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By Christine Hong l  originally for Korean Quarterly, Fall 2013 On July 27 of this year, two series of events commemorating the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Korean War Armistice Agreement took place in Washington, DC, yet for all intents and purposes, they occupied parallel universes. Featuring a keynote address by the U.S. President, one sequence of events unfurled, with pomp and circumstance fitting the military might and wealth of its sponsors, the U.S. and South Korean governments, at the Korean War Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. Attendees to this event received a bag of mementoes—compliments, or so it appeared, of the Park Geun-hye government—which included sunscreen and a fake Korean War medal. Those in the audience were able to hear Barack Obama deliver a ringing speech titled “Heroes Remembered,” which focused narrowly on the “shining deeds” of the American veterans of the Korean War but nowhere mentioned the grievous toll that this brutal Cold War counterinsurgency took on ordinary Koreans both north and south of the 38th parallel—a painful legacy that reverberates to this day in the Korean diaspora. Instead maintaining that the 60th anniversary represented an occasion to “tell our American story,” Obama hailed the Korean War not as a “tie” but rather, in a highly unorthodox historiographical move, as a decisive “victory.” “When 50 million South Koreans live in freedom—a vibrant democracy, one of the world’s most dynamic economies, in stark contrast to the repression and poverty of the North—that’s a victory,” Obama glibly stated. Signally absent from the spin delivered by U.S. and South Korean officials was the fact that the Korean War is not over, and that war, not peace or democracy, serves to justify an ongoing U.S. military presence on the Korean peninsula. Although the July 27, 1953 Armistice Agreement recommended that within three months’ time “a political conference…settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, [and] the peaceful settlement of the Korean question,” the Korean War in point of fact has never been resolved with a peace treaty. Also missing from U.S. and South Korean celebratory accounts of the war was meaningful reckoning with the profound and enduring human costs of the war—which not only resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4 million people (the vast majority of them civilian) and fractured one in three families on the peninsula, but also, continue to this day in the form of a formidable U.S. sanctions regime against North Korea, annual joint U.S.-South Korea war exercises which simulate an invasion of the North and involve the dropping of dummy nuclear munitions, and a durable structure of enmity between the United States and North Korea. The moral of the Korean War, one that “our allies and adversaries must know,” according to Obama, is that “the United States of America will maintain the strongest military the world has ever known, bar none, always.” It was this hegemonic message that was grimly broadcast in the sequence of 60th anniversary events staged under the Department of Defense banner across Washington, DC, in late July of this year. Just a ten-minute walk away, in front of the White House, a very different, much smaller, but infinitely more hopeful sort of event—namely, a rally followed by a peace march—was taking place that same hot Saturday morning. Representing a national gathering of peace activists who would reassemble later that evening at a local screening of Ramsay Liem and Deann Borshay Liem’s Memory of Forgotten War—a documentary that movingly narrates the unresolved Korean War from the perspective of first-generation Korean American survivors, all of whom are members of separated families—this crowd was remarkably multigenerational and multi-ethnic, albeit largely Korean American. Tirelessly led by Juyeon Rhee of Nodutdol, we raised our voices in calling for peace now. If the thousands of people assembled before the Korean War Veterans Memorial were mesmerized by Obama’s counterfactual insistence that the Korean War was a victory, by contrast, the tens of dozens of peace and social justice activists who took part in DC-based Korea peace events over the Korean War Armistice Day weekend were fortified by the sight of each other, heartened by solidarity on our pathway to achieve a long overdue peace in Korea. This crowd represented a spectrum of organizations: 6.15 U.S. Committee, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition, Action for One Korea, Alliance of Hope, Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach, Korea Policy Institute (KPI), Korean Alliance of Progressive Movement, Korean American National Coordinating Council (KANCC), National Association of Korean Americans (NAKA), National Campaign to End the Korean War, National Lawyers Guild, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, Peace Action, Ubuntuworks Peace Education Project, United Methodist Church, and Vets For Peace. Those of us gathered in Washington, DC, were moved to hear Reverend Michael Hahm of KANCC, an elder in the struggle for peace, speak with deep-seated conviction, born of courage and experience, about the need to end the Korean War. Sarah Sloan, of ANSWER Coalition, spoke fiercely and eloquently about the injustice of the Korean War, as an imperialist war, which decimated the Korean civilian population. Hyukkyo Suh of NAKA pointed to the economic stimulus of the Korean War, which jumpstarted a moribund U.S. economy geared toward total war in the aftermath of World War II. Stephen McNeil of AFSC spoke about his organization’s humanitarian record in North Korea and the urgency for peace as the basis of U.S.-North Korea relations. In terms of their actions, a few principled figures on the Hill stood with us. On July 25, 2013, Mike Honda, a stalwart advocate for peace and justice in Asia and the Pacific, read a clear-sighted statement into the Congressional record, which recognized that “genuine hope” must take the form of “a permanent and stable peace regime on the Korean peninsula.” During a peace strategy session, activists also decided to reanimate the tradition of Korea Peace Days (for more information or should you be interested in organizing a Korea Peace Day locally, please write to koreapeaceday2013@gmail.com). Above all, what this tale of two Korean Armistice commemorations in Washington, DC, reveals is that we cannot expect the U.S. president to prioritize peace in Korea. Rather, we must, as South Korean activist-scholar and longtime member of Solidarity for Peace and Reunification in Korea (SPARK), Kang Jeong Koo, has stated, “conclude peace through our own efforts” by “arous[ing] public opinion, call[ing] upon the main parties to the Armistice, conduct[ing] and perform[ing] campaigns, mass marches, demonstrations, [and] candlelight rallies.” As he further reminds us, “In Korea, the 60th birthday has traditionally been characterized as a milestone that signals the commencement of a new life—one that is qualitatively different from that of the previous sixty years.”  Likewise, although the 60th anniversary of the Armistice Agreement represents sixty years of war, it also more hopefully signals “the inaugural year of peace.” Let’s join together to make it so. # Christine Hong is an assistant professor of transnational Asian American, Korean diaspora, and critical Pacific Rim studies at UC Santa Cruz. She is a steering committee member of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea, a coordinating council member of the National Campaign to End the Korean War, and a member of the executive board of the Korea Policy Institute.

South Korea lawmaker, Lee Seok Ki, arrested in recent crackdown. Photo/Yonhap, Kim Ju-sung Gregory Elich* | September 14, 2013 [Originally published on CounterPunch.org, September 12, 2013] Actions by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) have generated a political furor that is growing by the day, pitting the ruling New Frontier Party against the main opposition Democratic Party and threatening the existence of the Unified Progressive Party. The NIS intervened in the election of December 2012 in an endeavor to bring victory to conservative candidates. NIS director Won Sei-hoon ordered the agency’s psychological warfare division to launch a campaign to discredit liberal and left political candidates. Agents were instructed to each create three or four posts on the internet per day, praising the ruling party and attacking the opposition. Three teams were tasked to carry out this mission, and one team alone generated an average of 1,200 to 1,600 posts per month. Won was motivated by a paranoid McCarthyist frame of mind, and he was heard to say, “If there is a person or a force which condemns the government and the ruling party, they are no different from North Korea even if they are our citizens.” The psychological warfare teams used IP switching software to prevent tracking. Many of the posts smeared liberal and left candidates as “followers of North Korea.” According to South Korean investigators working with the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office, the NIS utilized software to generate millions of automated tweets and re-tweets of their postings, flooding the internet. In a further boost to the campaign of presidential candidate Park Geun-hye and other conservative candidates, the NIS leaked excerpts from a classified document to the press and to the ruling New Frontier Party, containing a transcript taken from the October 2007 meetings between liberal South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. The excerpts leaked by the NIS dealt with discussions of the Northern Limit Line, the western maritime border between the two Koreas. The NIS intentionally distorted the excerpts it provided and fabricated content in order to make it appear that Roh was offering to turn over South Korean territorial waters to North Korea, expecting the resulting outcry to damage the chances of liberal presidential candidate Moon Jae-in. The NIS removed a statement from the version leaked to the New Frontier Party, in which Roh stated that the Northern Limit Line should not be changed. In another example, the NIS spliced together a phrase from a morning session with a phrase from an afternoon session so as to misrepresent Roh’s position. The NIS also altered words and phrases, and inserted content of its own invention into the transcript in order to discredit the liberal candidates. Two days before the December 19 election, Kim Moo-seong, head of Park’s election campaign, publicly revealed quotes from the fabricated transcript, and angrily announced that he was “filled with indignation” over its content. His comments received broad media coverage, which helped to swing votes in favor of Park. It was not until after the election that the extent of NIS meddling was revealed, and Won Sei-hoon was indicted in June. In response to demands by opposition parties that the NIS be reformed, President Park Geun-hye merely asked the agency to come up with a proposal to reform itself. Public anger swelled, and demonstrators packed Seoul Plaza for weekly candlelight demonstrations, calling for the NIS to be brought under control. Before long, candlelight demonstrations spread to cities and towns throughout South Korea, and it was clear the issue would not go away. The Unified Progressive Party was at the forefront of efforts to reform the National Intelligence Service. In July, I was among a group of international guests who met with members of the Unified Progressive Party, including Representative Lee Seok-ki. A man with an infectious smile, he joked with us that he was the most hated person in the National Assembly. The conservatives loathed Lee for his outspokenness about the need to reform the National Intelligence Service. Nor had they forgiven him for the leading role he played in stopping the nomination of Korean-American Kim Jeong-hoon for a ministerial post in the South Korean government, due to Kim’s service as an advisor to the CIA and as director of In-Q-tel, a technology company that works closely with the CIA. Retribution against Lee Seok-ki would not be long in coming. As the debate over the NIS in the National Assembly intensified and militant mass demonstrations continued to call for reform, the National Intelligence Service struck back on August 28, raiding the homes and offices of 18 members of the Unified Progressive Party. Three party officials were arrested and charged with treason. As the principal target for vengeance, Lee Seok-ki would later be arrested after a vote in the National Assembly stripped him of immunity. Wild claims were made, as the NIS charged that Lee headed a group called the “Revolutionary Organization,” which it said was planning an armed uprising in the event of war with North Korea. The quotations attributed to Lee were provocative, and were said to originate from a recording provided by an informer who attended two meetings of a local branch of the Unified Progressive Party on May 10 and 12. In a familiar pattern, the NIS illegally leaked selected excerpts to the New Frontier Party and media outlets. The result was as intended, and a furious trial by media ensued, even though the courts had not yet ruled on the admissibility of the transcript as evidence. Lee claimed that he was innocent of all charges, and the NIS had fabricated the quotations it had attributed to him. He charged the NIS with engaging in “political persecution” against his party. Lee Jung-hee, chairperson of the Unified Progressive Party, announced at a press conference, “The Blue House, facing an unprecedented crisis, and the National Intelligence Service, on the eve of its dissolution after being exposed of rigging the last election, are conducting a Yushin era witch hunt in the 21st century. This is an attempt to silence the candlelight protests as the truth of the fraudulent crimes of the National Intelligence Service are exposed, and voices demanding accountability from President Park Geun-hye intensify.” Lee warned, “Just as they accused all citizens who supported the opposition in the last election as ‘pro-North sympathizers’, they will try to crush and eliminate all democratic forces by labeling them criminal insurgents.” There were those who questioned the timing of the raid. The NIS claimed that it had been investigating Lee Seok-ki for three years, and the meetings that provided its rationale took place three and a half months beforehand. Why was this moment chosen, they wondered? The NIS was on the ropes. The National Assembly had completed its investigation of the NIS, and the opposition parties were demanding that the NIS should be banned from domestic intelligence gathering. According to a source familiar with the functioning of the NIS, “This investigation looks suspiciously like an attempt by the NIS to justify its existence. It may be intended to block efforts to reduce and eliminate the agency’s domestic and investigative branches, which are at its heart.” The Unified Progressive Party conducted its own fact-finding investigation into the May 10 and 12 meetings which had been organized by the party chair of the Gyeong-gi province chapter. Party members attended a lecture by Lee Seok-ki and participated in discussions about the situation on the Korean Peninsula. In a press conference, party chair Lee Jung-hee declared, “There is no evidence whatsoever that the 130 people in attendance are part of a so-called Revolutionary Organization. There is only the NIS’ allegation, as it attempts to bury our party through a baseless trial by media.” Party members denied that the Revolutionary Organization existed, and accused the NIS of concocting the name as a means of adding a sinister tone to the proceedings. In talking with those who attended the meetings, party officials investigating the matter found that many of the statements quoted in the media differed substantially from the actual words. It was apparent that the NIS was once again manufacturing “evidence.” At one of the May meetings, there were seven simultaneous small group discussions, and the NIS informer was able to record comments only in the session he attended. Lee Jung-hee pointed out, “An inquiry into the discussions of the six other small groups revealed that they were quite different from the conversation in the group that was recorded. Their conversations were about the immediate difficulties they would face in trying to sustain life in the event of war, ways to survive, and the need to raise public consciousness to oppose war and realize peace; there was no discussion of acquiring weapons or destroying vital facilities.” Some of those in attendance recalled that at the beginning of the Korean War, the South Korean government rounded up leftists and executed them by the thousands. Some estimates place the number of dead as high as 100,000. They expressed concern over a potential repeat if a new war arose, given how the conservatives consistently branded their party as “servants of North Korea” and “terrorists.” In the discussion that was recorded, two hotheads suggested arming themselves and destroying facilities in the event of war. Other group members roundly rejected these comments, saying that such actions were not an option. One group member responded, “Getting firearms is nonsensical and destroying a radar base with high technology and hacking is too.” Those who advocated force were ridiculed by the others. “Please look what the participants did after the meeting,” Lee Jung-hee urged. “They did not do anything related to taking over guns or preparing to destroy communications. Even though the NIS put a lot of manpower and money into the raid, it found nothing like a gun or a disturbance device.” The only evidence for the charges made against the Unified Progressive Party is the video, and we only have the word of the NIS for its content. There is nothing to corroborate the cherry-picked and fabricated quotations that it has leaked. Lee Jung-hee believes the video recording may never be made publicly available. Because no warrant was issued, there is a good chance that the courts may rule the recording inadmissible as evidence. She called on the NIS to release the original video in its entirety – and without manipulation – so that people could ascertain the truth of the matter and judge for themselves. “While the NIS did not present the original video, a reckless trial in the court of public opinion has happened. The NIS did not precisely follow legal procedures, and they have infringed on judiciary rights by leaking collected evidence illegally, which violates the defendants’ rights that are guaranteed in a normal judiciary process.” “The most important thing is truth,” Lee continued. “Even if we are in a bad situation, there should be no editing or deleting the facts.” The ruling New Frontier Party is using the dubious charges against the Unified Progressive Party to achieve its own political aims. It called upon the Democratic Party to end its participation in the mass demonstrations against the National Intelligence Service. For its part, the NIS is expected to argue that the charges against the Unified Progressive Party prove that it ought to retain authority to conduct domestic surveillance and intelligence gathering. The New Frontier Party has filed a motion in the National Assembly to strip Lee Seok-ki of his seat, despite the fact that his trial has not yet taken place and in South Korea one is legally presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. In a gross violation of democratic principles, moves are afoot to forcibly disband the Unified Progressive Party. The leadership of the New Frontier Party has asked its members to obtain data in support of that action. In May, conservative groups filed petitions to have the Unified Progressive Party banned. The Ministry of Justice is looking into the possibility of responding to those requests and asking the Constitutional Court to rule in favor of dissolving the Unified Progressive Party. There is no question that the ruling party finds the views of the Unified Progressive Party distasteful, and it would be delighted to remove the party from the political scene. If the Unified Progressive Party is disbanded, its 100,000 members will be cast adrift from direct participation in the political process. According to party literature, among the Unified Progressive Party’s goals is to “create a new society in which progressive democracy is established.” The party “has campaigned for free education, free healthcare, and tax on the wealthy as progressive alternatives.” It advocates an end to privatization and a strengthening of public services. The Unified Progressive Party “is the only one that identifies itself as a party for independence, peace and reunification in keeping with the vision” of joint South Korea-North Korea declarations. The strongest advocates of such values will be silenced if the ruling party has its way. Representative Lee Seok-ki is undergoing daily grilling by the NIS. Like other members of the Unified Progressive Party who are being interrogated, he is refusing to respond to all questions as a protest against political persecution. Reports indicate that the NIS is strongly considering adding an additional charge against Lee, aiding the enemy, which would carry with it a potential death penalty. Lee may be fighting not only for justice, but also his very life. If it is not reined in, and soon, the National Intelligence Service could take the nation down the path to repression once again. When South Korea was under military rule, for an individual to advocate progressive policies was an invitation to arrest, torture, and in some cases execution. The years-long struggle for democracy in South Korea brought a hard-won victory. The ruling New Frontier Party cannot be allowed to throw away that victory. * Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is the author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit. The author is grateful to Hyun Lee, co-producer of the Asia-Pacific Forum program on WBAI, and the Korean Alliance of Progressive Movements, for providing translations of source material. #GregElich #SouthKorea

By Christine Ahn and Anders Riel Muller Originally published jointly by Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com. Members of the Korean Women’s Peasant Association (Photo courtesy of Sunyoung Yang). The bustling, fast-paced, wired metropolis city of Seoul is what most people know of South Korea. Now the 15th largest economy in the world, South Korea’s economy is driven by the exports sector controlled by corporations like Samsung, Hyundai, LG, and Daewoo. These chaebols have significant global market share: 37 percent in LCD TVs, 33 percent in hand-held phones, and 9 percent in automobiles. The term “chaebol nation” aptly describes South Korea’s economy: the top 30 chaebols account for 82 percent of the country’s exports. It’s hard to imagine that just two generations ago, farming fueled the nation’s economy. In the 1970s, farmers accounted for half the population; today, they represent only 6.2 percent. South Korea’s rapid transformation from an agrarian economy to a highly industrialized one wasn’t accidental; it was the outcome of the central government’s development and trade liberalization policies that in the early 1980s began to see farming as part of Korea’s past, not its future. The major blow to Korean agriculture fell in 1994, when South Korea joined the WTO and the Agreement on Agriculture, which effectively forced the government to eliminate quotas and tariffs even while major agriculture exporting blocs like the United States and European Union still gave billions in subsidies to their own farmers. The result of all this liberalization: South Korea is only 20-percent self-sufficient in grain production, compared with the 1970s when it was at 70 percent. If South Korean chaebols and the politicians that represent them had their way, small farmers—the majority of South Korea’s agricultural sector—would all but disappear under the logic that they are uncompetitive in the global marketplace. They argue that it would be far more efficient for the country to continue to import cheap food from less developed countries—including through the process of acquiring land outside of Korea, like in Africa and South East Asia. And yet, despite a series of domestic and international policies that have sought to systematically eliminate them, South Korean farmers and peasants are fighting back. They have protested the WTO and bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) for two decades, inspiring peasant farmers throughout the global south to mobilize against the free trade regime. At home, they are trying to build a domestic food sovereignty movement that is ecologically sustainable, socially equitable, and economically resilient by producing healthy food, creating dignified rural livelihoods, and reviving farming communities. Instead of being blinded by South Korean high-tech bling, our eyes should be on South Korea’s food sovereignty movement. It offers the rest of us robust alternatives to the highly consolidated, industrialized, energy-intensive, and chemical-dependent globalized food systems that dominate all of our lives. In August, we co-organized and participated in a Food First Food Sovereignty Tour where we visited South Korea’s leading organic farms and progressive farmer-consumer cooperatives. South Korea is now a leader in the Asian region in organic production, so much so that the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements set up its offices there. And while there were many inspiring organic farms and gardens, two organizations stand out: the Korean Women Peasants Association (KWPA) and Hansalim. Korean Women Peasants Association “The food that is being sold by capitalism is sold as a commodity instead of food that sustains us,” explained Jeong-Yeol Kim of My Sister’s Garden, a KWPA project.  “That’s why we believe that helping farmers thrive is the only way to fix this food crisis, and the pathway to do so would be to ensure that consumers and every citizen join us in the process of making this come true.” We visited My Sister’s Garden in the small village of Bongang, where 14 women peasant farmers collectively grow and distribute a weekly “gerubi”—similar to a community supported agriculture (CSA) box—comprised of organic produce they grow and packaged foods they make, such as pickled radish and pear juice. KWPA operates 26 of these producer communities throughout the country. On the day we visited, they were packaging and sending 141 boxes to the Bluebird Children’s Center in the city where parents come to pick up the boxes. “Children today have no connection to the rural land,” explains Jeong-Yeol. Unlike previous generations, many children today no longer have grandparents or relatives living in the countryside who are connected in any way to farming. “So part of the effort of this partnership is to expose children to food production.” According to Jeong-Yeol, My Sister’s Garden plots were started in response to the devastating impacts of agricultural trade liberalization on the rural economy. “Just within ten years, 10 percent of farmers have fled to the cities here in Korea,” she explained. The reason? The globalized food production system. “We think that the solution to this crisis is to focus on small-scale farmers and give a solid foundation for each farmer to survive.” Each farmer takes on 15 consumer households, earning 1,500,000 won—approximately $1,400—per month. When more consumers wish to join, they encourage a new garden plot to be created so that more women peasant farmers also can earn a dignified income. Optimizing profits is not the goal; rather, sharing with both consumers and other producers is at the center of the project’s philosophy. They are seeking to bring as many people as possible into an economically viable and socially just system to reverse the decline of rural communities. Despite their prevalence in agriculture, Korean peasant women lack equal rights and opportunities, which makes a project like My Sister’s Garden an even more important empowered space for peasant women to make decisions on all aspects of their production and distribution. KWPA’s native seed supply (Sunyoung Yang). In the small village of Uiseong, just a few hours away from Bongang, KWPA members started a native seed protection program to defend Korean native seeds against corporate takeover. “A lot of our native seeds are being bought up or taken by Syngenta or Monsanto. There are no national Korean domestic seed companies left,” laments Jung-mee Han, a plum, mung bean, rice, and garlic farmer and member of KWPA. “We are all farming different crops,” adds Jeong-mi Kim, president of the Uiseong Native Seed Protectors. “Because we couldn’t take care of all the seeds ourselves, each member is responsible for preserving and cultivating several crops.” They also distribute seeds to low-income farmers who cannot afford them. “We’re not just saving seeds,” explains Jeong-mi. “We are tracking, monitoring, and sharing seeds among farmers, and nationally, we sell them to increase consumption of native agriculture.” These KWPA projects seek to radically alter the structure of the Korean food system and to de-commodify the linkages between consumers and producers. It has not been in vain. In 2012, KWPA was awarded with the Food Sovereignty Prize for their work to defend the rights of small-scale women farmers in Korea and preserve the cultural heritage of Korean native seeds. Hansalim In 1986, even before farmers’ markets and CSA programs became popular in the United States, South Korean farmers and consumers began Hansalim. “Han” in Korean means great, one, whole, and together, and refers to all living things on earth. “Salim” refers to domestic activities that must be managed to care for one’s home, family, children, and community, as well as to revive and give life. With 2,000 growers and 380,000 consumer members, Hansalim is among the world’s largest and most successful agricultural cooperatives, creating an alternative economy that supports organic farmers and local agriculture, producing healthy food and protecting the environment in the process. Despite the global financial crisis, its sales have been growing annually by 20 percent. “Farmers at the time realized that they would need to collaborate with consumers in the city,” explains Woon Seok Park, a Hansalim farmer. “Hansalim was created from that point of view, that consumers and producers could make a movement that went beyond mere market transactions to one of understanding each others’ conditions.” At Hansalim, consumers and growers meet each year to select what and how much they will produce and deliberate on prices for the following season. The coordination on such a massive scale—navigating production, price, harvest, distribution, and processing—is, to say the least, remarkable. It deeply impressed one U.S. organic farmer: David Retsky of County Line Harvest, who reflected back to Hansalim growers, “I come from California where I am just trying to make my business work. We’re competing with other people, so for me to see so many producers in the way of a collective, I’m amazed to see it working quite well.” To further demonstrate their commitment to support Hansalim farmers, consumers established a product stabilization fund in case of bad harvests caused by multiple factors, including rising fuel costs and climate change. Unlike many farmers who have been forced to throw in the towel in recent years due to extreme weather, which has caused crop failures, this fund has been a lifeline to Hansalim farmers who have been able to stay on the farm. Locally fed cattle (Christine Ahn). Hansalim farmers know that climate change poses a challenge to the viability of agriculture in Korea. That’s why “we only handle local food,” explains Woon Seok, because “using Hansalim products is a way to combat climate change.” Hansalim doesn’t exclude non-organic growers from the cooperative. While it encourages organic production, proximity is most important because of the high environmental costs of shipping food over long distances, including refrigeration. Hansalim also runs the only livestock feed factory in Korea that uses only local feed sources from nearby farmers. Unlike the majority of livestock farmers, Hansalim livestock is therefore not dependent on feed imports that make up the majority of South Korean grain imports. Hansalim also informs consumers about the environmental benefits of locally produced food. On each product, it lists the distance and carbon saved by consuming this locally produced good versus one that would have been imported. To make this figure relevant to the lives of consumers, the label also lists an equivalent energy savings, such as the number of hours of electricity used to watch television or to light a fluorescent bulb. Replacing Competition with Sharing Hansalim and KWPA are responses to government policies that have liberalized Korean agriculture and sacrificed farming to expand export markets for chaebols. And it’s about to get worse. South Korea has signed nine bilateral free trade agreements, and 12 more are under negotiation, including a trilateral one with China and Japan. The most significant pact is the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), which, after massive protests in South Korea, passed in 2011. According to Doo Bong Han and Kyung Min Kim of Korea University, under the KORUS FTA, Korean agriculture will lose $626 million in production value. Estimates by the South Korean government also predict that 45 percent of Korean farmers will be displaced under the KORUS FTA. In recent weeks, South Korea has also signaled its interest in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most ambitious free trade agreement the world has ever seen, which would account for 40 percent of the world’s economy. If Seoul joins, it would be the fourth largest economy in the pact, following the United States, Japan, and Australia. These free trade agreements, it is argued, will strengthen global demand for the high-tech commodities that constitute the core of South Korea’s export-oriented economy—and as such, Korean agriculture must either adapt or perish. Hansalim and KWPA, however, demonstrate that competition is not inevitable, necessary, or the only path forward. More than 1 million households in Korea today are members of cooperatives like Hansalim, demonstrating the viability and growing interest in alternative food systems. By stressing instead the concept of sharing and the notion that “consumers and producers are one,” these cooperatives have shown that a different economy is possible. The fate of South Korea’s countryside remains to be seen, but if history is instructive, we know that Korean peasants have endured and resisted. In the legendary Donghak rebellion of 1894, peasant farmers rose up with their bamboo spears against the Chosun King for levying heavy taxes on them to grow Korea’s industrial might and bolster the monarchy’s power against foreign invaders like China, Japan, Russia, and the United States. Donghak peasants were influenced by a philosophy that at its center argued for human equality, a radical notion during feudalism. The rebellion was quashed with the help of the Japanese, but the idea that all humans are equal and all living beings are one prevailed—and continues to inspire today’s social movements. In Korean folklore, the mung bean, or nokdu, is symbolic of the resilient spirit of the Korean peasants. In the harshest conditions, nokdu sprouts and grows, feeding the hungry.  In the face of domestic and international policies that have systematically undermined their livelihoods and depressed the countryside, Korean peasants and farmers are sprouting, growing, and inspiring Koreans and global citizens alike by demonstrating that another economy and food system can thrive—even under the harsh conditions of corporate trade regimes. FPIF columnist Christine Ahn is a founding board member of the Korea Policy Institute (KPI). Anders Riel Muller is a fellow with Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy and KPI. #SouthKorea #AndersRielMueller #ChristineAhn #globalization #foodsovereignty #freetrade

Gangjeong villagers and activists decorate the streets with colorful woolen squares knitted by supporters of the anti-base struggle. Traditional drummers play in the foreground. By Koohan Paik I recently spoke with two members of Veterans for Peace, who had become involved with Korea issues in only the past few years. Each of them came to know Korea through their support for the Gangjeong villagers who have been battling, for nearly eight years straight, construction of a huge, high-tech navy base being built on their Jeju-Island coastline. Both men said that before Jeju, their work with northeast Asia was Japan-centered, and that “no one ever talked about Korea.” But through their engagement with Gangjeong, they have learned about the April 3 massacre, about the unending Korean War, about the unprecedented tonnage of bombs that the U.S. levied upon the Korean people in the early 1950s, and about modern Korean history, in general. Today, they recognize that the Korean War was certainly as consequential in U.S. history as the war in Vietnam. It now perplexes them that Korea had been effectively erased from the books. The sad truth is, the vast majority of even the most progressive Americans know very little about Korea, let alone that the U.S. has been at war with it for the past 60 years. Many don’t even know where Korea is. This absurd knowledge void presents a challenge so daunting for those working toward unification, that nothing short of alchemy would seem to hold any promise for peace on the peninsula. On the other hand, it appears that the tragedy unfolding at Gangjeong village might offer just the sort of alchemy that could conjure Korea into the wider consciousness. Ecumenical groups, environmental groups, artists, lawyers, social workers, peace-studies groups, student groups, indigenous-rights groups, and food-sovereignty groups have all passed through the tiny village whose fame is now of global proportion. Numerous articles on the villagers’ plight have been published in Europe, South America, the Asia-Pacific and the U.S.  Last summer, I was at the San Francisco airport with Gangjeong’s charismatic Mayor Kang Dong-kyun on his first foray outside of northeast Asia, when a woman behind him in line said, “Aren’t you Mayor Kang? From Gangjeong village?” It turned out she had studied Gangjeong as part of a peace-studies program in Virginia, and recognized him from internet videos. Little Gangjeong has put Korea “on the map” and affirms that the Korean War is indeed alive and well. Then, in fall of 2013, the City of Berkeley, California, was the first city in the world to formally declare its support of the Gangjeong villagers in the form of a resolution opposing the navy base. Shortly thereafter, in Madison, Wisconsin, the National Board of Veterans for Peace passed a similar resolution to “Stop the Second U.S. Assault on Jeju Island.” The document not only describes what is at stake if the base project is allowed to proceed, but also gives historical context, such as the 1948 genocide on Jeju and how the ever-increasing militarization of Korea violates the 1953 Armistice. It reads like an overview of modern Korean history vis a vis the United States. One of the most poetic declarations in support of the Jeju struggle was made by a group of Afghani peace activists based in Kabul who have established a Skype relationship with their counterparts in Gangjeong. They write: “We are confident that if ordinary Chinese or North Koreans ever gave you trouble, you would have tea with them, using your imagination and citizen diplomacy to calm the troubles, non-violent paths which are far more effective and kind, and a far better use of tax-payer money (it takes no tax-payer money to drink tea!) than the multi-million premises, personnel and war equipment.” The global draw of the Gangjeong village struggle owes much to the fact that the land, water, heritage and culture at stake have already garnered international recognition. Gangjeong’s culture and environment have earned UNESCO designations. It is one of Korea’s few remaining traditional, indigenous villages; it contains some of Korea’s best farms and richest soil, its purest water and its haenyo diver tradition; its coast was home to Korea’s only pod of dolphins and one of the world’s finest, soft-coral forests (now being dredged); and its 1,900 residents practice authentic local democracy. True, all these elements attract an international crowd. But the most enduring appeal of the humble village sits squarely in its remarkable community spirit. The community is comprised of an eclectic mix of villagers, clergy and Seoul activists, who strategize and carry out campaign after campaign. There are cooks, videographers, and kayakers who monitor environmental violations by construction crews. There are people setting up for “Hundred Bows” every morning, or for a music concert in the evening. There are people manning the Peace Center, ready to welcome new arrivals disembarked off the public bus steps away. There are people printing up information pamphlets to disseminate at any one of the big, international conventions that regularly take place on Jeju. It is no exaggeration to say that the village is as fueled on dynamic love as it is by donation. Most recently, there have been scores of knitters – yes, knitters! – sitting crosslegged in the Peace Center for hours at a time, lashing together enormous woolen quilts in rainbow hues, out of over a thousand knitted squares sent to them by supporters from all over Korea. December 2013 in Gangjeong saw the streets festooned with the quilts, and even the skeletal trees were given cheery, colorful “sweaters” that fit snugly over their trunks and branches. The sight of this whimsical riot of color splashed across winter’s dreary landscape, in contrast with the phalanxes of stern and smooth-faced cops who robotically pull away every protestor from blocking cement trucks, is indeed chilling — yet somehow, transcendent. Even an atheist once commented that life in Gangjeong was the closest one could come to living with God. Maybe that’s why, when visitors return to their own countries, either voluntarily or through deportation, they are compelled, almost evangelically, to “spread the word” through events, writing articles, and making films. Something special is going on in Gangjeong. But it wasn’t always this way. Initially, the villagers were highly suspicious of outsiders, particularly those from the Korean mainland. They carried the trauma of the April 3, 1948 massacre in living memory, when the South Korean army, under U.S. orders, unleashed wholesale terror on the island and murdered at least a third of the population. Understandably, the South Korean government’s announcement that their village would be the site for a navy base only reinforced their mistrust of outsiders. In those beginning years, the Gangjeong villagers battled alone, in total obscurity. But at a certain point, with everything at stake, they had no choice but to embrace the support of mainlanders who seemed authentically sincere. One such mainlander was artist Sung-hee Choi, board member of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and the pivotal person in exposing the struggle internationally. She started a blog, No base stories of Korea, in December 2008 which first introduced Gangjeong outside of Korea in 2009. Choi moved to Gangjeong in 2010 and has been there ever since. Update: environmental destruction, incarceration, depression Today, almost eight years since the announcement of the base project, the Gangjeong coastline is unrecognizable, carpeted with enormous stacked cement forms of varying shapes and sizes that resemble a giant’s erector set. The 86 species of seaweed and over 500 species of mollusks – once food for the village – have all but perished. The sea is no longer a clear dark blue, but grayish brown. Gargantuan concrete cubes called “caissons,” 10 stories high apiece, sit on the ocean floor where biodiverse coral habitats once thrived. On land, an enormous rebar mold for manufacturing the caissons looms hideously over the horizon. The rumbling and scraping sounds of construction fill the air night and day. The base is slated to start operation in 2015. To add insult to injury, resistance leaders are jailed for months on end, often caught in a revolving door of multiple prison sentences. Currently, three beloved individuals languish unjustly behind bars: 22-year-old Kim Eun-hye, Brother Park Do-hyun, and film critic Yang Yoon-mo, who has been incarcerated for about a year. Depression and suicidal tendencies have skyrocketed in Gangjeong, according to the Jeju media. Women weep in the streets. Often, there are scant visitors to boost morale (and the visitors really do make a positive difference). During the winter when it’s off-season for tourists, they feel alone and helpless against the cranes, dredges and cops of the transnational defense industry’s destructive juggernaut. Community creativity Someone once asked Gangjeong Mayor Kang Dong-kyun, “What keeps you going?” He said, “Knowing that this is not just for me, not just for my children, or my children’s children, or for my ancestors. It is for world peace.” But Mayor Kang left out a key component as to how the villagers have maintained their resilience for as long as they have: through dance.  As silly as it may sound, a series of four wacky dances that celebrate Gangjeong has served as an indispensable catharsis ritual that ends each day. The villagers will also spontaneously break out into the Gangjeong dances when times get tough, such as what happened upon the tearful announcement at the IUCN convention that a resolution to stop base construction had been defeated. It’s how they let off steam so they can keep going. In a certain sense, Gangjeong uses creativity as a weapon in psychic self-defense. Once the villagers mounted a film festival of anti-war videos directly in the gaze of a row of riot cops surrounding the base. It is as if, for every harsh blow, every broken bone, every dead dolphin, every prison sentence, and every fine levied upon them, they emerge with a surprising rejoinder of equal, positive force. Recently they lined the village streets with six-foot high stacks of books, 30,000 in all, creating both political art and a library al fresco — a stunning visual juxtaposition against the squadrons of police. The Gandhi-esque villagers seem to have captured the hearts and imaginations of the world. When a former attorney with the Clinton administration came to Gangjeong, he marveled, “In the face of brutal opposition, they display only grace and persistence.” When a German IUCN bioethicist spent several days in the village, he remarked, “their joy is infectious.” When a Hollywood film director was asked what he liked best about his visit to Gangjeong, he said, “The dancing.” At the core of such astonishing creativity is – again — the community. Perhaps this is the alchemy that can heal all of Korea. One could say that the villagers have metamorphosed Gangjeong into a premiere destination for political tourism. Gangjeong is an excellent place for foreigners starting at a zero knowledge base, to learn about Korea’s place in history and in the region. And the benefits are reciprocal; while visitors learn about Korea, they invariably take their lessons home and spread the information, which, in turn, supports the movement. Professor Rob Fletcher gave a seminar at Costa Rica’s University for Peace on the base struggle. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, one of the original drafters of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, has been in communication with villagers about staking out their identities as indigenous Tamna (which could lead to advantages through processes at the UN). British attorney Harry Jonas wrote a case history of Gangjeong as an example of how legal constructs violate what he calls “natural justice.” Such developments have given new hope to villagers who have lost all faith in their own government. As a result of such exchanges, villagers have become extraordinarily sophisticated about other Asia-Pacific islands also under assault by militarization and the Pentagon’s “Pacific Pivot.” Solidarity has been built with Taiwan, Okinawa, Guam, Hawaii, and elsewhere. Now, when President Park Geun-hye echoes her father’s dream of turning Jeju into “Korea’s Hawaii,” a tourist mecca complete with navy base, the villagers steadfastly oppose. They do not want to see militarization kill all life in their sea, as it did in Pearl Harbor, which is now a toxic Superfund site. Like all indigenous people, they know that without their natural resources, they die — economically, culturally, spiritually. Recently, an American pragmatist looked out at the machines bulldozing the coast and said to me, in a defeated tone, “You’re not going to stop the base.” He’s likely right. But maybe I’m not looking only for linear cause-and-effect results – like I used to. The way of life here has connected me with my own humanity and the humanity of others. Just as its residents have transformed this physically disfigured place into a village of spiritual beauty, I, too, have been transformed. And I know many others who have been similarly changed. Gangjeong is like the Chinese character that means not only “crisis,” but also “opportunity.” # Koohan Paik, who was raised in Korea during the Park Chung-Hee era, is a journalist, media educator, and Campaign Director of the Asia-Pacific program at the International Forum on Globalization. In 2011 and 2013, she helped to organize the Moana Nui conference in Honolulu, which brought together international activists, scholars, politicians and artists to consolidate Asia-Pacific discourse as it relates to geopolitics, resource depletion, human rights and global trade. She is the co-author of “The Superferry Chronicles: Hawaii’s Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism and the Desecration of the Earth,” and has written on militarism in the Asia-Pacific for The Nation, Progressive, and other publications. #KoohanPaik #SaveJeju

Jang Song Thaek (AP) By Paul Liem l December 31, 2013 The arrest, trial, and execution of Jang Song Thaek, the uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by marriage to the latter’s aunt and a figure considered to be the second most important leader in North Korea, has led to speculation of a leadership crisis in Pyongyang.  Secretary of State John Kerry described the execution as an “ominous sign of instability” brought about by the ruthless and reckless nature of Kim Jong Un.[1]  South Korean President, Park Geun-hye, called it a “reign of terror” and warned of the “possibilities of contingencies such as reckless provocations.”[2] Jang’s demise was unusual in that the state’s rationale for his expulsion from the Workers’ Party on December 8, 2013 and execution on December 12, 2013 was highly publicized not only internally, but also in a lengthy report published December 13, 2013 by North Korea’s official international news service, the Korean Central Daily News Agency (KCNA).[3] Jang was reportedly purged and executed as a “traitor.” In military tribunal proceedings, Jang allegedly admitted plans to stage a coup by “trigger[ing] off discontent among service personnel and people.” Jang, according to the KCNA, testified that “Comrade supreme leader [Kim Jong Un] is the target of the coup.” To accomplish his aim, Jang, utilizing control over political and economic institutions and resources, “schemed to drive the economy of the country and people’s living into an uncontrollable catastrophe,” the report also said. In reference to U.S. and South Korean policies of non-engagement, Jang was accused of working “for years to destabilize and bring down the DPRK … pursuant to the ‘strategic patience’ policy and ‘waiting strategy’ of the U.S. and the south Korean puppet group of traitors.”[4]  Jang was executed immediately following the tribunal. To date, fears that Jang’s execution might be a harbinger of uncertainty for the direction of North Korea or that it might lead to “reckless provocation” have yet to materialize. North and South Korea resumed talks regarding the operations of the Kaesong industrial complex on December 19, 2013, and on the same day, North Korea allowed a 30-member delegation consisting of representatives of the world’s leading 20 economies (G-20) and officials of the IMF and Asian Development Bank to tour the complex.[5] Moreover, on the day of Jang’s arrest, North Korea was pursuing a contract with a Chinese consortium to connect Sinuiju, Kaesong, and Pyongyang via high speed rail and expressway, and on the day of Jang’s execution, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations Secretariat in Geneva reportedly called for dialogue of “whatever kind” to resolve “security concerns in Korea.”[6] China’s response was circumspect. In reply to questions raised at a press conference on December 13, 2013 concerning Jang’s execution, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hong Lei, remarked, “It is the DPRK’s internal affair. As its neighbor, we hope to see the DPRK maintain political stability and realize economic development and people there lead a happy life.  The development of economic cooperation and trade between China and the DPRK serves the interests of both sides. China will continue economic interactions with the DPRK based on friendliness and mutual benefit and advance practical cooperation. We hope and believe that China-DPRK economic cooperation and trade will move ahead in a sound and steady manner.”[7] The immediate outcome of Jang’s execution has been the consolidation of Kim Jong Un’s position as North Korea’s undisputed leader and his control over the country’s economic resources.  The latter is significant insofar as Jang was accused not only of attempting to disrupt the North Korean economy but specifically of selling “coal and other precious underground resources at random … resulting in huge debt.”[8]  This is no small matter as North Korea’s mineral resources are its most important export commodity.  The country has sizeable deposits of some 200 minerals including coal, iron, gold, magnesite, zinc, copper, tungsten, and graphite, all of which have the potential for large-scale development and badly needed revenue generation.[9] Most recently, privately-held SRE Minerals announced a joint venture with North Korea to develop what is estimated, at 216 million tons, to be the world’s largest deposit of rare earth elements (REE). Used variously in cell phones as well as high-tech military systems such as cruise missiles, North Korea’s REE deposit is valued in the trillions of dollars.[10]  In 2011, China controlled 95% of the world’s REE market.[11]  If managed profitably, North Korea’s mineral resources, and in particular its REE deposits, could be a game changer for its economic recovery. During his political career, which began under the rule of Kim Il Sung and continued under Kim Jong Il, Jang fell in and out of favor with North Korea’s leadership.[12]  His purge under Kim Jong Un was not unexpected as his visibility at political functions had diminished noticeably over the past year.  But the public spectacle of his humiliation and his swift execution came as a shock.  Of this event, New York Times journalists, Choe Sang-Hun and David Sanger reported that Jang’s execution “had its roots in a firefight between forces loyal to Mr. Kim [Kim Jong Un] and those supporting the man who was supposed to be his regent [Jang Song Thaek].”[13]  Jang reportedly refused an order by Kim Jong Un to return control of a fishing ground to the military and when forces loyal to Kim showed up to take possession of the resource, last September or October, a battle ensued resulting in the deaths of two of Kim’s soldiers.  The North Korean military returned in larger numbers and “prevailed.” Jang’s two top lieutenants were executed subsequently, Choe and Sanger reported.  The rest is history. Like the finale of countless tales of failed palace coups, Jang’s fate, at the hands of a relative, was dramatic and brutal but not to be unexpected.  Choe and Sanger’s report of a shoot-out was based on “accounts that are being pieced together by South Korean and American officials.”[14]  If true, Jang was in armed rebellion against the state.  If not, likely we may never know what tipped the balance in favor of execution over banishment.  In either case, with the commemoration of the passing of Kim Jong Il, observed only days after Jang’s execution, Pyongyang appears to be moving on.  At the start of the New Year, it continues to promote international trade and joint ventures to spur economic growth, and it continues to seek dialogue with the U.S. and South Korea to address military tensions on the peninsula. Whether or not the greatest fears of the U.S. and South Korea come to pass, namely, that Jang’s execution is a precursor to political instability in the north leading to external “provocations,” remains to be seen.  Thus far, there is no evidence that substantiates this narrative. To be sure, South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director, Nam Jae-joon, reported, “There is a high possibility that they [North Korea] may attempt to provoke the South sometime in January-March next year.”[15]  However, the upcoming annual U.S.–South Korea joint war exercises, Key Resolve/Foal Eagle, which are scheduled for the same period and which last year featured B-2 stealth bombers dropping dummy nuclear munitions off the Korean peninsula, are likely to spike tensions on the Korean peninsula, as they do every year, the execution of Jang Song Thaek notwithstanding. # Paul Liem is the chairperson of the Korea Policy Institute Board and a long time activist and writer on Korean peninsular issues. [1] http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/12/john-kerry-compares-kim-jong-un-to-saddam-hussein-says-uncles-execution-shows-ominous-sign-of-instability/ [2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/execution-of-kim-jonguns-uncle-jang-songthaek-raises-fears-in-south-9008872.html [3] http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm [4] http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm [5] http://www.vietnambreakingnews.com/2013/12/north-south-korea-hold-meeting/ [6] http://38north.org/2013/12/hpaik121313/ [7] http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xwfw/s2510/2511/t1108768.shtml [8] http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm [9] http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/08/30/north-koreas-mining-prospects/ [10] http://rareearthinvestingnews.com/19211-jv-to-develop-worlds-largest-known-ree-deposit-in-north-korea.html [11] pentagon-says-rare-earth-elements-less-at-risk [12] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec13/execution2_12-13.html [13] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/asia/north-korea-purge.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1& [14] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/asia/north-korea-purge.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1& [15] http://english.khan.co.kr/khan_art_view.html?code=710100&artid=201312241646567 #JangSongThaek #KimJongUn #NorthKorea

South Korean National Assemblyperson Lee Seok-ki denies charges of treason. (Photo AP) By GREGORY ELICH | January 9, 2014 [Originally published in Counterpunch, December 25, 2013] It made worldwide news when Lee Seok-ki, representative in the South Korean National Assembly, was arrested on charges of treason. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) fed media outlets with a transcript of a meeting that Lee attended, which appeared to reveal plans by the Unified Progressive Party to take up arms against the South Korean government in the event of war with the north. The release of the transcript came at the height of national protests against interference by the NIS in the national election of December 2012. The Unified Progressive Party (UPP) was at the forefront of the anti-NIS demonstrations, and the furor that resulted over the accusations against Lee and the UPP succeeded in stifling mass protests. In a sense, Lee Seok-ki and his six co-defendants have been tried twice; first in a trial by media, in which inflammatory news accounts based on one-sided details and misinformation provided by the NIS convinced a majority of South Koreans that Lee was guilty as charged. It appears that the second trial, now underway in a Suwon district court, may yield a quite different result, based on the unraveling of the prosecution’s case. The two main charges against Lee Seok-ki are conspiracy to take up arms against the government and violation of the National Security Law, which makes it illegal to praise or show sympathy for North Korea. Liberally applied, the law has often been used to suppress dissent and punish political actions that are wholly unrelated to North Korea. The prosecution’s chief witness is an informer who was paid by the NIS to spy on the UPP. The centerpiece of the case is the set of recordings the informer made at two party meetings he attended in May, 2013. The informer testified that these meetings were attended by members of a secret subgroup of the UPP named the Revolutionary Organization (RO). Claiming to be a former member of the RO, the witness said he had engaged in “anti-state activities.” Straining credulity, the informer asserted that RO members told him “there was only one leader – Kim Il Sung, and that Lee Seok-ki is the representative of South Korea.” Never mind that Kim Il Sung had long been dead by the time this conversation was alleged to have taken place. The very existence of the RO is open to question. The UPP declares that there is no Revolutionary Organization, and the entire concept is a concoction of the NIS in order to smear the party. The UPP has maintained from the first that the NIS deliberately manipulated the transcript in order to misrepresent the actual words that had been spoken at the May meetings. Indeed, there is ample cause for skepticism concerning the reliability of the transcripts. The prosecution submitted 46 audio recordings from various meetings as evidence. Once the recordings were in the hands of the judge, the prosecution reworked the transcriptions in order to produce more accurate results. The transcripts from the May meetings alone contained a total of 272 corrections made to the initial versions the NIS had leaked to the press and which formed the basis for the indictment of Lee and his six co-defendants. More than half of the errors came in the text of Lee Seok-ki’s speech on May 12. Whether the original inaccuracies could be termed “errors” is another matter. It would be naïve to imagine that it was just happenstance that incorrect wording tended to paint a damning picture of Lee. The inflammatory words inserted into the first transcript caused widespread outrage, providing the pretext for the NIS to raid the homes and offices of the UPP, arrest several of its members, and launch an effort to ban the party. Consider what a different impression is made by the creative rewording provided in the first transcript. In the first version, the phrase “carrying out holy war” is attributed to Lee, but the recording shows he actually said “carrying out promotion.” Similarly, “oppositional struggle” and the “the subject of this war” in the first transcript contrast with Lee’s recorded words, “antiwar struggle” and “struggle against war,” respectively. Lee’s reference to the Jeol-du-san Catholic Martyr’s Shrine appeared in the first transcript as “shrine for decisive battle.” Was it an unintentional mishap that the first transcript had Lee announcing “war preparation,” rather than his actual words “specific preparation”? Can it really be said that Lee was calling for an armed uprising when the first transcript’s phrase “Let us carry out decisive war” was shown to be “Let us decide”? The NIS claims that its dodgy transcript was due to “faulty audio quality and static interference,” but it surely is no accident that the nature of the errors made it more likely that Lee and his co-defendants would be indicted and the UPP defamed. Many of the audio files the prosecution submitted as evidence were copies. “Much of the original audio files have been deleted,” the defense team pointed out, “so it raises questions about whether or not the copies are the same as the originals. Even if the witness verifies the integrity of the evidence, it cannot be said that its authenticity has been established.” The prosecution contended that co-defendants Hong Sun-seok and Lee Sang-ho made more than 1,700 calls to suspected RO members during the year and a half preceding the May meetings. The defense countered, “There is no objective evidence to show that the people they spoke with are RO members and no one knows the contents of their conversations.” The defense also questioned the likelihood that members of an underground organization would use cell phones to communicate. Actions by the NIS may have given the prosecution an unfair advantage in the conspiracy trial. The NIS conducted a series of raids on the homes and offices of the UPP and affiliated organizations, and in the November 14 raid on one group, the NIS confiscated a secure digital card containing the defense team’s legal strategy. Two weeks later, the NIS contacted the defense team and announced that it would remove the seals on the card and told them to come. A defense team member reports, “After removing the seal, they didn’t immediately return it, but connected it to a computer and posted the materials on the screen; then took pictures of the documents with a digital camera.” The defense team protested that the materials were for defense counsels only and dealt with the conspiracy trial, “but the agents continued to take photos.” The NIS claims that it deleted the photos on the camera in front of the defense team, but data recovery software can retrieve deleted digital photos. Screen recording software could also have been installed on the computer. There was nothing to stop the NIS from capturing that information if it chose to do so. The behavior of the NIS throughout the entire affair does not inspire confidence in that organization’s good will. The defense called the actions by the NIS “a complete violation of the defendants’ right to defense and the rights of the defense counsels that could lead to the dismissal of the charges.” In a further violation of the rights of defense, Lee Seok-ki is kept under constant CCTV surveillance and was not allowed access to counsel except in the presence of the prosecution. Much of the government’s case relies upon the strength of the paid informer’s testimony, and cross-examination by the defense has demolished his credibility. The defense contended that the informer’s deposition was prewritten by the NIS and did not represent his actual testimony. According to records, the deposition lasted 3 hours and 25 minutes, followed by 25 minutes of review and questions. The defense argued that it was not possible to write 97 pages of deposition in such a short time and review and sign 142 pages of a report in 25 minutes. The defense questioned the informer: “Did the NIS agents prewrite the deposition?” The informer admitted, “They did prewrite it.” The deposition the prosecution attributed to the informer in fact represents the words of the NIS. In reply to the question of the time being too short to handle the volume of material, the informer replied: “I was familiar with the content, so I speed-read it just to check for any errors.” Nevertheless, it was the NIS that supplied that content. Nor has the informer’s testimony inspired confidence. The conclusion by the witness that the May 12 meeting was held by the Revolutionary Organization was based solely on his judgment that security was tight. There was no other indication that a secret group was meeting. If strict security is sufficient evidence of a secret revolutionary group, then one encounters such groups with each trip to the airport. One of the main features of the informer’s testimony was the term “single line double tracking,” describing the organization’s internal security structure. The witness assumed the RO had adopted this approach based on what he had read of past national security cases. He merely extrapolated from those unrelated cases. The witness frequently changed his testimony. Initially, the informer claimed that Lee Seok-ki announced that it was “time to prepare for revolution, a decisive moment.” During cross-examination, the witness admitted that Lee had never uttered those words. There is even a lack of evidence for the name “Revolutionary Organization.” The defense asked the witness, “You testified that when you first joined RO, you had ‘probably heard’ the name RO from someone named Do. What did you mean ‘probably’?” The informant answered, “At the NIS, they asked if the organization name is RO and I said ‘probably RO’.” In other words, it was the NIS that supplied the name Revolutionary Organization to the informer. The witness also admitted that his earlier testimony that the RO had four regional branches was his assumption and, despite having claimed that he heard the RO platform, he had in fact never heard it. The witness repeatedly reversed himself and acknowledged that a large portion of his earlier testimony was based on his assumptions. The informer also conceded that his testimony regarding the structure of the RO was based on his experience and in watching the breakout groups at the May 12 meeting. He had no direct knowledge of the structure of the RO. The informant testified to the existence of an RO central committee. Asked by the judge if he had heard from anyone directly regarding its existence, the witness answered, “I never heard from anyone directly. When I heard that Wang-jae-san is a ‘shabby organization without a central committee,’ I thought it’s possible that we have one.” He assumed the existence of a central committee merely because the activists seemed well-organized. In a preposterous statement, the witness said that he could tell who is an RO member merely by looking at the person. Indeed, the only evidence the prosecution had to offer that the RO even existed was the testimony of the informant, and that was proving an embarrassment. In the assessment of lead defense attorney Kim Chil-jun, “The informant assumed the role of a NIS contractor and collaborated with the NIS to actively meet people and entrap them to say certain things. Rather than provide objective and truthful information on an actual situation, he infiltrated for the purpose of investigation, choreographed the situation, and then submitted that as evidence. After drafting an exaggerated activity report, he then immediately submitted that to the NIS.” In regard to the evidence the NIS claimed to have on the RO, Kim observes, “It has been revealed that they were all either based on the imagination of the informant or fiction based on his knowledge of other high-profile national security cases.” As for the existence of the RO, “There is no evidence beyond the testimony of the government informant. Even what might be considered evidence is either contradictory or absurd.” Based only on a few words, Kim said, “The government informant basically imagined this entire scenario.” No resolutions came from the breakout sessions on May 12, nor could the informer know what was being said at the six other sessions taking place simultaneously with the one he attended. There is no evidence of decisions being taken to launch a rebellion. Asked whether there was any discussion following the breakout sessions on a plan of action or a resolution, the government informant replied, “No, I don’t remember.” The defense will begin presenting its case in January, when it plans to reveal additional information about the extent of fabrication in the government’s case. It is expected that within the next few weeks, the judge will make a determination on the admissibility of the recordings as evidence, and a negative decision would deal another blow to the prosecution case. At this point, the prosecution has failed to offer evidence to substantiate the charge of conspiracy. The National Security Law, however, is so open to varying interpretations that a conviction on that charge cannot be ruled out. The government is counting on a conviction on at least one charge in order to strengthen the motion it filed with the Constitutional Court for the abolition of the Unified Progressive Party. The Ministry of Justice also plans to try to remove the six UPP members in the National Assembly from office. A successful outcome in either endeavor would trigger wider efforts. In a growing wave of government repression that includes widespread attacks on unions, the conspiracy trial is an opening salvo in a campaign to remove progressive forces from the political scene. The Ministry of Justice has announced plans to get legislation passed that would grant it authority to disband what it terms “anti-state” groups. “The UPP is just the tip of the iceberg,” one Justice Ministry official revealed, and there are many individuals and groups that the government wants to target. The fate of democracy in South Korea hangs in the balance. The Right is resorting to the practices of the era of dictatorship, when oppositionists were routinely red baited and repression was used to stifle dissent. An acquittal of the defendants at the conspiracy trial and the failure of the government’s motion to abolish the UPP would foil efforts to de-legitimize participation by progressive forces in the political process, and mark a great victory in the Korean people’s defense of democracy. # Gregory Elich is on the board of directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the advisory board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is the author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit. #GregoryElich #LeeSeokki #NIS #SouthKorea

Thomas Friedman once said the hidden hand of the market needs the hidden fist of the military. The TPP and the Obama administration’s Pacific Pivot pack both. By Christine Ahn* | January 21, 2014 [Originally published in Foreign Policy In Focus, January 14, 2014] The struggle for food sovereignty in the Pacific got a major boost last December when Billy Kenoi, mayor of Hawai’i’s Big Island, signed a law that prevents farmers from growing any new genetically engineered crops (with the exception of papaya). This follows a successful push on Kauai, at the other end of the islands, to force large growers to disclose the pesticides they use and which genetically engineered crops they are growing. This is a major step in the battle for more ecologically sustainable agriculture in Hawai’i, which has suffered for over a century under the heavy weight of U.S. corporate and military domination. Yet like other local, state, and national regulations intended to protect the public and the environment, these anti-GMO laws can be swiftly overturned if President Obama signs the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the world’s most ambitious and far reaching free trade agreement yet. On January 9, the U.S. Congress introduced “fast-track” legislation allowing the Obama administration to sign the TPP without undergoing public debate. Fast-track authority would grant the White House the power to speed up negotiations, while giving Congress only 90 days to review the TPP before voting. The TPP spans 12 countries — including the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam — comprising 40 percent of the world’s economy. Like nearly all trade agreements signed since NAFTA, the TPP is almost to certain to allow multinational corporations from anywhere in the bloc to sue governments in secret courts to overturn national or local regulations, such as Hawai’i’s recent GMO laws, that could limit their profits. So it’s not just Hawai’i’s food sovereignty that’s at risk. “This is not mainly about trade,” explains Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “It is a corporate Trojan horse. The agreement has 29 chapters, and only five of them have to do with trade.” More than 600 corporate lobbyists representing multinationals like Monsanto, Cargill, and Wal-Mart have had unfettered access to shape the secret agreement, while Congress and the public have only seen a few leaked chapters. But the TPP is even more than a corporate Trojan horse. It’s a core part of the Obama administration’s Asia-Pacific Pivot, which is centrally about containing China. A New Cold War? Ahead of the fall 2011 Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC) meeting in Hawaii, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined a plan to transfer U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic resources from the Middle East to the Pacific, in what she called “America’s New Pacific Century.” Describing the pivot in militaristic terms as “forward-deployed diplomacy,” Clinton hailed the TPP as a “benchmark for future agreements” leading to “a free trade area of the Asia- Pacific.” Yet the TPP excludes China, which has become the second largest economy in the world and is poised to outpace the U.S. economy in a matter of years — a fact that is none too pleasing to U.S. elites accustomed to unrivaled hegemony. Like the United States, the future of China’s economic growth lies in the Asia-Pacific region, which by all indicators will be the center of economic activity in the 21st century. By 2015, according to a paper from the conservative Foreign Policy Research Institute, “East Asian countries are expected to surpass NAFTA and the euro zone to become the world’s largest trading bloc. Market opportunities will only increase as the region swells by an additional 175 million people by 2030.” Enter the TPP. By increasing U.S. market access and influence with China’s neighbors, Washington is hoping to deepen its economic engagement with the TPP countries while diminishing their economic integration with China. Obama’s “Pacific Pivot” also seeks to contain China militarily. By 2020, 60 percent of U.S. naval capacity will be based in the Asia-Pacific, where 320,000 U.S. troops are already stationed. The realignment will entail rebuilding and refurbishing former U.S. facilities in the Philippines, placing 2,500 marines in Australia, transferring 8,000 marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam and Hawai’i, and building new installations like the one on the tiny Pacific island of Saipan. Meanwhile, the U.S. military regularly stages massive joint military exercises involving tens of thousands of troops and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with its key allies — and China’s neighbors — Japan and South Korea. It has been regularly conducting Cobra Gold exercises with Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and even Myanmar. Official Washington seems to believe that these are necessary precautions. According to the RAND Corporation, for example, 90 percent of U.S. bases in the region are “under threat” from Chinese ballistic missiles because they are within 1,080 nautical miles of China. But who is threatening whom? The Chinese have precisely zero bases in the Asia-Pacific outside of their own borders. Some U.S. analysts insist that a more robust U.S. military presence is necessary to curb China’s ambitious territorial claims in the region. Without a doubt, China has recently taken a more aggressive stance in regional territorial disputes over dwindling natural resources, angering many of its neighbors. But by turning to the United States as a check against China, less powerful nations invite a bargain with the devil as Washington will advance its own strategic interests. And by getting itself involved, Washington risks encouraging China’s rivals to behave more provocatively, as well as angering China itself. According to Mel Gurtov, “While accepting that the United States is a Pacific power, Chinese authorities now resist the notion that the United States has some special claim to predominance in Asia and the western Pacific.” A One-Two Punch “The hidden hand of the market,” as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman famously wrote in the 1990s, “will never work without a hidden fist.” The Asia-Pacific Pivot, a one-two neoliberal-militaristic punch, packs both. Of all people in the world, Hawaiians know this especially well. Once a sovereign nation, Hawai’i was the starting point for America’s century of imperialism and conquest in the Pacific. Most people don’t know this critical history, but what fueled the overthrow of Hawai’i’s monarchy was trade. During the 1800s, American merchants were profiting handsomely from exporting sugar from Hawai’i to the United States. When faced with new tariffs that the U.S. government imposed to protect the domestic sugar industry in the American South, the exporters orchestrated a coup with the U.S. marines to overthrow the islands’ queen and annex Hawai’i so that Hawaiian sugar would not be subject to tariffs. With the world facing the pressing issues of global climate change, biodiversity loss, rising food prices, and declining sources of fossil energy, what is now needed more than ever are policies that promote local, sustainable economies that ensure the well-being of their people and protect the ecosystems upon which all of our lives depend. Local communities seem to get it — new laws like the GMO restrictions recently passed in Hawai’i are a step in that direction. But with multinational elites and the U.S. government pushing undemocratic monstrosities like the Pacific Pivot and the TPP, prospects for a more genuine security appear more distant than ever. *Christine Ahn is a Korea Policy Institute Advisor, a Senior Fellow of the Oakland Institute, Co-chair of Women De-Militarize the Zone (DMZ), and a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist. #ChristineAhn #TPP

UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea By Christine Hong | March 31, 2014 (Originally published in the Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 12, Issue 13, No. 2) Abstract:  This essay offers a historicized overview of the consolidation of contemporary human rights as the dominant lingua franca for social justice projects today and applies it to the debate over human rights in North Korea. Highlighting what the rights framework renders legible as well as what it consigns to unintelligibility, it examines the antinomies of contemporary human rights as an ethico-political discourse that strives to reassert the dominance of the global North over the global South. Relentlessly presentist in its assignment of blame and politically harnessed to a regime-change agenda, the human rights framing of North Korea has enabled human rights advocates, typically “beneficiaries of past injustice,” to assume a moralizing, implicitly violent posture toward a “regime” commonsensically understood to be “evil.” Cordoning off North Korea’s alleged crimes for discrete consideration while turning a willfully blind eye to the violence of sanctions, “humanitarian” intervention, and the withholding of humanitarian and developmental aid, the North Korean human rights project has allowed a spectrum of political actors—U.S. soft-power institutions, thinly renovated Cold War defense organizations, hawks of both neoconservative and liberal varieties, conservative evangelicals, anticommunist Koreans in South Korea and the diaspora, and North Korean defectors—to join together in common cause. This thematic issue, by contrast, enables a range of critical perspectives—from U.S.– and South Korea–based scholars, policy analysts, and social justice advocates—to attend to what has hovered outside or been marginalized within the dominant human rights framing of North Korea as a narrowly inculpatory, normative structure. This excerpted article is adapted from the introduction to a two-part thematic issue of Critical Asian Studies on “Reframing North Korean Human Rights” (December 2013 and March 2014). The full article can be read on the Asia-Pacific Journal site. I. Victors’ Justice? In February 2014, upon completing a several-month investigation into “human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK, or North Korea]”—an investigation initiated in the sixtieth anniversary year of the 1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement that halted combat but did not end the war—the three-member Commission of Inquiry (COI) established by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) concluded that North Korea had committed crimes against humanity. Such “unspeakable atrocities,” in the framing account of Commission chair Michael Kirby, “reveal a totalitarian State [without] parallel in the contemporary world.”1 Analogies to the “dark abyss” of North Korea, the Australian jurist maintained, could be found only in the brutality of the Third Reich, South African apartheid, and the Khmer Rouge regime.2 Reproduced in news reports around the world, Kirby’s markedly ahistorical examples may have succeeded in inflaming global public opinion yet they failed to contextualize the issue of North Korean human rights in a way that might generate peaceful structural resolution. Indeed, insofar as the 372-page COI report singularly identified the North Korea government as the problem—both as “a remaining and shameful scourge that afflicts the world today,” in Kirby’s jingoistic phrase, and as the primary obstacle to peace in Korea—the Commission gave new life to the vision of regime change that has animated post-9/11 North Korean human rights campaigns. By recommending that North Korea and its high officials be brought up before the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), it continued the hostilities of the unresolved Korean War “by means purporting to be judicial.”3 The urgent question of a long-deferred peace relative to the Korean peninsula, which the Commission incoherently addressed, bedeviled its conclusions, rendering its findings partial, its recommendations in some instances uneasily one-sided, and its premise of impartiality suspect.4 Moreover, that the COI proceedings and report aligned the United Nations with the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Great Britain while singling out North Korea and, to a far lesser degree, China, for blame performed an unsettling restaging of the Korean War on the agonistic terrain of human rights, suggesting an encrypted “victor’s justice” with regard to an unending war that up to now has had no clear winners.5 By overlooking the roots of North Korean militarism and underdevelopment in the unending Korean War, by failing to offer a “systematic and widespread” account of “crimes against humanity” that critically assessed the impact of unresolved war on the entire peninsula and in the greater region, and by assuming the neutrality of the United Nations, the United States, South Korea, Great Britain, and Japan relative to North Korea, the Commission thereby offered an inculpatory account of North Korean human rights that obscured rather than illuminated the complex consequences of unresolved interventionist war.6 Indeed, the footnote status accorded to the Korean War’s historical and ongoing violence within today’s dominant international human rights framework speaks to the limitations of available “post-Cold War” structures of recognition when it comes to the unsettled, in many cases active, legacies of the asymmetrical wars waged by the United States and its allies throughout the Cold War. Justice, with regard to the ongoing Korean War, as Kim Dong-choon, a former standing commissioner of South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRCK), has maintained, cannot be had in the present. Instead, as he has soberingly argued, “dignity for all” and meaningful peace are conceivable “only after the unification of North and South Korea.”7 Implicit in this future prospect for broad structural reckoning is precisely what the TRCK (2005-2010), constrained in its mandate by the U.S.-ROK “security” alliance, could not compel, and what the ICC, for reasons of Realpolitik, is similarly not empowered to address: namely, U.S. accountability.8 In this regard, the Commission’s principal recommendation that North Korea be referred to the ICC for its perpetration of “crimes against humanity” should be critically evaluated against the attenuation, in our historical moment, of “crimes of aggression,” or “crimes against peace.” Crucial, here, is not only the legal limbo of the unresolved Korean War, but also, the repeated efforts by North Korea as well as scholars and activists in South Korea and the United States to emphasize the right to peace as the foremost priority on the Korean peninsula and to render the war’s consequences visible within a human rights framework. To the extent that North Korea’s grievances with regard to the unending Korean War are referenced at all in the COI report, they are framed as baseless propaganda wielded by the North Korean state to justify its human rights violations against the North Korean people. Riven by contestatory claims, unsettled truths about “North Korean human rights,” as we thus can begin to see, are invariably entangled with competing truths about the Korean War. More to the point, justification for “international” intervention under UN auspices on the Korean peninsula at mid-century functions as a necessary premise for today’s interventionist human rights posture toward North Korea. Indeed, in its conclusions, the COI report incomprehensibly identifies the “responsibility” of the “international community” in delivering “an effective response” to North Korea’s human rights violations “because of the unresolved legacy of the Korean War.”9 It bears recalling: if the stated rationale for U.S. and UN intervention in Korea was that North Korea, on June 25, 1950, aggressed the “border” of the 38th parallel—a demarcation line, to be clear, rather than an international boundary drafted by the United States in 1945 with zero Korean input—this studiously reactive account of the war’s origins fails to account for the indiscriminate aggression that followed. The brutal U.S. occupation of the North and its massive aerial bombing campaigns, perpetrated under the cover of the United Nations Command, would generate a swath of ruin impossible to justify as self-defense on the part of the United States. When all was said and done, North Korea’s major cities and towns would be reduced to rubble, its civilian infrastructure smashed, and an estimated twelve to fifteen percent of its population killed. As historian Bruce Cumings has pointed out: “Why is it aggression when Koreans cross the 38th parallel, but imaginary when Americans do the same thing?”10 As Cumings’s critique begins to intimate, the persistent legal illegibility of aggressive war, a crime “predominately committed by the political and military authorities of the major powers,” point less to a breakdown in a global system of rule of law than they do to the workings of an imperial model of global governance that rescripts geopolitical terrain through superior military force and makes recourse to legitimation from “reactive, politically unaccountable institutions (such as courts of law).”11 By definition legibus solutus, or beyond the law, imperial sovereignty, to some degree, could be said to throw the system of international law into “legal incoherence.”12 As jurist Danilo Zolo has pointed out, “[i]mperial power is incompatible both with the general character of law and with the formal equality of subjects in the international legal order.”13 It is revealing, along these lines, that crimes against peace, which were prioritized as “the supreme international crime,” indeed placed, in seriousness, above crimes against humanity and war crimes at the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals and enshrined as crimes of aggression in the Rome Statute of the ICC, are functionally little more than a dead letter in international law.14 We might also think of what Walter Benjamin referred to as the “lawmaking character of violence.”15 Effectively immune to prosecution for crimes of aggression, the United States has wielded the lesser category of crimes against humanity, a legal classification dormant for the duration of the Cold War, against the sovereignty of small postcolonial states. Since the fall of the socialist bloc, we have been repeatedly witness to the unfurling of a spectacular dramaturgy staged around the vanquished that takes the sequence of U.S. interventionist war followed by criminal proceedings under a highly selective interpretation of jus in bello, namely, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of genocide. In this era, the international criminal tribunal, with its fractured and uneven system of justice, has served as a vital mechanism for the consolidation of what Neda Atanasoski refers to as a “postsocialist imperialist” world order in which international legal mechanisms have been monopolized by the United States and its allies and harnessed to a dubious “global ethic of humanitarianism,” which is itself inextricably linked to a regime of U.S. perpetual warfare.16 As an intended prelude to a juridical process, whether via the ICC (doubtful given the likelihood of China’s and possibly Russia’s veto) or the establishment of an international criminal tribunal along the lines of those set up for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the COI proceedings and report on North Korean human rights thus must be understood within the context of “a dual-standard system of international criminal justice…in which a justice ‘made to measure’ for the major world powers and their victorious leaders operates alongside a separate justice for the defeated and the downtrodden.”17 Indeed, prior to recommending that North Korea be referred to the ICC for its alleged commission of crimes against humanity, the Commission, in late 2013, held a series of carefully orchestrated hearings in four sites: namely, Seoul, Tokyo, London, and Washington, DC. Again, the unsettled past (and present) of the Korean War served as prologue. That South Korea, Japan, Great Britain, and the United States not only equipped and financed the COI proceedings but also were allied parties or participants in the Korean War hovered as illegible context for the work and mandate of the Commission, even as this unresolved structure of enmity everywhere informed and, one could argue, contaminated the Commission’s informational base, procedures, and findings.18 Occasionally referenced but nowhere analyzed in the COI report for its profound structural impact on human security both north and south of the DMZ, the irresolution of the Korean War was, for the most part, topically confined to a short perfunctory section in the report dedicated to historical and political context. This glaring failure to wrestle with the human costs of the unending Korean War and to prioritize the right to peace on the Korean peninsula haunted the Commission’s one-sided findings with regard to chronic North Korean hunger, separated families, and war abductees. Far from tackling the consequences of unresolved war head-on, the report displaced and minimized its significance. Insofar as the COI human rights report rehearsed a narrative familiar in its details to “those who know North Korea well,” as historian Charles Armstrong stated to Vice News, it thereby reified, rather than challenged, a structure of enmity whose consequences must be understood as grave human rights matters meriting critical scrutiny in their own right.19 Although the report, in its synopsis of Korean history, offered a cursory overview of the Korean War that cited the research of “Bruce Cummings [sic]” and gestured toward “wounds inflicted by the Korean War [which] were deep and are still felt…on both sides of the border [sic],” it nonetheless doggedly restricted its investigation of state criminality to North Korea, and in a few instances, to China—a narrow nation-based investigation inadequate to the task of examining the structural consequences and human costs of unending war as itself a crime against humanity and, even more seriously, a crime against peace.20 When discussion of the war’s consequences surfaced, the latter were unintelligibly framed as human rights violations on the part of North Korea alone. In its final recommendations, for instance, the COI report singularly calls on North Korea to “[a]llow separated families to unite,” without addressing the root causes of their separation, much less the UN role in fomenting the state of division, peacelessness, and human tragedy that prevails on the Korean peninsula.21 With its focus on “widespread and systematic attack directed against any civilian population,” the COI report conceivably could and arguably should have offered some structural reckoning with the profound human costs of unabated war that extended across the DMZ and outward to the larger Asia-Pacific region, including the system of U.S. and UN sanctions reaching back over six decades; the ongoing U.S. military presence south of the DMZ (against the 1953 Armistice recommendation); massive U.S. joint and trilateral military exercises with South Korea and Japan, some that simulate nuclear strikes against North Korea and practice the takeover and occupation of North Korea; regional nuclear proliferation and ambitions; South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) cyber-warfare against “North Korea” that tilted domestic election results; the National Security Law and redbaiting in South Korea; the undemocratic militarization of Jeju, Okinawa, Guam, and Hawai‘i under the resurgent sign of a U.S. military pivot to Asia and the Pacific in response to a “North Korean threat”; and so forth. Incongruously, the Commission closes its 372-page report with a recommendation impossible to square with its reiteration of near-singular North Korean culpability: “the United Nations and the states that were parties to the Korean War should take steps to convene a high-level political conference…and, if agreed, ratify a final peaceful settlement of the war that commits all parties to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, including respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”22 If recalling the 1953 Armistice Agreement’s recommendation that a “political conference of a higher level of both sides [the United States and North Korea/China] be held by representatives appointed respectively to settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea [and] the peaceful settlement of the Korean question,” the COI report, in all other respects, failed to locate the issue of North Korean human rights within a structure of persistent enmity that has adversely impacted the human rights of the peoples of not only North Korea but also South Korea and the larger Asia-Pacific region.23 Instead, the COI report identified North Korea’s “instrumental” use of the “fear of invasion and infiltration”—what the Commission held to be North Korea’s cynical orchestration of a “state of emergency” (apparently not to be conflated with the indisputable fact that the war is far from over)—to explain how the North Korean state has justified and carried out its “harsh governmental rule and its accompanying human rights violations.”24 Although the report elsewhere makes brief mention of the fact that the United States has tied food aid to nuclear concessions, it described food shortages in North Korea as being irrationally “blamed on a hostile outside world” by North Korean authorities.25 Here, we would do well to take stock of analysis of the root causes of North Korea’s persistent food insecurity by David Austin, head of Mercy Corps’ humanitarian aid program to North Korea—a perspective, one would hope, not facilely dismissible as the propagandistic construction of the North Korean government: The food security situation is a symptom of the greater problem,…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 ordinary farmers, and they’re suffering the consequences of the non-solution to the political questions. …[U]ntil there is engagement, there’s not going to be greater solutions.26 On the conspicuous narrowness of COI’s data culture, particularly with regard to the complexity of North Korea’s food security issues, Hazel Smith observes: “[w]hat is most striking about the [UNHRC] reporting on the DPRK is the almost complete absence of reference to relevant data from other UN agencies, donor governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), to the extent that the…reporting seems unaware of the existence of reports on the DPRK from within the UN system itself.”27 Instead, the Commission appears to have relied heavily on an extremely dated account from Médecins Sans Frontières from 1998 and the testimony of former USAID administrator and current co-chairman of the conservative U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Andrew Natsios, despite the wealth of much more discerning, rigorous scholarship and firsthand knowledge of North Korea’s food situation that has emerged in the past decade. In this regard, the Commission’s ascription of blame to the DPRK for food violations, as Smith further argues, “demonstrates a securitization of evidence and analysis through a heavy reliance on assumptions [about North Korean state-level culpability for food-related human rights violations] and a filtering of information through those assumptions,” even as “the weight of [other] UN agency reporting contradicts” those very premises.28 The COI report, it should be noted, concedes the political bias of the data culture on which it based its findings and recommendations: “The Commission is conscious of the fact that most victims and witnesses cooperating with the Commission had an overall unfavourable opinion of the DPRK’s authorities.”29 This was uncomfortably apparent in a peculiar exchange between Commission chair Kirby and a North Korean defector residing in the United States. During the October 30, 2013 public hearing in Washington, DC, Kirby repeatedly pressed Jo Jin-hye to comment upon North Korea’s hostile stance toward the COI investigation: “Now are you aware that the government of North Korea says that the type of testimony that you have given to the Commission of Inquiry today is false and that you are a defector and a person who should not be believed because you are defaming North Korea?”30 The leading nature of this question notwithstanding, Jo offered up a response that symptomatically attested to the structure of enmity and the geopolitics of unresolved war underpinning—and to no small degree compromising—the proceedings: “I am well aware. I know who my enemy and my friend are.”31 Although the Commission conducted roughly 240 confidential interviews and held four sets of public hearings, the solicited testimony of seasoned political actors long at the helm of a well-funded, transnational “North Korean human rights” industry aimed at North Korean regime-change or regime-collapse loomed large within the 372-page COI report. In particular, the report relied heavily for its framing on testimony from prominent North Korean defectors like Kang Chol-hwan, Ahn Myong-chol, Shin Dong-hyuk, Kim Hyuk, and Kim Young-soon, and the “expertise” of unabashedly right-wing South Korean, American, and Japanese “North Korean human rights” advocates like Kim Young-hwan, Andrew Natsios, Victor Cha, and Ishimaru Jiro. The insight of this cadre of “witnesses and experts” into North Korea appears frequently in the COI report, furnishing its narrative contours. In other words, despite the Commission’s assertion that all testimonies were carefully vetted for reliability and Kirby’s strained assurances that such testimonies represent “authentic voices,” the 372-page COI report troublingly allocates outsized representational value to the words and views of ultimately only a handful of institutionalized actors whose relationship to U.S. and South Korean intelligence, U.S. soft-power institutions, thinly renovated Cold War defense organizations, hawks of neoconservative and liberal varieties, conservative evangelicals, and anticommunist Koreans in South Korea and the diaspora goes completely unquestioned.32 It treats their testimony, moreover, as primary data, ascribing a false positivism to sources that “divulge their secrets at some distance in time and space from the ongoing developments inside the target they are reporting on.”33 Although the COI report offers a perfunctory account of its own methodological underpinnings, we should remark what goes unsaid: namely, the interoperability of the technologies of North Korean human rights, namely defector testimony and satellite imagery, and the technologies of war. Indeed, North Korean human rights testimony is morphologically indistinguishable from what the CIA and military intelligence agencies call “human intelligence” (Humint). As former CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz points out: “Where it has no physical presence, the [CIA] has historically relied for humint primarily on defectors, detainees, legal travelers, opposition groups and foreign government liaison services.” That the COI report gives extensive space to defector testimony without weighing the perils of an over-reliance on this sort of informational base raises the question of the empirical nature of the North Korean human rights project. Donald MacIntyre, former Seoul bureau chief for Time magazine, observes: North Koreans who have left their country have provided some of the best information that we have. But you can’t go to North Korea and check what they tell you. An example arose in 2004 when the BBC ran a documentary alleging that North Korea was using political prisoners as guinea pigs in chemical weapons tests. The issue is now part of the human rights agenda on North Korea. …The problem has become worse…as a result of the Japanese and Korean media’s practice of paying defectors for interviews. Paying for interviews creates an incentive to pad, or create, stories that will boost your own market value. …Bad news about evil North Korea sells.34 In his memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang (2001), co-authored with the French anti-communist Pierre Rigoulot, Kang Chol-hwan, a major COI witness, states that Japanese and South Korean media paid him so handsomely “for opening [his] mouth” about North Korea that he “occasionally felt [he] was trading [his] experience for a story…no longer entirely [his] own.”35 Yet the question today goes beyond whether “authentic voices” like Kang’s represent the truth of North Korea. Rather, in light of the fact that approximately 26,000 North Koreans resettled in South Korea both during and after the 1990s’ North Korean famine, we might more pointedly ask whether the testimony of North Korean defectors and migrants featured in the COI report bears a sufficiently representative relationship to the diversity of views and experiences of this significant minority population. On this point, in a South Korean civil society organizational response to the COI findings, People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) highlights one of the report’s major shortcomings: “North Korean human rights issues should not be limited to the situation inside the DPRK [but should] cover human rights concerns of all North Korean people, their separated families, and relatives,” including “DPRK defectors living in the ROK.”36 It is, above all, the complexity of allegiance and nuance of perspective within this demographic that merit careful regard. Not only does this post-famine wave of migrants constitute a critical new phase in the separated-family phenomenon, with phone calls and remittances flowing, often in circuitous ways, across the DMZ, but also, the South Korean state’s past instrumentalization of North Korean defectors toward anti-communist Cold War ends, plausible when they were few and far between, is no longer a broadly applicable strategy. Moreover, that North Korean migrants face crippling labor and educational discrimination, social stigma, and diminished life chances in South Korea complicates a human rights narrative that assigns all blame to North Korea—indeed calls for other interpretive approaches which possess more explanatory power.37 Ultimately, little in the COI findings departs from a well-honed human rights narrative about North Korea, an account of neo-Orientalist sadism, depravity, and inhumanity that took shape after the collapse of the socialist bloc but crystallized in the wake of George W. Bush’s infamous designation of North Korea as part of an “axis of evil.” Even as the COI report, in its details, offers information that lends itself to multiple interpretations, the Commission’s findings, in keeping with a familiar “demonization script” toward North Korea, rehearse the standard postulates of North Korean human rights campaigns.38 These are worth restating insofar as they form the contours of a globally dominant narrative about North Korea: to wit, North Korea is unsurpassingly “evil.” The defector is the voice and representative of the North Korean people. Satellite images reveal the truth about North Korea. “North Korean human rights” singularly denotes those abuses, violations, and crimes perpetrated by the North Korean state (and in a few instances, China). It does not compass those abuses, violations, and crimes committed by other states or organizations against the North Korean people. Relative to North Korea, human rights and humanitarianism are, by and large, separate, non-intersecting tracks.39 The politicized withholding of food aid by donor nations, even if it adversely impacts, to the point of death, the North Korean people, is not itself a human rights violation.40 Six decades of U.S. and UN sanctions and of unending war are simply business as usual and not themselves human rights violations; any argument to the contrary is the stuff of North Korean propaganda. The violation of the right to peace and the commission of the crime of aggression are the least consequential of human rights in the international human rights regime. The Korean War is a mere footnote. [The remainder of this article and the footnotes can be read on the Asia-Pacific Journal site.] #humanrights #NorthKorea #UnitedNations

Haesook Kim, Tae Man Park, Jeongeun Hwang, Dae-Han Song Interview with Tae Man Park by Haesook Kim and translated by Dae-Han Song | March 30, 2014 In protest of government efforts to privatize the railway system, South Korean railway workers launched its longest strike ever, starting December 9, 2013 and lasting 22 days. On January 14, 2014 all thirteen of the leaders of the Railroad Workers strike turned themselves into the police. They are currently held in custody as they await trial. On February 25th 200,000 South Koreans launched a general strike, called by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, to express solidarity with the railway workers and to protest government anti-labor policies. The International Strategy Center (iscenter.or.kr) paid a visit, January 9, 2014 to the railroad workers, then under sanctuary at the Jogyesa Temple, to express their solidarity and conduct this interview. ISC Director, Haesook Kim, interviewed Senior Vice-President of the Korean Railroad Workers Union, Tae Man Park, about his lifelong career in the railroad and last December’s strike. Tae Man sought sanctuary at Jogyesa Temple on December 24th, after the railroad workers strike was declared illegal and arrest warrants were issued for the leadership. The interview was translated by ISC Policy and Research Coordinator, Dae-Han Song. Haesook Kim: Can you briefly tell us about yourself? Tae Man Park: My name is Tae Man Park and I am currently the Senior Vice-President of the Korean Railroad Workers Union. I am 55 years old. I started working at the railroads in 1977 after I graduated from railroad high school. Haesook Kim: Where did you start working after graduation? Tae Man Park: My first job was at a small county called Mokhang. It was near a fertilizer factory. Back in the day, fertilizer production was very important. I was working in the railroad station next to the biggest fertilizer factory in the country. When fertilizer was produced, it needed to be distributed all over the country. Haesook Kim: When did the railroad workers’ union start? Tae Man Park: The union has a very long history starting under Japanese colonialism. After liberation from Japan in 1945, all workers were organized into a national trade union. At that time, our union had the most members. When I first started, the union was a government union so it partook in oppressing and managing workers. Much like the democratization movement at the time, we also initiated a democratization struggle within the union, so that unions would be for workers. In 2001, for the first time, we achieved direct elections. Before that it was a three tiered voting system where union members would elect a branch representative who would elect regional representatives. They, in turn, would elect national representatives. Finally, the national representatives would elect the president. PRIVATIZATION FOR IMF LOANS Haesook Kim: If the first democratic union was formed in 2001, this was right after the 1998 IMF crisis when policies to privatize public companies started emerging. Was there any connection between the democratization of the unions and the anti-privatization struggle? Tae Man Park: The person we elected union president in 2001 was just 37 years old. Yet, despite his young age he was elected because our slogan at the time was “Will you block privatization, or will you vote for someone privatized?” That’s why our union members elected him. The President at that time, Kim Dae Jung, had promised privatization in order to receive IMF loans. So he had to privatize the railroads. We went on strike and stopped him. I had become president on May 2001 and then on May 2002 when the strike started, I was dismissed, locked up, spent some time in jail, and then a new president was elected. Roh Moo Hyun came into power. Since there were promises made to the IMF, Roh Moo Hyun also attempted to privatize the railroad. There was another strike against privatization in 2003. Finally, there was an agreement where Roh Moo Hyun wouldn’t privatize the railroad, but he would turn it into a public company instead. This means that we would no longer be public servants. I was reinstated in 2007. What Park Geun Hye is trying to do right now, is to divide up all the different components of the railway system and then privatize them one by one. This strategy had already been laid out by her predecessors. FOR THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE IT WILL MEAN THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GOOD JOBS. Haesook Kim: At the core of the current strike was President Park’s plan to dismantle public ownership of the Suseo KTX line. How did the Suseo KTX line become such an explosive issue? Tae Man Park: The anti-privatization struggle started in 2002 and it’s been happening for 10 years now. The significance of the Suseo KTX line is that there are only two lines operating in the black right now: Gyeongbu (Seoul to Pusan) KTX and the Gyeongin (Seoul to Incheon) subway line. As an operator you have to ask yourself how much you have to spend to earn 100 won. For the Gyeongin subway line you have to spend about 95 won to make 100 won. So it about cuts even. The rest of the lines are all in the red. In some lines, such as the Jungang line, for which you have to spend 500 won just to make 100 won. However, if we look at the Gyeongbu KTX line, it spends 72 won to make 100 won. This means that they are making a lot of money. We are talking about a near 30% profit. So we take the money earned from the Gyeongbu KTX line to pay for the rest of the lines. Annually that’s about 400 billion won (about 400 million dollars). That’s what we call the cross subsidization system. The new Suseo KTX line won’t just run from Suseo to Pyeongtaek, it’s going to continue to the Gyeongbu line and Jeolla (Seoul-Yeosu) line. The government estimates that there will be a 500 billion won (about 500 million dollars) drop in revenue because we would lose those passengers living in Pyeongtaek, or those near the new stations between Pyeontaek and Suseo. The Ministry of Transportation expects 140 billion and at the very least 110 billion won (about 110 million dollars) in deficit. So even now we face about 500 billion won in deficit every year. So what are the ways to resolve this deficit, you can either cut the workforce or eliminate the lines in the red. If you don’t cut the workforce, then you must change workers from regular to irregular status. The Incheon airport line [recently created] may be running in the black but only 20% of its workers are regular workers. For the country as a whole it’s going to mean the disappearance of good jobs. This is not the way. We need to stop this. THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO FINE US… Critics point out, “You have a stable job; you got your steel rice bowl; why are you fighting?” Those times I want to flip the question. I get good money. I only have three years until retirement. Becoming Senior Vice President [of the union] means that I may have to spend my retirement in prison. Do I have political ambitions? Me, who has not even graduated college become a politician at this age; in a country where education is so esteemed? No. Then why would I become Senior Vice-President when it’s clear that I can get dismissed or end up in jail? Recently someone calculated. If 10,000 people went on strike and they need three meals a day. It’s about 18,000 won a day per person, and we were striking for 22 days, so just the food costs alone would have been about 400 million won (about 400 thousand dollars). If you calculate the cost of living on the run it’s about the same. If as the critics say we make 60 million won a year then monthly we would make 5 million won. During a strike you get paid nothing. Going on strike for 22 days means that each person suffered 4 million won in unpaid wages. Ten thousand people went on strike. If you calculate it that’s 40 billion won. On top of that, the government wants to fine us for the losses they say they’ve incurred. Not only that we are also being reprimanded, so when we get back our pay, it will be docked. Even with all this, the railroad workers came out to strike. Haesook Kim: As you’ve mentioned you were on strike for 22 days which would make it the longest railroad strike. What do you think make that possible? Tae Man Park: Like our President stated in the press, we went on strike on December 9th. The next day KORAIL made the initial investment in the stockholding subsidiary company for KTX Suseo. We thought we would go on strike until the 12th and wrap up. At the longest, we would go until the 14th. Everyone thought so, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the Korean Public & Social Services, the Transportation Union, and the public. Everyone was saying, “They will strike for just a few days.” Even those with all the information like the police or the National Intelligence Service (NIS) probably calculated that we would not strike for very long. They all thought, even if it goes a long time, it won’t last past the 14th. So why did it last so long? THE STRIKE WAS NO LONGER ABOUT JUST STOPPING PRIVATIZATION; IT WAS ABOUT DOING IT TOGETHER WITH THE PUBLIC. Those of us who had been fighting against privatization for the past 10 years since 2002, asked ourselves, “Isn’t it about time that we fought this properly?” If we don’t fight tooth and nail, then the Suseo KTX is the first stage, the second stage will be to make a logistics subsidiary stockholding company and so on. So that’s what happened internally. That was our internal strength. Externally, before the strike got to the 14th of December, all the conservative media were lambasting us, but on the 14th there was tremendous support from the public. Not only did the public come out and support the strike, but our families also started to support us. Someone told me how his son sent him a Kaotalk message: “I knew my father was a regional leader in the union but I never knew how great he was. I have great respect for him.” This is coming from a junior high kid that most days won’t even talk to his dad. Even the wives, who in the past would tell us, “Stop already. You got punished isn’t it time to go back now?” But now they were asking, “Is everything okay? Make sure you get something to eat.” Public opinion kept moving against privatization. And that sentiment was getting back to our families. So after the 14th, our President said, “Let’s go for another three days.” And all our union members gave the okay. And then on the 16th, the “How are you doing?” movement erupted among college students. They covered many issues, but central was supporting the railroad workers. This sparked further support from the public. As we passed the 16th, we began getting even more support. So by the 17th, public opinion was behind us, not just about the railroad, but also the overall anti-Park sentiment due to the electoral intervention by the NIS. Every time we asked for dialogue with the President, she would refuse. Instead, she would reprimand us. So, some of us were thinking, “We got this far. Let’s see how far we can take this.” We struck seven times in the past. We never received public support. But now, the public was worried that we would fold, so they would beseech us, “We will help you! Please keep up the fight!” So there was no way we could stop. The strike was no longer about just stopping privatization; it was about doing it together with the public. Up to now, there had never been a strike that the public supported. That’s how we were able to strike for 22 days. Without that strength, I think we would have folded on the 14th, or the 17th, or the 19th. I would say that one of the great successes of our strike is that it eradicated the concept of privatization. The government was forced to insist they were not privatizing. They would say, “We are not giving it to the conglomerates, it will be sold to a pension fund.” People would then point out, “But can’t that also be privatized.” So the government would alter their position and say, “Well, then we would just sell the stocks to the public sector. We won’t privatize.” In order to break the strike, the government was forced to keep making all these promises in the media. Ultimately, we didn’t achieve an agreement to end privatization, but we created the conditions where the government can’t just privatize en masse. Of course privatization continues, but not like before, when the government would justify it saying it would increase efficiency. Now, privatization has become taboo. Secondly, we were able to come together with the public. I think these two were our greatest achievements. So our task ahead would be to search for alternative solutions and to find out how workers can join with the public to set Korea on the right path. WE ALL WENT BACK IN TOGETHER Haesook Kim: A slogan that really moved me was “We leave together, we return together.” Can you speak about this? Tae Man Park: Well how long a strike goes is determined not by the strongest branches, but by its weakest. If the weakest ones leave one by one, than the strongest branches are isolated and can’t hold out but for a few more days. And then sometimes they blamed each other. But this was not like that. There were some strikers that ended earlier than us, but no one was like, “Why did you quit? Why did you stop?” Rather those that held out would tell the weaker ones, “Good work. Thanks for holding out so long. Only because you held out, could I keep striking.” Furthermore this time the weak branches held out much longer than before, that’s what allowed the strong branches to continue. So we are still saying we all went back in together. One thing that was different about this strike was that instead of people dropping out as time passed, the numbers increased. Usually, when a strike begins we all go out on strike together. When the government repression starts, slowly one by one people start to go back to work. But this time, instead of decreasing one by one, the numbers increased one by one. I think some people were like, “They are only going to be out a few days longer what’s the point of joining now.” But as the strike dragged on, their thinking changed to, “Shouldn’t I be out there also?” And then you have the public cheering us on. Now it starts to feel strange to not go out. So the numbers increase. In some of the stations, I’ve heard that passengers even confronted workers. “Why aren’t you on strike; are you scabs,” they asked. So out numbers increased as time passed. Haesook Kim: So about how many workers participated on the strike? Tae Man Park: Well, if we just look at the number of reprimands then we can tell it was probably about 8,800 workers.  After 2008 there is also a limit to the number of workers in essential public services who can legally go on strike. Before, if there was a disagreement between the employer and employee, it would go to the National Labor Relations Commission. The NLRC would arbitrate and its decision would be binding. If you didn’t obey the decision and went on strike, then it would automatically be an illegal strike. So, in reality collective action wasn’t guaranteed. So, I think in 2007, this binding arbitration system is abolished. The right to collective action was then guaranteed for workers in the public sector, including gas, the railway and electricity workers. So if the management and the workers don’t reach an agreement, these workers can go on strike. But because you are in the essential public service sector, even if you strike, you are required to leave a minimum number of workers on the job. So we have about 20,000 union members, and of these the number of workers that can go on strike is about 12,000. Haesook Kim: The government claims that your strike was illegal and the union claims it was not. Can you talk more about this? Tae Man Park: Well both the government and the union agree that the full process was legal. When we went on strike we gave five days’ notice, so that the government could figure out a way to operate the trains. However, the government is saying that it was illegal because of its purpose. The splitting off of the KTX Suseo line is government policy. So from their point of view, a strike against privatization would make it into a political strike which is illegal. But what we have said, as I mentioned earlier, is that if KTX Suseo breaks off, it will decrease revenue by 500 billion won resulting in a 100 billion won deficit. This can’t but deal a blow to our worker rights, whether that means people being cut or the weakening of employee rights. Then clearly this is tied to our union which makes it a legal strike. So for that we get punished under labor law. We are also being charged with “obstruction of business” which the Supreme Court had ruled occurs when a large number of people withhold their labor resulting in great losses. But we asked, “Isn’t any strike an obstruction of business?” So the Supreme Court ruled that as long as enough time to prepare was given, strikes do not count as “obstruction of business.” We definitely gave the five days warning. While there were glitches, ultimately the trains ran smoothly. So this is completely legal. So there’s a lot that can still be disputed both for the “obstruction of business” and around the purpose of the strike. LEAVE TOGETHER, RETURN TOGETHER Haesook Kim: As regards to ending the strike on December 28th, there were differing opinions. Some people were thinking “They [the union] did their part, now it’s the public’s duty to block privatization.” Others thought, “The strike awakened something in the public, ending it will dampen that movement.” What do you as the Senior Vice-President, as an individual, think? Tae Man Park: Even until the morning of the 28th, a friend was asking “couldn’t the union have held out just a little longer?” But by the afternoon, after discussions he was saying, “You all did great. You did all you could.” As people find out more about the internal conditions, they start to understand. Haesook Kim: Can you speak about those conditions? Tae Man Park: Well, since that information is not yet public, I’m hesitant to get into the details. But if you looked at it on a surface level, while we go in by [geographic] branch, this time we also went in by work sector (vehicle inspectors and mechanics, the drivers, the ticket sellers, maintenance, the electricians). So many of the workers were feeling that, “We fought the best we could. We suffered a lot.” On December 27th, at 9:00 AM, the head of KORAIL issued an ultimatum that if workers did not return by midnight, then it would be assumed they would not be returning. Then later that day at 9:00 PM the subsidiary stockholding company received their license. With this ultimatum workers started asking themselves, “Will continuing for a few more days force the Park government to give up its privatization plans?” They had waged their strongest attack on us. So the mood among our members became, “We have done all that we can. We have let the public know about this sufficiently.” And people started going back to work by branch. The engineers [driver] and the sector that inspects and fixes the actual train cars kept striking. Sure, if the engineers don’t go back then the trains couldn’t run. So, the police would go looking around for them, persuading them and threatening them. So we start seeing this. On the 27th, our President gets 72 more hours, and by pressuring the Unified Democratic Party and the Saenuri Party he gets them to agree to establish a subcommittee on the issue of privatization. Would the other side have kept going until the end without even conceding that? I don’t know since we didn’t take that path. We never expected to last this long. The opposition party even stated that they would block the budget if necessary. Of course, this is all just my personal opinion. We would need to do an official evaluation to delve deeper. Yesterday some of the branch leadership turned themselves in to the police. So, the national leadership are still discussing about turning themselves in. There’s still some issues that we need to resolve and monitor, such as: the reprimands, the lawsuit, the restitution they are demanding from us, and the subcommittee agreement in the National Assembly. There’s also the promise of compensating the trains for the 100 billion won deficit that it might suffer. So there are still a lot of things that we need to deal with. Haesook Kim: So it may take a while… Tae Man Park: Yes, very likely so. Haesook Kim: As you mentioned, this strike could mean that you retire in prison and you don’t have any political ambitions. What was your personal commitment when you joined in this strike? Tae Man Park: I came into the trains when I was 19. I think I am indebted to the railroad. I raised my kids by working in the railroad, I took care of my parents, married off my youngest son, put my oldest through college working in the railroad. Through the railroad, I gained my social consciousness and my sense of social responsibility. I have to repay my debt. That is what’s in my heart. Leave together return together. I received so much from the railroad. And of course the railroad is funded by taxpayers, so my indebtedness goes back to the people. I have to pay back this debt. What can I do? I can block its privatization. I’m not going to call it sacrifice, but I would put my body on the line if need be to fight this. I think that’s how I will pay back this debt. So, while I seek refuge at Jogyesa Temple, I will do this in high spirits and with joy.

Children play at a daycare center in Pyongyang, where despite widespread poverty and a deeply militarized economy, many children enjoy better healthcare and childcare than children in wealthier Asian countries. But without a peace treaty to end the Korean War, the peninsula remains plagued by militarization and underdevelopment. (Photo: Christine Ahn) By Christine Ahn* | April 13, 2014 [Originally published in Foreign Policy In Focus, April 1, 2014] For 60 years, Koreans on both sides of the DMZ have awaited a peace treaty. Instead they’ve gotten an arms race and political repression. “Please don’t take her,” my sister pleaded with me. “You’ll end up in a prison camp.” She, along with the rest of my family, lobbied forcefully against my bringing my two-year old daughter on a recent peace-building mission to North Korea. Granted, it wasn’t a great time to go to Pyongyang. It was during the dead of winter, freezing cold, with gray skies and barren trees. Even worse, our trip was bookended by two major events: the release of a 400-page report by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea and the start of joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises simulating the invasion of Pyongyang. Furthermore, this year’s exercises featured a new policy of launching pre-emptive strikes against any suspected North Korean missile activity. Given the exchange of fire that nearly erupted during last year’s war games (and that did erupt shortly after our visit), it wasn’t an auspicious time. What proved to be the greatest threat to my daughter, however, was neither of the above. It was the debilitating air pollution in China. To get to Pyongyang, we had to transit through Beijing, where we happened to be on a day the government advised children stay indoors to avoid breathing the pollution. But staying indoors didn’t stop the pollution from penetrating the airport walls and into my daughter’s lungs. She developed an unrelenting cough that worsened the day we arrived in Pyongyang. By nightfall, she struggled to breathe. It was enough to make any mother panic. But it was worse. Here we were, far from home, in the most closed off country in the world. At 2 am I woke up our hosts, and in an instant, we were in a minivan speeding through the dark streets of Pyongyang. The only lights on the road were the cars’ headlights. We pulled up to a dimly lit hospital, and in a flash, a doctor and two nurses greeted us and quickly led us down a cold and dark hallway into a warmed and well-lit examination room. As the doctor placed his stethoscope on my daughter’s back, the lights went out in the entire hospital, as it often does throughout North Korea due to energy shortages. In that moment of darkness, tears streamed down my face. I cried, not just for my daughter whose condition was precarious, but also for the North Korean people who continue to suffer so heavily under the weight of an ongoing Korean War that has shaped every aspect of their lives. Human Rights and War While the UN human rights report and war games appear to be two disparate issues, they are linked by the Korean War, which came to an unresolved end on July 27, 1953 with the signing of the temporary armistice agreement. The signatories—the United States, North Korea, and China—committed to finalize a permanent peace treaty within three months. Sixty years later, we’re still waiting. What has ensued instead for the past six decades is an endless arms race between South and North Korea. According to SIPRI, in 2013, South Korea was the world’s 12th highest military spender, with its expenditures reaching $31.7 billion for the year—though experts say this figure would be far higher if it included the salaries of soldiers. World Bank data shows that in 2012, 13.6 percent of the central government’s expenditures in South Korea went towards defense spending. And according to Suh Bohyuk, North Korea expert at Seoul National University, South Korea became the world’s number-two weapons importer in 2011. North Korea invests approximately $8.7 billion—significantly higher than the $570 million Pyongyang claims—or one-third of its GDP in the military, according to the government-run Korea Institute of Defense Analyses in South Korea. To great surprise, Pyongyang acknowledged last year how the unended war has forced it “to divert large human and material resources to bolstering up the armed forces though they should have been directed to the economic development and improvement of people’s living standard.” Unfortunately, North Korea’s heavy military spending isn’t just to defend against South Korea, but against the world’s most powerful military in the world: the United States. In 2012, by the most conservative estimates, Washington spent $682 billion on its military, or 39 percent of the world’s total spending. While the Pentagon uses China’s military spending, which has grown annually in the double digits, to justify Washington’s Asia-Pacific Pivot and unsustainable defense spending, the Korean War also plays a central role. At a March 25 Senate Defense Committee hearing on the 2015 budget, the commander of the U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK), General Curtis Scaparrotti, argued that while the 28,500 U.S. troops based in South Korea were “fully resourced,” he was concerned about the readiness of “follow-on” forces needed if fighting erupted. The ongoing Korean War not only diverts investment away from the Korean people; it justifies repression in the name of national security on both sides of the DMZ. One week following the UN report on North Korean human rights, Amnesty International issued a public letter to South Korean President Park Geun-hye, daughter of the former dictator Park Chung-hee, concerning her administration’s use of the country’s National Security Law (NSL) “as a form of censorship to intimidate and imprison people exercising their rights.” In response to the repression South Koreans are feeling, students launched a poster movement asking, “Are you doing all right?” which went viral through social media. The somber responses ranging from fear about rising poverty and unemployment to government corruption has galvanized millions of South Koreans to protest the Park administration’s policies, including her questionable tactics during the last presidential election. In the run-up to the vote, prosecutors found that the National Intelligence Service had ordered its psychological warfare division to launch a campaign to discredit liberal and left candidates by posting more than 1 million online messages vilifying them as “followers of North Korea.” According to Sukjong Hong, “Park denied that these activities had any effect on her winning margin of 1 million votes, but amid calls for her to step down or appoint an independent prosecutor, the administration filed to disband a leftist opposition party and accused lawmakers and citizens of espionage.” And while repression in North Korea is widely recognized, less understood is why North Korea is such a militarized nation. “We cannot think of human rights without considering the sovereignty of a nation,” declared the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. North Korea has long declared the right to defend its national sovereignty, justifying its pursuit of nuclear weapons as a precaution against a U.S. invasion and occupation as recently experienced by Iraq and Afghanistan. While it might be easy to brush this off as mere paranoia, North Koreans only have to look back at their own history of surviving indiscriminate and unrestrained U.S. air raids during the war. According to University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings, during the Korean War, U.S. airstrikes led to the destruction of 18 of 22 major North Korean cities. Cumings cites Hungarian journalist Tibor Meray, who recalled, “I saw destruction and horrible things committed by American forces. … Everything which moved in North Korea is a military target, peasants in the field often were machine gunned by pilots, who, this was my impression, amused themselves to shoot targets which moved.” North Koreans must not only face down this tragic and traumatic past; their everyday lives are shaped by another form of war: U.S. sanctions. In a special edition on North Korea human rights in the journal Critical Asian Studies, Haeyoung Kim of the Korea Policy Institute documents how U.S. sanctions have not only failed to achieve their policy aims, but have direct bearing on the well-being of the North Korean people: “It is the North Korean people, moreover, not the governing elite, who bear the ultimate costs and suffer under these sanctions, creating an undeniable tension when considering the causal relationship between economic sanctions and human rights.” While it’s important to see how the unended Korean War impacts the human rights of Koreans on both sides of the DMZ, we must also see the way in which the cause of human rights is being dangerously used to justify “regime change”—code for military intervention. In another Critical Asian Studies piece, North Korea scholar Hazel Smith outlines how “the securitized version of the debate insists that human rights abuses are so egregious that governments should automatically intervene militarily, especially given the international doctrine of the ‘Right to Protect,’ which permits foreign intervention on the grounds of genocide and other heinous crimes.” And finally, right here in the United States, we must see clearly how the militarization of our country is gravely impacting our own human rights. Our government spends more than half of the federal discretionary budget on the military, diverting funds from investments that improve human health and security. Furthermore, it is perpetuating a culture of war that allows gross transgressions by the government on our basic human rights. In an assessment of how the United States was complying with the International Convention of Civil and Political Rights, the UN human rights committee delivered a heavy blow to the U.S. human rights record, citing torture, failure to close Guantanamo, drone strikes, NSA mass surveillance, the death penalty, fatal shootings by police, and the high proportion of black Americans in U.S. prisons. At a Crossroads The people of North Korea live extremely difficult lives. You can see it as you drive along the wide and sparse avenues of Pyongyang alongside over-crowded buses and in the weathered faces of the men and women walking those cold streets. And even during joyful moments, like at a musical performance at a daycare center, my heart ached as I watched four-year old toddlers perform perfectly in a musical ensemble while bundled up in three to four layers of clothes. And yet everyone—from the teachers to the nurses to the toddlers—carried on with immense pride and dignity. The country is not without achievement. Despite famine, a nearly collapsed economy, and debilitating sanctions, North Korea still provides free and universal healthcare to its citizens and to visitors like my daughter, who under the care of the doctors and nurses in Pyongyang was brought back to health. North Korea’s physician-to-patient ratio is on par with high-income countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), North Korea has 33 physicians per 10,000 persons, whereas South Korea and the United States have only 19 and 27 physicians, respectively (though North Korea has a lower rate for nurses). Three decades of on-the-ground work by the WHO has shown that North Korea has amazingly low rates of measles, polio, and whooping cough due to far-reaching immunization programs for preventable diseases. And as Hazel Smith astutely points out, in 2013 when the UN special inquiry was established, “North Korean children were better off than children living in many other Asian countries, including many that were much wealthier than North Korea, such as India and Indonesia.” And unlike the United States—where this mother spends nearly 25 percent of her family income on childcare—North Korea provides universal childcare to all working moms. I can see why, despite the hardships, North Korean people are proud of the society they are trying to create. But they will never be able to achieve their full potential unless the United States and the American people recognize how much the unresolved Korean War—and its consequent policies, from war games to sanctions—limits them. North Korea has forever requested a settlement of the Korean War with a permanent peace treaty, the lifting of sanctions and economic development, and normalized relations with the United States. The prospect of constant war not only threatens human security on the Korean peninsula; it diverts urgently needed attention to the ecological crises facing humanity. My daughter’s experience in North Korea is a stark reminder of the real and urgent threats we are all facing. Air pollution is the single largest environmental health risk in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In 2012, it killed an estimated 7 million people. “We are at the crossroads to either survival or self-destruction,” Pak Chol of the DPRK UN Mission wrote me in an email. “We have no time for hating and killing each other. We should put an end as soon as possible to all those cold war legacies for good and pull together to tackle our common task.” President Obama should put to rest his failed policy of “strategic patience” and re-start talks with North Korea. As former U.S. ambassadors to Korea urged in The New York Times last fall, “the current impasse, which only buys time for North Korea to develop its nuclear program, is unstable and that matters will only get worse if not addressed directly. It’s time for the Obama administration to reopen dialogue with Pyongyang.” Next year—2015—will be the 70th anniversary of the division of Korea. In 1945, two American colonels drew a line across the 38th parallel so that Washington could have control over Seoul and Moscow everything north. By drawing that line, the United States divided a country that had been unified for thousands of years and paved the way for the Korean War. As the world’s unparalleled military power that was responsible for the division of Korea—whose unbridled air bombings killed millions during the war, and whose current policies of war games and sanctions keep the North Korean people on their knees—Washington must do the right thing and end this senseless and wasteful war. A peace treaty would go a long way towards defusing rapidly escalating tensions in Northeast Asia and freeing our leaders to urgently address the crises we collectively face so my daughter and future generations have a chance for survival. Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Christine Ahn is also a Senior Fellow of the Oakland Institute, Co-chair of Women De-Militarize the Zone (DMZ) and a Korea Policy Institute Advisor. #ChristineAhn #humanrights #NorthKorea

A South Korean armoured vehicle participates in a US-South Korea joint military exercise in Pocheon, April, 2014. (ChinaDaily.com) By John Feffer* | April 21, 2014 [Originally published in Asia Times] For the second year in a row, the world is spending a little less on the military. Asia, however, has failed to get the memo. The region is spending more at a time when many others are spending less. Last year, Asia saw a 3.6% increase in military spending, according to figures just released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The region – which includes East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and Oceania – posted topping off a 62% increase over the last decade. In 2012, for the first time Asia outpaced Europe in its military spending. That year, the world’s top five importers of armaments all came from Asia: India, China, Pakistan, South Korea, and (incredibly) the city-state of Singapore. China is responsible for the lion’s share of the increases in East Asia, having increased its spending by 170% over the last decade. It has also announced a 12.2% increase for 2014. But China is not the only driver of regional military spending. South Asia – specifically the confrontation between India and Pakistan – is responsible for a large chunk of the military spending in the region. Rival territorial claims over tiny islands – and the vast resources that lie beneath and around them – in both Northeast and Southeast Asia are pushing the claimants to boost their maritime capabilities. Even Japan, which has traditionally kept its military spending to under 1% of Gross domestic product (GDP), is getting into the act. Tokyo has promised a 2.8% increase in 2014-15. The United States, a Pacific power whose military spending is not included in the Asia figures, has also played an important role in driving up the expenditures in the region. The Barack Obama administration’s “Pacific pivot” is designed to reboot the US security presence in this strategically critical part of the world. To a certain extent, the arms race in Asia is connected not to the vast expansion of the Pentagon since 2001 but rather to the relative decline of Asia in US priorities over much of that period. As US allies, South Korea and Japan were expected to shoulder more of the security burden in the region while the United States pursued national security objects in the Middle East and Central Asia. China, meanwhile, pursued a “peaceful rise” that also involved an attempt to acquire a military strength comparable to its economic strength. At the same time, China more vigorously advanced its claims in the South China Sea even as other parties to the conflict put forward their counter claims. The Pacific pivot has been billed as a way to halt the relative decline of US influence in Asia. So far, however, this highly touted “rebalancing” has largely been a shifting around of US forces in the region. The fulcrum of the pivot is Okinawa, where the United States and Japan have been negotiating for nearly two decades to close an outdated Marine Air Force base in Okinawa and transfer those Marines to existing, expanding, and proposed facilities elsewhere. Aside from this complex operation, a few Littoral Combat Ships have gone to Singapore. The Pentagon has proposed putting slightly more of its overall fleet in the Pacific (a 60-40 split compared to the current 50-50). And Washington has welcomed closer coordination with partners like the Philippines and Vietnam. Instead of a significant upgrade to US capabilities in the region, the pivot is largely a signal to Washington’s allies that the partnerships remain strong and a warning to Washington’s adversaries that, even if US military spending is on a slight downward tilt, the Pentagon possesses more than enough firepower to deter their power projection. This signaling function of the pivot dovetails with another facet of US security policy: arms exports. The growth of the Pentagon over the last 10 years has been accompanied by a growth in US military exports, which more than doubled during the period 2002 to 2012 from US$8.3 billion to $18.8 billion. The modest reduction in Pentagon spending will not necessarily lead to a corresponding decline in exports. In fact, the opposite is likely to be true, as was the case during the last Pentagon slowdown in the 1990s. The Obama administration has pushed through a streamlining of the licensing process in order to facilitate an increase in military exports – in part to compensate US arms manufacturers for a decline in orders from the Pentagon. Asia and Oceania represent the primary target for US military exports, absorbing nearly half of all shipments. Of that number, East Asia represents approximately one-quarter (South Asia accounts for nearly half). The biggest-ticket item is the F-35 fighter jet, which Washington has already sold to Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Long-range missile defense systems have been sold to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Overall between 2009 and 2013, Australia and South Korea have been the top US clients. With its projected increase in military spending, Japan will also likely rise much higher on the list. The more advanced weaponry US allies purchase, the more they are locked into future acquisitions. The United States emphasizes “interoperability” among its allies. Not only are purchasers dependent on the United States for spare parts and upgrades, but they must consider the overall system of command and control (which is now C5I – Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Combat systems and Intelligence). Although a French fighter jet or a Russian naval vessel might be a cheaper option in a competitive bid, the purchasing country must also consider how the item integrates with the rest of its hardware and software. The United States has argued that its overwhelming military presence in the region and lack of interest in territorial gain have dampened conflict in Asia. But the security environment has changed dramatically since the United States first presented itself as a guarantor of regional stability. Japan no longer abides by a strict interpretation of its “peace constitution”. North Korea has developed nuclear weapons. China has dramatically increased its capabilities. South Korea has created its own indigenous military manufacturing sector and greatly expanded its exports. Territorial disputes in the South China, Yellow, and East China Seas have sharpened. The only flashpoint that has become more peaceful in the last few years has been the Taiwan Strait. The continued increase in military spending by countries in East Asia and the massive influx of arms into the region are both symptoms and drivers of conflict. Until and unless the region restrains its appetite for military upgrades, the risk of clashes and even all-out war will remain high. In such an increasingly volatile environment, regional security agreements – on North Korea’s nuclear program, the several territorial disputes, or new technological threats like cyberwarfare – will be even more difficult to achieve. Most importantly, because of these budget priorities, the region will have fewer resources and less political will to address other pressing threats, such as climate change, which cannot be defeated with fighter jets or the latest generation of battle ship. *John Feffer is Co-Director of Foreign Policy In Focus, and a Korea Policy Institute Advisor. #Asia #JohnFeffer #Military

In light of the Sewol ferry tragedy, Korean American activists highlight the dangers of rampant deregulation and the prioritization of corporate profits over human security. (Photo courtesy of Ike Shin.) By Christine Hong |  May 24, 2014 (originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus) On Sunday, May 18, on the corner of El Camino Real and Flora Vista Avenue in Santa Clara, California, 300 Korean Americans clad in black, the color of mourning, carried yellow signs and donned yellow hats with slogans proclaiming, “Moms Want the Truth,” “Democracy in South Korea,” “Government Incompetence,” “Zero Rescued,” and “Not an Accident!” This rally, which called critical attention to the Sewol ferry disaster, in which over 300 people died—the majority of them students from Danwon High School—occasioned some nativist response. A few drivers leaned out their car windows, shaking their fists as they shouted anti-Asian slurs and yelled for us to “Go home!” One flipped us off before peeling around the corner. Commenting on a San Jose Mercury News article about the rally, one reader sounded a familiar refrain: “if you want to be that involved in a foreign government, move there.” The message from such quarters was clear: the Sewol ferry disaster was a foreign issue that matters only to a foreign people. To no small degree, perhaps especially in our globalized age, connecting “there” to “here” presents an abiding challenge to transnational organizing and solidarity. Why should anyone be concerned with what happens over there? Why should it matter to us? For many in Santa Clara, a heavily ethnic Korean enclave of the South Bay, the messages on our signs and hats required no further explanation. For every wave of traffic that passed before us, several cars honked in support. For these drivers, as with those of us standing along this busy intersection, the Sewol ferry disaster was no far-flung concern. Indeed, the rally was one of roughly 30 protests organized by Korean Americans in cities across the United States in solidarity with massive ongoing candlelight vigils in South Korea calling for an independent investigation into the disaster and for President Park Geun-hye to resign. Yet the meaning of these rallies went deeper. Even in Santa Clara, a bustling hub of Asian immigrant entrepreneurship, the rally offered a trenchant critique of neoliberal capitalism—of the dangers of rampant deregulation, corporate profits prioritized over human security, irregular and poorly trained labor, and privatized rescue operations, as well as government manipulation of media. Indeed, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) described the ferry disaster not as a tragedy or an accident but, in blunter terms, a “massacre committed by political power and capital”—a foreseeable disaster in which “capitalist greed” resulted in the abandonment of “safety and a sense of responsibility for the sake of increased profit.” In South Korea, a country frequently touted as an example of East Asian capitalist democracy done right, public mourning over the deaths of the ferry victims has morphed into a groundswell of outrage against the neoliberal policies and corporate cronyism of the Park Geun-hye government. This dark account of capitalism forms the underside of rosy narratives about South Korea’s rise on the world stage. Indeed, much of South Korea’s compressed development occurred during four decades of U.S.-backed dictatorships—a “miracle on the Han” whose human graveyard lurks as sobering subtext to the typically bright accounts of capitalist democracy thriving south of the 38th parallel that we are far more accustomed to hearing. Proclaiming that the Korean War “was no tie” before an audience of American veterans last year, President Barack Obama, for example, described South Korean capitalism as a triumph of the Korean War: “When 50 million South Koreans live in freedom—a vibrant democracy, one of the world’s most dynamic economies, in stark contrast to the repression and poverty of the North—that’s a victory; that’s your legacy.” The question, however, that the Sewol ferry disaster poses is whether the relationship between capitalism and democracy can be easily assumed or whether capitalism, in the South Korean case, betrays its relationship with the dark authoritarianism of the past—a history in which the United States played no small part. Beyond the symbolism of black (mourning) and yellow (a color associated with popular support for the liberal Roh Moo-hyun, who was succeeded by conservatives Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye), the demonstrations were coded by a dark history of U.S. and South Korean military collusion. Thirty-four years ago, on May 18, 1980, students, labor organizers, and ordinary citizens in the South Korean city of Gwangju rose up in democratic protest against a dictatorial military regime backed by the U.S. government. This watershed event, in which the United States authorized the use of force against South Koreans who rose up for democracy, has animated people’s struggles in South Korea and in the Korean diaspora ever since. Democracy in South Korea emerged despite U.S. intervention, not because of it, and it is precisely this commitment to democracy that we saw in action on the corner of El Camino Real and Flora Vista Avenue. Christine Hong is an assistant professor of transnational Asian American, Korean diaspora, and critical Pacific Rim studies at UC-Santa Cruz. She is a steering committee member of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea, a coordinating council member of the National Campaign to End the Korean War, and a member of the executive board of the Korea Policy Institute. #ChristineHong #Sewol #SouthKorea