers of escalation if law enforcement responsibilities are not carried out with care and restraint. Gleysteen wrote back in another NODIS/CHEROKEE cable, noting the high stakes involved but reassuring Christopher that he had told both the Korean government and the military that a military crackdown might be unavoidable. Speaking of his meeting at the Blue House, Gleysteen wrote (in a cable that was fully declassified in 2005): Choi said that the president was determined to do his utmost to avoid the use of the Army in controlling the students, although contingency plans had been made. More than 12,000 combat police had been distributed throughout Seoul, many of them newly trained or drawn from coastal guard duty now being covered by the Army…If all the government’s exhortation failed to deter the students, the government would seriously consider closing the schools if this would facilitate police control of the situation. Choi was also uneasy about the labor situation, proud of the way the govt had handled the Sabuk mine riot, and rather pleased with the successful quashing of violence at four major industrial plants in Inchon, Seoul and Pusan. Yet the government was very concerned because there was evidence of radical troublemakers and all the settlements so far tended to undercut the government’s ability to hold down wage increases in an effort to check inflation. After hearing Choi “lash out passionately” at Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, Gleysteen continued: I commented that we, of course, understood the government’s need to maintain law and order and to make contingency plans to use of the military as an instrument of last resort. Nevertheless, I was pleased to hear that President Choi and General Chun were so reluctant to use the military because of the danger of killings and a rapid erosion of public support. I urged that the greatest care be used in dealing with ringleaders or politicians who were suspected of being unhelpful. As long as the government would continue its present caution, I promised to do our best to try to talk sense into Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam. Thus the scene was set for the tragedy and massacre in Kwangju — and, despite the terrible violence that occurred in that city, continued U.S. support for Chun Doo Hwan. The Kwangju Uprising Chun Doo Hwan waited only a week before playing his contingency card. On the night of May 17, 1980, he declared martial law and sent the Army to occupy South Korea’s major universities and most important cities. Hundreds of student leaders were arrested, as were both Kims. The dreaded Special Forces — the only Korean troops not directly under the control of the US-ROK Joint Command — were deployed as well (see my original stories from the Journal of Commerce and Sisa Journal, linked above, for details on Special Forces deployments). But in Kwangju, a city in South Korea’s southwestern Cholla Province well-known for its resistance to centralized, authoritarian rule, students continued to defy the martial law edicts. On May 18, Chun’s troops were apparently warned by their commanders that a communist revolution was unfolding in Kwangju that could infect the whole country and inspire North Korea to invade. In response, they began a two-day rampage through the city. In broad daylight, they began beating, bayoneting and shooting anyone who dared to stand up to martial law. Bystanders too were attacked — some of them chased into their homes and killed. Horrified and angered by the actions of the storm troopers, the people of Kwangju – most of them skilled in firearms because of males’ mandatory stints in the army – formed a citizens’ militia and started shooting back. After two days of combat and hand-to-hand fighting in which dozens of people were killed and wounded, Chun’s Special Forces turned tail and pulled out of the city. It was the first armed insurrection in modern South Korean history since the Korean War. (There were, as Bruce Cumings and Charles Armstrong have pointed out, several significant armed insurrections in the late 1940s, including those at Yosu and Jeju Island). A citizens’ committee, made up of armed insurrectionists, clergy and civic leaders, sought desperately to negotiate a peaceful end to the crisis. On May 22, Carter’s national security team gathered at the White House for a high-level meeting on the crisis. They met less than 12 hours after hundreds of thousands of armed students, industrial workers, taxi drivers, students and citizens in Kwangju had gathered in their downtown plaza to celebrate the liberation of their city from the two divisions of Special Forces who had been sent to quell their protests. The city was a liberated zone, at peace with itself and its citizens working to help the wounded, bury the dead, keep order and distribute food and water. They looked to the United States to act honorably and respect their desire to bring to bring an end to military rule. But, as the declassified minutes of the May 22 meeting make clear, the die had already been cast. To get the full flavor of this meeting, it’s important to remember that, as Carter’s Korea team met at the White House, Holbrooke and others had already been informed in detail about what had happened in Kwangju. The few foreign media in the city had managed to transmit stories of the savage brutality inflicted by the Special Forces on the city’s population, especially its youth. The secret cables from the US Embassy in Seoul to the State Department that I later obtained confirmed that massacres had indeed taken place and were the primary cause of the uprising. The Defense Intelligence Agency, in other documents I obtained, warned that the Special Forces were fully capable of vicious cruelty and that Chun was secretly planning to use the Kwangju incident to seize power. None of that seemed to matter: Carter’s White House prioritized the preservation of US national security interests not the democratic impulses of a Korean population rebelling after 18 years of dictatorship. As the citizens of Kwangju mourned their dead and waited for signs of hope, Carter’s team decided to support Chun’s plan to crush the rebellion by force. The participants in the meeting included Christopher; Holbrooke; Brzezinski; CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner; Donald Gregg, the NSC’s top intelligence official for Asia and a former CIA Station Chief in Seoul; and U.S. Defense Secretary Harold Brown. This crack foreign policy team quickly came to a consensus. “The first priority is the restoration of order in Kwangju by the Korean authorities with the minimum use of force necessary without laying the seeds for wide disorders later,” the minutes stated. “Once order is restored, it was agreed we must press the Korean government, and the military in particular, to allow a greater degree of political freedom to evolve.” The May 8 promise to Chun to allow troops from the joint command to put down any rebellion was repeated: We have counseled moderation, but have not ruled out the use of force, should the Koreans need to employ it to restore order. Another key passage underscored the gravity of the situation. Secretary [of State Edmund] Muskie asked the Defense Department to take additional planning steps to prepare for “worst case scenarios” which could develop. Specifically, he asked that DoD prepare recommendations for what should be done if there is a pattern of spreading violence outside of Kwangju and, secondly, what the Defense Department would recommend if ROK redeployments to internal security duty continued to the point where the counter-North Korea mission of the joint command was endangered. Brzezinski summed up the U.S. position: “in the short term support, in the longer term pressure for political evolution.” As for the situation in Kwangju, having just decided to authorize the use of military force, the group declared that “we have counseled moderation, but have not ruled out the use of force, should the Koreans need to employ it to restore order.” If there was “little loss of life” in the recapture of the city, “we can move quietly to apply pressure for more political evolution,” the officials decided. Once the situation was cleared up, the war cabinet agreed, normal economic ties could move forward — including the Export-Import Bank loan to South Korea to buy American nuclear power equipment and engineering services. Within hours of the meeting, the US commander in Korea gave formal approval to the Korean military to remove a division of Korean troops under the US-Korean Joint Command and deploy them to Kwangju. The city and its surrounding towns had already been cut off from all communications by a tight military cordon. Military helicopters began flying over the city urging the Kwangju urban army — which had taken up positions in the provincial capital building in the middle of the city — to surrender. At one point, a Kwangju citizens’ council asked the US ambassador, William Gleysteen, to intervene to seek a negotiated truce. The request was coldly rejected. These actions were a stunning blow to the Kwangju resistance and to the few Koreans — including some in the United States — who were aware of the terrible events unfolding in the city; not only was the United States abetting a military coup, it was directly involved in putting down the democratic resistance. In the early morning of May 27, the Korean troops from the Joint Command shot their way into the provincial capital and quickly crushed the resistance. The Kwangju Commune was shut down, and hundreds of people who had participated were rounded up and imprisoned. Apparently, the “loss of life” was not enough to disrupt normal business for Washington (the final toll remains in dispute, but most accounts agree that at least 200 people were killed and over 2,500 seriously injured). In early June, Carter’s team approved the Eximbank loan, and South Korea went ahead with its plan to buy US nuclear technology from Westinghouse and Bechtel. By September 1980, Chun was president, and in January 1981 he was chosen by incoming President Reagan as the first foreign head of state to visit the White House. US-Korean ties were restored, and a crisis averted. But not for the people of South Korea. Partly because of the decisions made at that White House meeting, they endured eight more years of military dictatorship. Over the 1980s, however, a mass movement, with Kwangju as its symbol, spread throughout South Korea, culminating in 1987 with huge demonstrations in Seoul and other cities that drew millions of people. In 1997, the democratic movement reached an apex when Kim Dae Jung, the longtime dissident leader (and a Kwangju native) was elected president of South Korea. Prior to his election, Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo were tried for treason and murder in connection with the events in Kwangju; I asked Holbrooke once about his role in US diplomacy at the time, particularly the decision to allow the Korean military to use force to end the student-worker unrest and the Kwangju Uprising. The question infuriated him, and he virtually spat out his words: “Kwangju was an explosively dangerous situation, the outcome was tragic, but the long-term results for Korea are democracy and economic stability,” he informed me. He added: “The idea that we would actively conspire with the Korean generals in a massacre of students is, frankly, bizarre; it’s obscene and counter to every political value we articulated.” When the Carter Administration heard Chun was sending Special Forces to Kwangju, “we made every effort to stop what was happening,” Holbrooke said. That was a flat-out lie, as the released documents show. Ironically, the most honest answer about what drove US policy during this time came from a CIA agent who was in South Korea during this time. In 1983, a former CIA case officer showed up at an academic forum on Korea where I was speaking about Kwangju with Bruce Cumings, the author of several excellent books about the Korean War and the US role in the Korean peninsula. I believe that Cumings identified the man as CIA and told him that it was only fair for him to say who he was and why he was there. The agent, Robert Muldoon, rose slowly, and in a halting voice explained how the Carter administration was initially confused by the power struggle that broke out in South Korea after Park’s assassination. But in the end, he said, Carter opted for national security. “We looked at this as a situation in which there was a political vacuum, there was a struggle for power among Korean factions, and I think the conclusion that we came to was that the strongest political force in South Korea was the Korean Army,” he declared. A few years ago, Donald Gregg, a career CIA officer who, as US ambassador to Seoul during the 1980s, visited Kwangju, gave me a similar assessment. “For us to have broken publicly with Chun would have been a categorically different signal than we’d ever sent to the Korean peninsula,” he told me. That may be true — but the cost to the US-Korean relationship, and above all to the Korean people, was incalculable. So what’s the lesson for Egypt? Clearly the Obama administration reached the same conclusion about its army in Egypt that the Carter administration did about the Korean military: that it is the only cohesive force with the ability to hold Egypt together in the service of US power. As they did with Korea, US officials today are meeting constantly with their Egyptian counterparts in government and above all the military. Having belatedly recognized that Mubarak must go, they probably counsel “moderation” on the part of the ruling military and the democratic opposition to assure that the situation doesn’t spin out of control in ways that could jeopardize the primacy of US power in Egypt. As of early July 2011, it’s too early to say what the final outcome will be as the army and the social movements—with varying emphases on democracy, labor rights, and religious orientation—vie to define Egypt’s future. With huge US oil and geostrategic interests in the region, will the United States this time consider the Egyptian people in the equation? In Korea in 1979 and 1980, the hopes and dreams of the Korean people for democratic reform were trampled in the name of US national security. The result was the tragedy of Kwangju and eight years of the savage Chun dictatorship. Three decades later, with the US enmeshed in unpopular and destabilizing wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and on the verge of going to war in Libya, it remains to be seen whether the Obama administration can learn from the bitter lessons of 1980 Korea and support the forces of democratic progress over the continued grip of the military. *Tim Shorrock, a KPI Fellow, writer and trade unionist based in Washington, is the author of SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World of Outsourced Intelligence (Simon & Schuster/2008). He grew up in Japan and South Korea and has been writing about the U.S. role in Asia since the late 1970s. Much of his work, including his stories and documents on Kwangju, can be found at his website, http://www.timshorrock.com. He is also an avid poster on Twitter. Note on sources: A terrific bibliography on the Kwangju Uprising can be found at the activist website “Gusts of Popular Feeling” here. It includes books as well as many articles and manuscripts. Readers can also find my original reporting on the Kwangju FOIA documents at my website here and here. Click here for my 1986 interview with Kim Dae Jung in which the former president and democratic leader discussed, for the first and only time in public, his views on the Kwangju Uprising and the U.S. response. Recommended citation: Tim Shorrock, Reading the Egyptian Revolution Through the Lens of US Policy in South Korea Circa 1980: Revelations in US Declassified Documents, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 28 No 3, July 11, 2011.

Gangjeong, a small fishing and farming village on Jeju Island 50 miles south of the Korean peninsula, is a pristine Unesco-designated ecological reserve where elderly Korean women sea divers, haenyo, still forage for seafood. It is also the site of a fierce resistance movement by villagers who oppose the construction of a South Korean naval base on the island that will become part of the U.S. missile defense system to contain China. South Korea’s president, Lee Myungbak, says the base is needed to protect Seoul from an attack from Pyongyang. The problem with that assertion is that the Aegis destroyers that Lee pledged to deploy at the base aren’t designed to protect South Korea from North Korean Taepodong ballistic missiles (TBM). In a 1999 report to the U.S. Congress, the Pentagon verified that the Aegis system “could not defend the northern two-thirds of South Korea against the low flying short range TBMs.” Thus, instead of protecting South Koreans, the militarization of Jeju Island will introduce new security threats to the country by fueling an arms race in an increasingly tense region of unresolved conflicts. The naval base on Jeju Island will equip South Koreans and their American allies with the capability to strike long-range ballistic missile batteries in southeast China that target Japan or Taiwan. Washington sees this base as a central pillar to its defense system in the Asia-Pacific region. China, no doubt, sees it as a new threat. The result of building the base, therefore, will only be increased stress on the U.S.-China relationship. One South Korean military analyst, Cheong Wook-sik, said that China sees the U.S. Asia-Pacific missile defense system “as the 21st century’s greatest threat.” And a Chinese Air Force colonel, Dai Xu, speaking more generally about Washington’s Asia-Pacific strategy, wrote recently that Beijing “cannot always put up with American provocations.” He added that China “must draw a clear red line against American attempts to surround it.” Meanwhile, on the American side, a 2009 Rand Corporation report confirmed that, given China’s growing economic threat to the United States, the Jeju naval base is crucial for America “to project power in the East China Sea and southward.” Washington hasn’t been forthcoming about this base being built for U.S. interests, particularly in light of growing South Korean resentment of the high costs of U.S. military bases on the peninsula, and tensions over the recent admission by three U.S. veterans of dumping Agent Orange at Camp Carroll in southeast South Korea in 1978. When I called the Korean Embassy in Washington to register my complaint about the Jeju naval base, the response was: “Don’t call us; call the U.S. State or Defense Departments; they are the ones who are pressuring us to build this base.” Gangjeong villagers have used every possible democratic means to overturn the decision by Seoul to construct the base there. For four long years, the villagers have squatted on their farmland that was seized by the government, and laid down in front of cement trucks intending to pour concrete over the volcanic rock where pure spring water meets the ocean. Despite the fact that 94 percent of Gangjeong residents voted against the base, the central government, the military and Jeju officials colluded to make Gangjeong the designated site. This week, the South Korean government ordered the police take further measures to restrict protesters, many of whom have already been arrested, heavily fined and barred from entering the waters and land that they have lived on and depended upon for generations. Jeju is a bellwether of how conflicts in the Asia Pacific may be resolved in the near future. Will the South Korean people allow its government to blindly follow U.S. plans to draw its country in a standoff against China? Will the South Korean government choose to resolve conflicts through dialogue and cooperation? No one in the United States, North and South Korea, Japan and China wants another militarized conflict; we still haven’t healed from last century’s wars. This is perhaps more apparent in Korea than anywhere else, a country where a militarized division still separates millions of families. We must not allow an unneeded military base to destroy Gangjeong’s rich marine ecology and the livelihoods of farmers, fishermen and haenyo — people who provide us with human security — certainly not in the name of “national security.” *Christine Ahn is the executive director of the Korea Policy Institute and a member of the Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island.

“The people who boisterously fight unfair ruling power,” are how Jeju people are described in an ancient Korean text. Today, the people of Gangjeong village on Jeju Island, off the southern coast of South Korea, are fiercely fighting a planned navy base on their island. Gangjeong, which means river and wells, is famous for its natural beauty and abundant fresh springs, with rare and unique species of colorful corals and has been designated a UNESCO absolute nature preserve. In the middle of this harmonious and pristine environment, the South Korean Navy began constructing a $970 million base to be completed in 2014. The naval base will accommodate 20 warships, including submarines, and two 15,000-ton Aegis destroyers. The South Korean Navy says the base is needed to protect Korea’s shipping lanes and the disputed submerged rock south of Jeju. Several military analysts, however, say the Aegis technology is capable of communicating with the US satellite system and is really intended to connect Jeju with the expanding US missile defense system to contain China’s emerging power. This is further substantiated by the fact that even the Pentagon has verified that the Aegis missile defense system cannot protect most of South Korea from North Korea’s low flying Taepodong ballistic missiles. On Aug 6, 2007, just three months after it was selected as the site of the naval base, Gangjeong village held a referendum. Of 1,050 registered voters, 725 people participated. An overwhelming 94% voted against the navy base. The vote, however, was ignored by the central government in Seoul and the Governor of Jeju. Since then, the village mayor Dong-kyun Kang has steadfastly led a non-violent struggle against the naval base. At dusk on September 2nd, 2011, hundreds of police, shipped in from the mainland, raided Gangjeong village in full riot gear arresting more than 35 protesters. As villagers and activists moved to try and block the police, construction workers completed the last 200 meters of fencing that completely shut out villagers from their beloved farmland and coastline. As feelings of defeat settled in among the villagers and activists who have been waging a fierce nonviolent resistance for four long years against the naval base construction, a miracle appeared. Two days after the police raid, a renowned archaeologist named Pyeong-woo Hwang (translated as ‘Peace Rain’ in Korean), director of the Korean Cultural Heritage Policy Research Institute, arrived in Gangjeong village bearing news that ancient relics had been discovered in the area where the navy was constructing the base. Director Hwang explained that the Jung Duk three-way intersection that the Navy had just sealed off with the fence shows evidence of round dwellings possibly stretching far back into the beginning of Jeju civilization to the prehistoric Bronze era (~1000-2000 BC). Archeologists also discovered near the port a house foundation belonging to the late Choseon period (~1800-1900). Hwang explained that this discovery reveals that people have continuously inhabited this village and the surrounding area since the Bronze era. On September 11th, I interviewed Director Hwang about the significance of this discovery. Imok Cha: When did you first discover the Gangjeong relics? Pyeong-woo Hwang: I have been following Gangjeong since it was designated as the site for a Navy base in 2007. During the excavation research, I phoned several colleagues on the Jeju Cultural Treasure Institute investigation team who verified that several relics were found. Two days before the September 4th press conference, I arrived in Gangjeong but could not access the relic site because police had blocked the area. I could tell from the photos, however, that this is a very important discovery. For several decades, I have studied archeology, art history, Korean architecture, and folk culture. When you study archeology and cultural treasures, you develop a feeling. Even before I saw the photos, I just knew, but after I saw the photos, I realized that these are really important relics. Sometimes experts can tell the relics’ significance by just looking at the photos. When more excavation is done, we know better as we carefully see what treasures will be uncovered. I believe Gangjeong is an archeologically and culturally important place. Gangjeong village is mentioned in an archeology book written by Professor Chungkye Lee of Young Nam University in Dae Gu. Some 20 years ago, while Professor Lee was teaching at Jeju University and conducting field research, he published Jeju Archeology Research in which he wrote that Gangjeong village is rich in cultural relics. When Gangjeong was chosen as the Navy base site in 2007, Lee was a member of the Cultural Heritage Administration and predicted that relics would be uncovered and therefore research should be thoroughly conducted. IC: What has been discovered? Pyeong-woo Hwang: Near the Jung Duk three-way intersection and the main gate are round dwellings presumed to be from the Bronze period. During settlements in that era, people dug big round holes of about 1.5 meters deep in the ground because it was warmer at this depth. They then erected tent-like or similar structure over it to live in. Near the port in Gangjeong, archeologists discovered a late Choseon period house foundation with holes made for house columns. IC: How old are the Bronze period relics? Pyeong-woo Hwang: The Bronze period is thought to be around 2000 BC, and the Neolithic period around 7000 BC. The Choseon era was from 1340-1900. In archeology, you cannot count years in absolute terms. It is all very old. IC: Can you explain the way the investigation is being carried out? Pyeong-woo Hwang: The investigation of Navy base was assigned to the Jeju Cultural Heritage Research Institute, a private company authorized by the government. The company conducts research, but also needs to make profit. Although the site is one single project, they have divided the investigation into four sections. They first investigated the section nearest Gurumbi rock, and when the Jeju Cultural Heritage Research Institute reported that no relics were found there, the Navy obtained a permit for construction in this area from the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea. Investigating this area by four sections is a misinterpretation of the cultural protection law. For example, this kind of division is allowed for multiple apartment building projects in which different construction companies are building in different areas or new city development projects. This kind of division should not be applied to a single project like this Navy base. I am suspicious of this. This means that they knew where the relics are. Then they chose the area that is least likely to yield relics, farthest away from the village, near the rocks, and started to investigate that area first. This is a strategy to push ahead with the construction and then later say, “What can we do? We have already built so much.” The Advisory Committee overseeing the investigation is composed of all government officials, including the director of the Jeju National Museum. One would presume that the director of a museum is an independent scholar, but in fact, this is a government position. Another person on the Advisory Committee is a director of the Cultural Heritage Administration inspection division who monitors cultural treasures when they go overseas. He is not even an archeologist. The review meeting took place with three Navy officials in attendance. I have seen a photo of three navy officers standing with their arms crossed in a meeting. How can you determine the value of the relics objectively under this scenario? Only 10-20% of the area has been investigated. The construction has to stop and detailed research has to be done. The area of research has to be expanded. It is as if only the head and shoulder have been excavated. If we dig more important treasures will likely be uncovered. Gangjeong village is recorded in the Choseon period encyclopedia Sin Dong Guk Yoe Ji Seung Ram (New East Nation Geography, 1530). Because of its clean water, rice cultivation was possible in Gangjeong whereas most of Jeju farming is based on other agricultural produce. People who had less money earned it from the sea. Nearly 1,000 years ago, Jeju had erected stonewalls called Hwan Hae Jang Sung (Long Sea Wall) that surrounded the entire island to fight against Mongol and other outside invaders. Some of these stonewalls still remain. Jeju people prayed and performed rituals at sea because they earned living from the sea. They went out on boats, and many died at sea. They prayed for luck. There are thousands of shrines. Gurumbi rock was a place of ritual. This is not well researched. Not only must archeological research be conducted, but folk cultural and underwater research must also be done. Since the late Choseon period (1700-1900) relics were found near the port. There must also be other artifacts, including fishing gears and tools, which could tell us about fishermen’s lives 200-300 years ago. The sea surrounding Gangjeong has been recognized by UNESCO as a nature preserve because of its unique biodiversity. There are soft corals that are found only in this area of nearby Tiger Island and Moon Island. Even the government had designated this area for preservation because the coral are so well preserved. Approximately 20 years ago, I went under water in a commercial submarine that transported some 50 people to see the corals. The Navy says that the base is 1.2 km away from the UNESCO preserve area. It is estimated that 1 km is required for a buffer zone to protect the designed area, which leaves only 200 meters. How can you say that because there is 200 meters distance from the protected area that it is safe to operate massive Navy ships? Underwater, 200 meters is virtually meaningless. You cannot draw a line underwater. When you are dealing with the natural environment, measuring just the distance is not useful, even 20 km would not be sufficient. Because South Korea is paying huge sums of money and membership fees to UNESCO, this institution has become more political, ignoring illegal activities and not listening to cultural and environmental voices. IC: You said that the fence installed during the September 2nd police raid at the Jung Duk three-way intersection is illegal. Can you elaborate? Pyeong-woo Hwang: The fence was constructed along the side and behind where Ae-ja Hyun, the former Jeju assemblywoman is doing a sit-in protest at the Jung Duk three-way intersection. The relics are very close to where she is sitting, and the posts are installed within 1 meter of the Bronze period relics. This is illegal. If posts are necessary, they must be erected extremely carefully, one by one, with the inspection and advice of the research team not to damage buried relics. If you were to excavate where the assemblywoman is sitting, we would probably find many more relics. IC: Who has the power to stop the construction? Pyeong-woo Hwang: The current head of the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea, Deputy Minister Chan Kim has the power to order the Navy to stop the construction. The Advisory Committee would decide on the value of the relics. Kwang-sik Choi, the former Deputy Minister of the Cultural Heritage Administration, authorized the construction to begin. Now he has been promoted to become the Minister of Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea. There will be a hearing on his appointment by a subcommittee of 17 Assembly members on September 15th. The opposition party will question him regarding the authority he granted the Navy to begin construction. Gangjeong Update The Lawyers for Democratic Society have sued the Navy Chief of Staff Seong-chan Kim, the Jeju Navy base business leader Eun-guk Lee, and the former and current Deputy Ministers of Cultural Heritage Administration, Kwang-sik Choi and Chan Kim, for violating the Cultural Property Protection Law. Assemblywoman Ae-ja Hyun continues her sit-in protest at the Jung Duk three way intersection — which has gone on for more than 50 days now. Seven people, including Gangjeong Mayor Kang, have been imprisoned for more than 20 days for “obstructing business.” In the mean time, within days of the police raid, drilling machines are working full time on Gurumbi, the ancient coastline lava rock, shattering it into thousands of pieces to make roads. The Mayor of Seogwipo has ordered the immediate removal of all banners, tents, and other protest structures. Villagers are afraid of another impending clash with the police force. Fortunately, more and more mainland Koreans are heading to Gangjeong on Hope planes, Hope boats, Hope buses, and Hope bicycles. Artists are painting on the metal fences, building sculptures, making music, documentaries, and even uploading short films of the struggle on YouTube. Supporters from around the world have been sending support messages that are made into banners and hung along the road. The protestors’ voices are getting louder and louder. Can the Navy justify severing people from their ancestral land and forever burying the history of Jeju civilization under cement, against the people’s will? *Imok Cha, M.D. is a San Francisco-based physician specializing in cancer diagnosis and an advisory committee member of the Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island.

Humanitarian relief efforts have faced doubts about whether they are actually reaching the people of North Korea who need them most. The difficulties are tied to political debate, in the United States and South Korea, and the wariness of philanthropic interests to contribute money or resources to any effort that can be exploited by the North Korean regime. David Austin is a program director for Mercy Corps, which has provided food assistance, agricultural development, medical relief and cultural exchanges for more than 12 years in North Korea. The agency’s core projects and relationships stem from apple orchards planted in Gwail County, South Hwanghae Province. Having worked with the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture and with the U.S. Department of State Interfaith Cooperative Initiative, Austin brings to bear experience that demonstrates how humanitarian efforts are reaching their mark in North Korea, that is, connecting aid with individuals and communities, and addressing the causes of suffering. Christine Hong: Tell me about the work of Mercy Corps in North Korea. David Austin: Mercy Corps, like other U.S. NGOs such as World Vision or Samaritan’s Purse, does humanitarian assistance. We mostly stay away from development work. There are some strict guidelines on doing work in North Korea that are set up by the Department of Commerce. We focus on humanitarian work around food security and medical relief, and we’ve been working on apple orchards for about 10 years. We first got involved in North Korea back in the late ’90s. As an organization, we’ve been going back two or three times a year. We’ve brought in a lot of medical equipment in hospitals. We helped five hospitals in South Hwanghae Province, in Haeju City, and in Gwail County, with X-ray machines, ultrasound equipment, patient monitors, and medicine on various occasions. It depends on what the need is. CH: Can you speak about some of the challenges of arguing for humanitarian food aid for the people of a country with which the U.S. has been at war for 61 years? DA: We’re not political actors. We’re non-governmental organizations. We’re not out to meet a policy objective related to a particular national interest. Just by the definition of our agency as a humanitarian or a relief and development agency, our goal is to alleviate suffering, whether that’s from poverty, oppression, war or natural disaster. Recently, somebody asked me about the food crisis, “Is this a manufactured crisis or a real crisis?” They were putting an adjective on the situation that demonstrated a political judgment: Is it a manufactured crisis or is it a natural crisis? The kids that we saw back in February when we were going through the countryside and going to hospitals—kids who are acutely malnourished—don’t know if it’s manufactured or natural. All they know is that it’s a crisis. We have to step back from the question of whether the causes are politically tenable for us to go ahead and engage in a humanitarian response. That’s something Mercy Corps doesn’t do. CH: A couple of months ago, I was in New York where I had the opportunity to meet and speak with a representative of the World Food Program, who spoke about what might be called “donor unwillingness,” for lack of a better term. When it comes to North Korea, there’s certainly a high degree of donor suspicion. DA: The U.S. government made it pretty clear, back in the fall, that if the North Koreans needed food, they needed to ask the U.S. government directly. The North Koreans did. They made a specific appeal. They had a face-to-face meeting back in January in New York, which put the U.S. government in an awkward position. Now the North Koreans are asking for food, and the U.S. has to verify—and it’s important that they verify—that there really is a need. That’s where the U.S. NGOs came in. There are five U.S. NGOs: Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, Mercy Corps, Global Resource Services and Christian Friends of Korea. We got together and said, “We’ll go in and do an assessment because both the North Koreans and the U.S. government asked us.” In February, we went in, and frankly, I went in very suspicious. I was on the assessment team. I wasn’t sure we were going to see anything that really convinced me that we would make a recommendation one way or another. But we did have a lot of access to the things that we asked to see, and our team came away convinced that what we saw was a real need. We submitted a report. We verified that need. Here’s what’s interesting. We submitted our report in February. The World Food Program, FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), and UNICEF did another assessment in March. I believe they went to all nine provinces. We put a couple of people on that team halfway through, and they came up with the same report. Then the U.S. government did its own assessment, and now ECHO (the Humanitarian Aid department of the European Commission), or the European community, has done their own assessment. Every assessment that we know of has come up with the same findings. Namely, there is an extreme, chronic problem of hunger, with several incidents in the hospitals that are recorded as acute malnutrition-where somebody is dying from hunger. CH: The situation has gone from chronic to acute? DA: It’s moving that way, especially in the most vulnerable populations. And so you’ve had three UN agencies, five U.S. NGOs, a U.S. government factfinding team and a European government fact-finding team, all coming up with the same answers, verifying that there’s a need. This thing has been analyzed backwards and forwards. North Korea has been exposed. One of the things that I think we’ve failed to observe is that this is an opportunity for the United States to basically show its best face on foreign policy. Which is, we feed people who are in desperate situations, and we do it as a free gift. When we were in North Korea, we asked people in our surveys in homes and institutions, “When is the last time you had enough food?” They said, “In 2008 or 2009.” We said, “Do you know where you got that food?” And they said, “Yes, we know who gave us that food. It was the U.S.” That’s remarkable. The U.S. NGOs, in 2008, fed about 890,000 people for eight months, who received their food knowing it was a free gift from the American people. The fact that we can have that kind of diplomatic impact across the country with people at the county level is remarkable. During our recent assessment we revisited 19 counties, and everywhere we went, we were greeted very happily by local officials who remembered people on our assessment team who had been food monitors before. CH: I also read that those apple trees you’ve taken over to North Korea are from Oregon. So there’s a little bit of Oregon in North Korea. (Austin is a native Oregonian.) DA: That’s true. There is. And we’ve brought North Koreans to Oregon, and we’ve taken a lot of Oregonians to North Korea. CH: The point that you raised earlier, about this being touted in certain circles as a manufactured emergency, there’s a sense within the Western and the South Korean media that the North Korean regime not only exaggerates the extent of its food crisis, but also diverts food aid to the military. Is the North Korean government exaggerating the scope and scale of the crisis, and is giving food aid tantamount to supporting North Korea’s military, if not nuclear program? DA: [Commentary] about food aid being redirected to the political elite and suggested favors makes me realize whoever said that doesn’t know the kind of food that we give, because the kind of food that we give is a corn-soy porridge; it’s a fortified corn-soy blend called CSB within the NGO community. There’s only one way to eat it, and that is to put boiling water in it. It’s not like you can take CSB and mix it in with something else to make some sort of bread, like wheat flour, or rice. It’s a nutritionally based food to help people who are starving get enough nutrition so they don’t die. It’s not that tasty. That food, I am sure, does not get redirected to the political elite because nobody wants to eat it. It’s not like we’re sending over rice. In fact, in 2008 and 2009, we did not send rice, and we don’t send rice. We send food that will help acutely malnourished people survive. The mainstay of our food program, CSB, is also something you can’t resell on the market. North Korea’s not going to take this food and then resell it to China because China doesn’t buy CSB. Second, we monitor the food really closely. We have monitors at the port, who are a part of the bagging program, making sure that they count every bag when it comes off, when it gets onto the trains and into the trucks. They know where it’s supposed to go. We have people who are at the provincial and county warehouses going in and checking the records and regularly spontaneously checking the actual bags on site so we can verify those records to the actual commodities. We were told by some South Korean political leaders, “We don’t doubt that you can get the food to the people, but even once they get the food, then the North Koreans come and take it away, and they don’t get to eat it. We’ve heard reports that the army will come and take the food away.” My colleagues said, “You want us to watch all the people who eat it?” And they said, “Yes, we do.” I said, “Hold on a minute.” We know that they eat the food because we are able to visibly see the difference in children in these orphanages, children’s homes and schools where the food is distributed, because children who get enough food have enough energy to play. That’s the very unique thing about kids: When they don’t have enough food, they don’t play. In February, when we went into the children’s homes, all the kids were sitting down; they were very listless. Three-year-olds, normally when they see a foreigner, will giggle and run off to the side and point and run towards their teachers. But all the kids just sat there. Their hair isn’t black; it’s brownish blond. There’s a visual element that our monitors are able to verify. As part of our monitoring program, we’re able to take nutritional measurements of kids. It’s called a MUAC—Mid-Upper Arm Circumference—rating. We have tight monitoring, and we have Korean speakers on our team. We can go anywhere within the provinces where we deliver food within a 24-hour notice and say, “All right, tomorrow we are going to go to Cholsan County in North Pyongan Province,” and our North Korean guides would have to take us to Cholsan County the next morning. And then we can say, “OK, in Cholsan County, we want to go to the food warehouse. We want to go to these five schools. We want to go to these two hospitals. We want to go to this children’s home.” We randomly get to go wherever we want. In 2008 and 2009, we made a little over 1,600 such visits. Again, all of those places are seeing Americans, several of whom speak Korean, who are double-checking, making sure that the food is getting delivered, that it’s being eaten, and that they know where the food is coming from. By agreement with the North Koreans, anywhere our food is distributed, there has to be a statement in Korean with the U.S. flag that says, “This food is a free gift from the American people.” CH: Those of us in the West tend to think of famine or food crisis in North Korea as the result of something sinister caused by the North Korean regime. What explains the recurrence of food shortages in North Korea, and what possibilities are there moving forward? DA: The situation in North Korea requires a greater political solution. The food security situation is a symptom of the greater problem that you addressed at the very beginning, which is technically that the U.S. is still at war with North Korea. And so there are sanctions on North Korea. They are not allowed to get fuel; there’s no fertilizer. And so the greater political situation has a tremendous effect on the lives of the ordinary people who are not privileged to be a part of that broader solution. They’re not policymakers. They’re ordinary farmers, and they’re suffering the consequences of the nonsolution to the political questions. CH: Should individuals and communities be donating to relief organizations that furnish food aid to North Korea? DA: The reason we should do it is because we can. We can save people’s lives. We can alleviate human suffering, and I think it’s really important to remember that this is the one way the people of the United States have been able to maintain a humanitarian and a positive link between our country and the people of North Korea. There is no other bridge. There aren’t sports exchanges. There’s no other link. This is it. And we’re able to send over American citizens to deliver the food in the name of people of the United States. CH: Hazel Smith, a policy expert on North Korea, has argued that “the activity of the humanitarian community is helping to deliver solid information” when it comes to North Korea. North Korea is often described, from an intelligence perspective, as a black hole, and oftentimes people will describe it as a modern Hermit Kingdom. Smith argues against this. She states that since the days of famine in the 1990s the humanitarian community has been situated through substantial parts of North Korea and therefore is equipped to speak knowledgeably about North Korea. In its decade and a half of work in North Korea, what has Mercy Corps learned about North Korea, its people, its society, its government that might surprise Americans? DA: Well, I think this is true not just of the people of North Korea; it’s just true of people around the world that they want to feed their kids, get their kids educated, enjoy their relationships with their neighbors, and see the next generation succeed them in terms of being more prosperous and successful. You see that wherever you go. When we’re in the hospitals, I agree with Hazel Smith’s observation, we do get some great information, but it’s not information in terms of clandestine data. We have the opportunity to relate to people in the local communities on the local levels and learn about their lives, their work and their hopes. We spend time with the hospital administrators, the farm workers, the managers of these large farms. We discover in very human terms that they’re really concerned about producing enough food and providing good medical care—just like you would find at the local hospital or the small county hospital in the States. The other thing I’ve learned working at Mercy Corps is I have tremendous regard for the other U.S. NGOs who work there. They are some of the most amazing American citizens I have ever met. CH: Why? DA: Because North Korea is a difficult place in which to work. I mean, it’s not like people are excited to give funds for North Korea. There’s only a handful of groups that work there. And they have a special calling. They speak Korean, even though the vast majority of these people are white Anglo Americans. And they’ve been able to keep [tuberculosis] at bay. They’ve been able to provide food and inspiration. Because they care. To have these people there and to see what they’re doing under really difficult circumstances, it’s remarkable. I have such high regard for my colleagues at other NGOs who do this work, and I think one of the unique things about this food program, is that all of them have said, “When we do food on a national level, we want to do it together as one entity.” They’ve asked Mercy Corps to be the lead agency, even though we’re by no means the largest. We end up being the lead, but we don’t do it in the name of just Mercy Corps. We say “the U.S. NGOs.” That’s how we’re known in North Korea in our food program. All five of us put aside our titles, and deliver food on behalf of the American people. It is really a remarkable little group. *Christine Hong is a fellow with the Korea Policy Institute and an assistant professor of Asian American, critical Pacific Rim and Korean diasporic studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

For the entire post WWII period the political security and economic development of South Korea has been guaranteed by the United States. In turn South Korea has served as a bulwark against communist expansion in Asia — as a security buffer for Japan, in particular. But today, this scenario is appearing more and more anachronistic, so rapidly is change coming to Northeast Asia. To be sure, the U.S. will maintain a strong presence in Northeast Asia for years to come, but it will be one among others vying for influence on the Korean peninsula, as Seoul and Pyongyang leverage their geopolitical and other economic assets to reap the benefits of what is shaping up to be a new regional economy encompassing China, Russia, Japan and both Koreas. While the upcoming summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Lee Myung Bak is being staged to underscore efforts by both administrations to pass the controversial KORUS FTA, a lesser known trade agreement is very much in the works — a trilateral agreement among China, South Korea and Japan which is intended to assist Japan’s recovery from devastation caused by natural calamities and damaged nuclear reactors, and also to serve as a buffer against the economic downturns in Europe and the U.S. In exploration for several years, pursuit of this trade agreement took on a new sense of urgency last spring as it became clear that with its deficit spinning out of control, the U.S. economy was heading towards a second recession and threatening to pull the global economy along with it. South Korea’s President Lee Myung Bak, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Japan’s Foreign Minister Naoto Kan, met in Japan in May to show support for Japan’s recovery and to take steps to promote their common economic interests. They agreed to accelerate discussions on a trade framework between their countries, encompassing 1.5 billion people and accounting for more than 20% of the world’s GDP. In a joint statement they announced, “We decided to complete joint studies among industry representatives, officials and academics on a Japan-China-South Korea free-trade agreement this year, and to follow up by accelerating other joint studies after that.” There are many outstanding issues between the three countries, not all of them are economic. To cite only a few, China and Japan have unresolved territorial disputes and President Lee brought up the artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island last year by China’s ally, North Korea. But it is expected that closer economic ties will help moderate other disagreements among the three. President Lee referred to tensions with North Korea with considerable constraint. “Inconvenient situations,” he said. “However overcoming these inconvenient situations we are showing an attitude of cooperation to move forward,” he stressed. And if there is any truth to the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, the image of the three leaders munching on tomatoes during their summit deftly captures how quickly times are changing in that part of the world. Formal negotiations on a trilateral trade agreement are expected to start next year. Russia is the other trading partner in the region. It has been cultivating ties with South Korea since the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago and has been gradually mending its relations with North Korea in the past decade. This year Russia came on strong, negotiating bilateral agreements with North and South Korea for an 1100 km gas pipeline running through North Korea to the South. If the three countries are able to achieve a tripartite agreement, as planned for November, the pipeline stands to provide over $100 million per year in transit fees to North Korea and will provide gas to South Korea at one third the cost of shipping liquid natural gas by sea. Equally important a tripartite agreement among Russia and North and South Korea, like a tripartite trade agreement among China, South Korea and Japan, would reinforce a new model for economic cooperation in the region; one in which mutual benefit trumps cold war enmity. So far the project has the support of both Koreas. The gas pipeline took a big step from design to reality in a summit meeting between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and North Korea’s General Secretary Kim Jong Il last August in Ulan-Ude, the capital city of Buryatia in Siberia. The two leaders apparently laid the groundwork for re-establishing the close relations enjoyed by their countries prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not only did they move forward on the gas pipeline, Medvedev agreed to cancel 90 % of North Korea’s $11 billion debt to Soviet Russia while allocating the balance towards joint economic projects in North Korea. They also discussed a trans-Korean railway project and the export of surplus electricity to North Korea. Russia, like China, desires economic ties with Japan and South Korea, but again like China it is heavily invested in maintaining stability in North Korea with which it shares a border, and regards as a security buffer against U.S. military forces. To this end both countries strongly support the six party talks for resolving tensions over the latter’s nuclear programs. The Ulan-Ude summit ended with an offer by Kim Jong Il to suspend work on nuclear weapons programs should the talks resume. Then, in its efforts to further bolster its ties with Pyongyang, Russia went one step further. Within a week of the Ulan-Ude summit Russia’s Eastern Military District commander, General Igor Muginov, visited Pyongyang and concluded an agreement to renew joint defense commitments. Naval exercises practicing the rescue of vessels in distress and the delivery of humanitarian assistance to populations experiencing natural disasters are planned for next year. Unlike a century earlier when trading rights were imposed by gun boat diplomacy and colonization, and during the cold war when opposing ideological blocks, even within the communist camp, competed for hegemony in the third world, emergent regional “cooperation” in Asia is today becoming a much more “civil” affair, if no less calculating. Russia and China have resolved their border disputes, a key source of friction during the cold war, and are committed to “strategic cooperation” in all levels of economic, military and cultural exchanges. They have set a goal of increasing their trade from $57 billion to $100 billion by 2015 and $200 billion by 2020. Although the volume of Russia’s trade in the region is dwarfed by China’s, Russia’s wealth from abundant supplies of energy is creating a growing market for manufactured and high technology products from Japan and South Korea. A year from now Russia will host the APEC summit in Vladivostok with the aim of more closely integrating its far eastern territory and Siberia into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation region. Russia is clearly seeking to accelerate the growth of its trade, as well as its political influence, and so far it appears there is still room for all to partake in the growing Northeast Asian market. In any case the growth of economic “cooperation” does not necessarily paint a rosy picture. Trade pacts are contentious. Moreover, dangers posed to the environment by the drive to modernize on the basis of fossil fuel energy, and the rapacious tendency of neo-liberal trade agreements to produce profits for a few at the expense of the many, may prove too powerful to overcome. More could die of famine than in all the wars of the 20th century if damage caused to the ecosphere is not repaired. Rather than lifting people out of poverty, a “successful” FTA might create massive wealth for corporations but drive millions into low wage jobs or unemployment. For the present, however, economic cooperation between former cold war adversaries in Northeast Asia, even if reluctant at times, serves to undermine the rationale for the division and militarization of Korea along ideological lines, and that is a welcome development. North Korea and South Korea are both very much a strategic part of the new playing field and both stand more to gain if they are able to work together. The possibility of a tripartite agreement to construct a trans-peninsula gas pipeline is one short step from the kind of foreign relations that would be conducted by a confederated Korea as envisioned by the late President Kim Dae Jung and General Secretary Kim Jong Il in their historic summit of 2000 — one in which the two Koreas would come together to leverage the economic resources of the peninsula for the benefit of all Korea. To hold its own among powerful neighbors Korea stands a better chance united rather than divided. The “rise of the rest,” as coined by journalist and author Fareed Zakaria to describe the ascent of a multi-polar world, is coming to pass in Northeast Asia. For the major actors in the region, the pursuit of economic cooperation as a hedge against economic decline emanating from the West is mitigating U.S. efforts to form a coalition of the willing to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons programs. China and Russia are the big nuclear powers in Northeast Asia; they maintain diplomatic relations with each other, with Seoul, Pyongyang, and Tokyo, and thus have little need for leadership from the U.S. to keep the peace. China and Russia appear steadfast in their support of North Korea’s proposal to restart the six party talks unconditionally and its proposal to place a moratorium on its nuclear programs within the framework of ongoing talks. Under this circumstance the Obama-Lee precondition that North Korea must first shut down its nuclear programs, before talks are possible, is shared only by Japan. But the world that gave rise to the U.S.-ROK-Japan alliance is itself transforming as South Korea and Japan are drawn more and more into the whirlwind of change sweeping not only the region, but the globe. The U.S. too must eventually find its place among the rest. No proclamation by Presidents Obama and Lee this week can turn back the tide of change in Northeast Asia. But their actions can still greatly influence the manner and speed with which change in the cold war status quo takes place. South Korea continues to suffer all the ills associated with militarization as exemplified this past year by continuation of massive war games, revelations of agent orange buried and left behind by U.S forces, the perpetration of sex crimes by U.S. soldiers in two instances last month, and the heavy handed construction of a naval base off the shores of the Jeju island village of Gangjeong, in spite of protests by residents. It doesn’t have to be this way. In the North, U.S. and South Korean sanctions intended to pressure Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear weapons have contributed to what the World Food Program and world leaders, including President Jimmy Carter, have described as a return to the famine years of the mid 1990s. Across the disputed territorial waters of the West Sea, North and South Korea continue to trade artillery shots, while China and the U.S. eye each other warily from a distance. The status quo on the Korean peninsula is fraught with tension and danger. But this can change. The six party talks can be turned into a successful partnership and achieve the legitimate goal of implementing a verifiable nuclear nonproliferation regime across the peninsula in accordance with the September 2005 six party talks. The U.S., North Korea and South Korea can implement a peace process to replace the Korean War Armistice with a peace treaty, ending the cold war in Korea. In the next year, before the presidential elections in the U.S. and South Korea, there is still time for the two allies to partner with the other countries in the region and make these things happen. It is time for all to embrace change. *Paul Liem is Board Chairperson of the Korea Policy Institute.

At 4 am on September 24, an intoxicated U.S. soldier based at Camp Casey in South Korea broke into the dorm of a high school student, threatened her with a weapon and repeatedly sexually assaulted her. Due to the extraterritoriality of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the South Korean and U.S. governments, Seoul must issue an arrest warrant to the U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK) to transfer the soldier to face Korea’s criminal system. This tragic incident presents a critical opportunity to question why, after 66 years, 28,500 U.S. troops still remain on 87 bases and installations on the Korean peninsula and whose security they are safeguarding. The same questions are being raised in Okinawa and Guam, islands in the Asia Pacific with large U.S. bases. Although the economic crisis facing America has called into question the bloated military budget, it is the first time in U.S. history that Congress is discussing the prohibitive costs of U.S. bases. Given growing popular opposition throughout the Asia Pacific to the ongoing presence of U.S. bases, the time is now to seize this rare political window to close down U.S. bases worldwide. High Cost of U.S. Bases to People of Asia Pacific As in the past, the USFK will attempt to call the rape another case of a bad apple, when in fact U.S. troops in Korea have a long history of committing heinous crimes against Korea’s civilian population. In 1994, South Korean civil society began to mobilize after U.S. soldier Kenneth Markle brutally murdered 27-year old Yoon Keum E. whose bloody body covered with white laundry detergent was found dead with an umbrella shoved up her anus and two beer bottles in her womb. This unspeakable violence forced the Korean people to question the so-called protection provided by the U.S. military and the unequal SOFA arrangements, which enables soldiers to act in impunity. According to the National Campaign for the Eradication of Crimes by U.S. Troops in Korea, U.S. soldiers have committed tens of thousands of crimes against South Korean civilians since the beginning of its military occupation in 1945. According to South Korean National Assembly member Kim Tae-won, 377 U.S. soldiers were arrested for committing crimes in 2011 alone. Since 2008, the number of rapes doubled, and thefts and assaults tripled. But it’s not just interpersonal violence Koreans endure. U.S. bases have also borne significant social and environmental costs. In 2006, after nearly a 1,000-day long struggle, the South Korean government demolished the homes and fertile farmland of elderly rice farmers in Pyeongtaek for the expansion of Camp Humphreys. This past May, three U.S. veterans confessed to dumping barrels full of Agent Orange in an area the size of a football field at Camp Carroll. Today, Gangjeong farmers and fishermen on Jeju Island are fighting to save their village from becoming a naval base that will stage Aegis destroyers linked to the U.S. missile defense system. Unfortunately, sexual violence and crimes committed by U.S. troops against civilians haven’t been restricted to South Korea. Okinawa, a prefecture of Japan, has also borne similar costs due to the ongoing presence of U.S. military bases. Although Okinawa accounts for only 0.6 percent of the entire land area in Japan, it is home to 74 percent of U.S. military facilities in Japan. Women for Genuine Security estimates that 37 U.S. bases and installations in Okinawa house 23,842 troops and 21,512 family members. According to Suzuyo Takazato of Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, from 1972 to 2005, U.S. soldiers committed over 5,500 crimes against civilians, although many Okinawans say the number is actually much higher because women and girls rarely report crimes such as sexual violence. Only some 700 U.S. soldiers have been arrested. Since U.S. troops first landed on the island, Okinawans have been demanding their removal. In 1995, the resistance gained steam after three U.S. servicemen abducted and raped a 12-year-old girl. In 1996, Tokyo and Washington agreed that the United States would return the land used by the Futenma Air Force base and build a replacement facility in Nago City’s Henoko Bay. But Okinawans have opposed this plan through every democratic means—elections, referenda, rallies, and public opinion polls. In 1997, Nago citizens voted in a referendum opposing the construction of the new U.S. base. In a May 2010 poll, 84 percent of respondents opposed this move, which would destroy Henoko’s ecological preserve. And recently, Nago’s 60,000 people elected a mayor who strongly opposes the base. Given the fierce opposition to the base relocation, the Japanese government signed a deal in 2006 with Washington to transfer 8,000 U.S. marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam, or Guahan in its native language Chamoru, at a price of $27 billion. According to Lisa Natividad of the Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice, the infusion of these additional marines, their families, and support workers to Guam’s population of 170,000 would grow the island population by 30 percent. “It will double the existing military presence on the island and will eclipse the Chamoru population,” says Natividad. Since the announcement of the military build-up, Guahans actively led grassroots public education campaigns on the consequences to their culture and environment. Their organizing has begun to pay off. According to Natividad, the Pentagon received an unprecedented 10,000 comments of concern in 2009—6.5 percent of Guahan’s total population—about the planned Guam military build-up. Two civil society organizations—We Are Guahan and the Guam Preservation and Historic Trust—have filed a lawsuit to prevent the use of Pagat village as a live firing range. Cost of U.S. Bases to America For the first time in history, the call for closing bases and shifting priorities may actually have the ear of lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they cope with the nation’s intensifying budget crisis and take the unprecedented step of putting the Pentagon budget on the chopping block. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) proposes to save $69.5 billion by reducing military personnel overseas in Europe and Asia. This recommendation, originally made by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, is aimed at reducing “the military personnel stationed at overseas bases in Europe and Asia by one-third.” Senator Coburn also recommends canceling the deployment of 8,600 U.S. Marines and their 9,000 dependents to Guam from Okinawa. To realign U.S. troops in Japan, Okinawa, and Guam would cost $27 billion. The Sustainable Defense Task Force also proposes to cut military personnel and bases by one third in Europe and Asia and projects savings of up to $80 billion. “On the Korean peninsula, the gap between adversary and friendly conventional capabilities has grown much more favorable,” it states in Debt, Defense, and Deficits — A Way Forward, released June 2010. “Also, U.S. capacities for long-range strike and for effective rapid deployment of forces have grown greater, reducing the crisis response requirements for troops on the spot.” The Task Force does not view China as a military threat to the United States. Rather, it says, China’s integration into the regional economy means “Beijing does not seek to fracture its relationship with the United States.” It also sees Taiwan and the Mainland as “strongly interdependent economically.” In May, three ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee—Senators Carl Levin (D-MI), Jim Webb (D-VA), and John McCain (R-AZ)—called on the Pentagon to “re-examine plans to restructure U.S. military forces in East Asia” because they were “unrealistic” and “simply unaffordable in today’s increasingly constrained fiscal environment.” Their recommendations include putting on hold plans to expand Camp Humphreys in Pyongtaek, South Korea to support tour normalization, scrapping the relocation of Futenma in Okinawa, and scaling back plans for base expansion in Guam. “The proposals would save billions in taxpayer dollars,” stated the letter from the Senators. Last month, during Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s confirmation hearing, Senator Levin asked whether the closure of some bases and bringing home U.S. troops was on the table. Carter responded that indeed, it was “on the table.” Time to Link Arms The struggle of farmers and indigenous people against U.S. bases in Guam, Okinawa, South Korea, and elsewhere, and the struggle of working people for jobs, healthcare, and education here at home are opposite sides of the same coin. The vibrant energy and creative talents of our nation’s youth are needed here to build hospitals and schools and revitalize local communities, not on unpopular bases abroad that displace indigenous populations. It’s time to link up our demands — shut down bases abroad and create jobs here at home. Although oceans apart, we have more at stake in each other’s struggles than we may think. And Washington’s budget debate provides an opening for us to link arms and demand a change in the nation’s priorities. Movements for peace and economic justice across the Asia Pacific are strengthening their ties by organizing two important convenings: Peace in Asia and the Pacific: Alternatives to Militarization conference in Washington, DC on October 21-22; and Moana Nui: Pacific Peoples, Lands and Economies gathering from November 9-11 timed with the APEC Summit in Honolulu, Hawaii. In the long term, the U.S. peace and social justice movement must press to change the fundamental mission of the U.S. military around the world. For now, we can start by impressing on the U.S. public and policymakers the urgency of people’s struggles against U.S. bases abroad as well as the high cost of maintaining them and what that means for the American people. *KPI Executive Director Christine Ahn is a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist and a member of the Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island. Hyun Lee is a member of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development and a contributor to FPIF.