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Refugee tableau at the No Gun Ri Peace Park (Photo: Charles J. Hanley) By Kim Dong-Choon | October 5, 2015 In collaboration with the Korea Policy Institute, Legacies of the Korean War, an online oral-history project that documents the stories of Korean American survivors of the war and their descendants, is pleased to announce its new website. This article was published as part of special series to launch the Legacies of the Korean War website. While the Korean War has been regarded as having been one of the most destructive wars of the 20th century in terms of civilian casualties, there is no reliable data or figures on the number of casualties, especially the mass killings committed by U.S. and South Korean authorities. The dominant history or narratives of the Korean War are mostly grounded in the official statements, the military documents, the speeches of state leaders, and the statistics of the concerned states, United States, China, North and South Korea. Crucial documents about U.S. military operations during the Korean War have yet to be released. Although we cannot guess the extent of unreleased documents of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the U.S. military during the Korean War period, it is my impression, based on my research experience at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, that more than 90 percent of G-2 (U.S. military intelligence) documents related to the Korean War are still unreleased. This is why so many mysteries regarding the particularly sensitive chapters of the Korean War remain unexplained so far. In this sense, it may be too early to reconstruct the historical realities of the Korean War. The Nogun-ri killings, in which the U.S. military slaughtered Korean civilians in July 1950, were belatedly brought to light in the United States in 1999 through a series of Associated Press investigative reports, which prompted a U.S.-South Korea joint report. But many U.S. veterans later recanted their previous statements in which they admitted having participated in or witnessed the killings, and the U.S. government, after issuing a Pentagon report on Nogun-ri, indicated its reluctance to pursue a more systemic investigation of other U.S. military incidents in which civilians were indiscriminately killed. While it is known that the South Korean Ministry of Defense conducted a systematic interview with Korean War veterans in South Korea, researchers have no access to these materials. Moreover, we can assume that the South Korean government, much like the U.S. government, would be unwilling to inquire into its military’s misdeeds towards the civilians during the Korean War. However, the testimonies of the Korean survivors who suffered the most during the Korean War can compensate for the many vacant holes that characterize Korean War history. Testimonies of the Korean survivors including low-ranking veterans are especially crucial in assessing the human costs of the war can. Insofar as the historical lesson of the Korean War turns on its most tragic, sensitive, and detrimental chapters, namely, fratricide and mass killings, the truth of the war can be verified largely through two key sources, the testimonies of the victims and their family members as well as the testimonies of the perpetrators. The testimonies of the victims furnish an abundant resource for reexamining the ruling narrative of the Korean War which describes hostile North Koreans invading the “peaceful South” in an attempt at a communist takeover with the support of the Soviet Union, thereby prompting a potential Third World War—that is, until the United States came to rescue South Korea and consequently preserved freedom and democracy. While sympathetic outsiders, mostly researchers and activists, collected and mobilized victim memories in a concerted effort to bring about justice and to challenge the ruling discourse about the Korean War, ordinary victims’ families, by contrast, have largely approached research around mass killings during the Korean War as “family individuals” interested in knowing the truth of their parents’ deaths. The installation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea (TRCK) constituted a turning point with regard to the collection of rich oral testimonies not only about the Korean War but also the mechanisms of state violence specific to and the mass killings which originated from the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), the American occupation (1945-1949), and the de facto civil war in Korea since 1948. The testimonies about the civilian massacres during the Korean War have confirmed existing arguments of some historians that the Korean conflict was at least in part an extension of civil war—a war triggered by the acquiescence of the U.S. occupation authority in the south in the establishment of a regime made up of Korean exiles and Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese occupiers and, with U.S. support, assumed and retook the main post of the South Korean government. The establishment of the TRCK by the South Korean government opened a floodgate: more than 10,000 petitions poured in, and several thousand cases are still pending. Investigators have interviewed thousands of survivors and bereaved families, eyewitnesses, and alleged perpetrators. Some written documents of family members, spectators, and ex-policemen contributed to the historical reconstruction of the incidents in question. With its legal authority, the TRCK could, for the first time since the occurrence of the incidents, compel perpetrator testimony. Through testimonies from a range of perpetrators, including policemen, veterans, and paramilitary rightists, state practices of summary executions, preventive detentions, preliminary inspections, and martial law could be verified even though such practices were officially concealed and any discussion of them effectively taboo during the era of military dictatorship (1961-1987). Given that most South Korean military commanders and the chief of the police had already passed away, the TRCK could find only low-ranking soldiers or police who confessed to past wrongs, which were committed on orders from presumably top-level policy-makers. If the TRCK had not been established, some perpetrators’ testimonies might not ever have been heard and might have remained secret forever. The fact that the TRCK possessed governmental authority also conditioned the comfort level the long-suffering victims’ families had in disclosing their untold stories, which could not be spoken before. While the law and mandate of the TRCK was restricted to investigation specific to the petitions filed by the victims, TRCK investigators, in the course of their work, were able to hear the abundant side-stories of the survivors and eyewitnesses of the Korean War. Based on individual victim testimonies and cross-checking by the investigators, the TRCK’s investigation could construct the historical trajectories of some communities from the period of Japanese colonial rule up to the Korean War. These collected testimonies and reports, as rich archival materials in their own right, would contribute to the rewriting of national and local histories of modern Korea. In recent years, no less than several academic articles, a PhD dissertation, and books based on the records and testimonies collected by the TRCK have appeared. Even though the victims asked merely for minimum government recognition that their parents who were killed during the war were “innocent,” their memories based on private experience were highly appealing and sympathetic. In the process of becoming public knowledge, these memories were generalized within an overarching account of why the victims were killed and who ordered them to be killed, which was the TRCK’s main mission. This is to say that the TRCK’s findings, based on these newly collected testimonies and documents about the mass killings committed by South Korean authorities, were an unprecedented achievement in setting the Korean historical record straight, especially with regard to disclosure around the mass killings of National Guidance League members (Bodo yeonmang), collaborators with North Korea’s peoples’ committees, political prisoners, and the civilians who served in leftist guerrilla groups. The task that remains, however, is a review of the operations of the intelligence organizations and the U.S. bombing of South Korean civilians, and at stake is no less than the dominant narrative of Cold War history in Korea since the 1950s. During the Korean War, some American bombings resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians. Nevertheless, these U.S. bombing incidents against South Korean civilians have never been raised as a political issue, even after the TRCK’s work came to a close. Under the geopolitical circumstances of the Cold War in South Korea, where criticizing the United States meant running the risk of being branded a communist or a North Korean sympathizer, discussing or even mentioning any U.S. war crimes was and to no small degree is still regarded as “taboo.” Some TRCK findings, based on newly found testimonies and documents about the secret operations of the intelligence organizations or the U.S. bombing of South Korean civilians, demand a thoroughgoing reevaluation of the prevailing Cold War narrative about the Korean War that has served as the founding story of South Korea. Under the long Cold War atmosphere in South Korea in which any criticism of the United States meant running the risk of being branded a communist or North Korean sympathizer, mentioning or discussing any U.S. war crimes in the Korean peninsula was regarded as politically dangerous or even taboo in Korea. Although the TRCK has broken this taboo, much more remains to be done. The TRCK’s findings and decisions have been central to challenging the politics of denial that have obtained for the last 60 years in South Korea, and the impact of this thawing of Korean War historiography has also impacted those within the Korean diaspora to pursue, through survivor testimony, the long-repressed truths about the Korean War. Moreover, the work of TRCK will help to straighten South Korea’s distorted history and to rewrite Northeast Asian Cold War history, no matter how sensitive the topic and no matter how few Asian politicians pay attention. The testimonies that the TRCK collected not only shed light on the past politics of Korea and its interconnection with neighboring big powers but also, in disclosing buried and painful truths, illuminated a way forward for Korea’s reunification and for peaceful relations in North-East Asia. The documents and testimonies gathered by the TRCK have been moved to the National Archives of South Korean government and are now being processed. Unfortunately, researchers can access them only through the official TRCK report. This official report should be translated into English or other foreign language if the work of the TRCK is to contribute, in critical global and transnational ways, to thawing Korean War and Cold War historiography. These special documents and testimonies must be preserved in separate, perhaps even non-governmental institution as well so that the peoples’ right to know can be honored and fulfilled. Applicable laws must be elaborated to ensure that all documented reports from the TRCK’s investigations can be systematically categorized, filed, and stored at an archival institute independent from the National Archives. Kim Dong-Choon is Professor of Sociology and director of the Democracy Institute at SungKongHoe University in Seoul, Korea. His most recent book is This Is War over Memory (이것은 기억과의 전쟁, Igeoseun gieok gwa ui jeonjaeng ida) (2013). #TruthandReconciliationCommission #Nogunri #KoreanWar #peacetreaty #Armistice #masskillings

By Namhee Lee | October 13, 2015 | [1] In collaboration with the Korea Policy Institute, Legacies of the Korean War, an online oral-history project that documents the stories of Korean American survivors of the war and their descendants, is pleased to announce its new website. This article was published as part of special series to launch the Legacies of the Korean War website. The Korean War (1950–1953) remains possibly the most traumatic collective experience for most Koreans, both on the peninsula and in the diaspora since 1945.[2] The war claimed close to three million civilian lives and destroyed half of Korea’s industries and a third of all its homes. Moreover, the atrocities committed by both sides left Koreans with deep scars, as many who were accused of supporting the other side were imprisoned or summarily executed during the war. The Armistice Agreement of 1953 was not a peace treaty signed by any of the governments involved in the war, but rather an agreement to suspend fighting. The Korean peninsula has since been engulfed in intense Cold War geopolitics. In the south, the war also overshadowed the thirty-five years of colonial occupation by Japan, the division of Korea, and the occupation by the United States as well as its continuing dominance in political and military affairs. It also conferred ideological legitimacy upon the south Korean state, which it had lacked prior to the war, as anticommunism became its primary state policy. The enmity toward and fear of north Korea that developed as a result of the war also contributed to the deeply internalized and quotidian quality of anticommunism in south Korea. Until very recently, the unfinished Korean War and the deepening geopolitics of the Cold War also silenced those who lost their loved ones and those whose lives were irrevocably from disrupted, preventing them from speaking freely about their own experiences. This silence pervaded the Korean American community as well, aggravated by anticommunism in the United States, the close alliance between the United States and south Korea, which shared intelligence based on the monitoring of Korean Americans, and the community’s own internal censorship. In what follows, I discuss the emergence of anticommunism as a hegemonic social discourse in the trajectory of south Korean state formation. I then discuss the role of the National Security Law and the Anticommunist Law in silencing undesirable elements in society. I conclude with a brief remarks on the impact of anticommunism on the Korean American community. Anticommunism as Hegemonic Discourse As traumatic as the war was, it did not necessarily turn south Koreans into vehement anticommunists in its immediate aftermath. In the 1956 presidential election, for example, over two million Koreans, of the nine million who cast votes, voted for the Progressive Party (Chinbodang) candidate Cho Pong-am. He had promulgated a “social democratic” platform that included peaceful reunification with north Korea.[3] However, the state continually mobilized individual experience of the war, which was hardened into a useful social memory that then served as an effective medium through which to consolidate society and to sustain a sense of fear and animosity toward north Korea. One of the principal mechanisms through which the authoritarian regimes controlled and disciplined society was the indiscriminate application of the National Security Law (NSL) and the Anticommunist Law. First enacted in 1948 and revised several times since, the NSL mandated harsh punishments for “any person who has organized an association or group for the purpose of . . . disturbing the state or who prepared or conspired to do so.”[4] The Anticommunist Law, promulgated soon after the military coup of 1961, was created to deal further with dissent and was followed by the revamping of the NSL in 1962. Intended to “strengthen the anti-communist posture . . . [and] block the activities of the communist organizations that endanger the national security,” this law mandated up to seven years of hard labor for “any person who has praised, encouraged, or sided with anti-state organizations or members thereof on foreign communist lines or benefited the same in any way through other means.”[5] In reality, both the NSL and Anticommunist Law were applied indiscriminately to those who criticized inequality in a capitalist economy, the lack of political freedom in south Korea, south Korea’s unequal relations with the United States, or even those who called for Korean reunification. Beginning in the 1960s, as international détente and domestic tensions intensified, the south Korean state began to equate anticommunism with national security and public safety. The 1969 Nixon Doctrine—which called for each ally nation to be in charge of its own security—as well as Nixon’s 1972 visit to China made Koreans suspect that the United States would no longer provide military protection for south Korea. In the mid-1960s north Korea turned belligerent toward south Korea, blowing up a railroad line at the time of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s visit in 1966, sending armed commandos to the presidential residence (known as the Blue House) in an attempt to assassinate Park Chung Hee in January 1968, and sending again armed commandos to Samch’ŏk, in Gangwon Province later that year. Domestically, intellectuals, students, and workers vociferously opposed the Park regime. All of these developments led the state to declare national security as an absolute goal to be achieved at all costs; 1972 was designated “the year of all-out security” (ch’ongnyok anbo). Anticommunism, therefore, was directed not only toward the “real communist” north Korea and its followers, but even more toward domestic political opposition. North Korea’s close proximity to south Korea, the fratricidal Korean War, and the continuing confrontation between the two Koreas made anticommunism in south Korea a particularly virulent form of social control as well as an effective method of maintaining the state’s hegemonic power. South Korea’s anticommunist state relegated those who were critical of society to the category of the Other. Anticommunism in south Korea has been promoted and sustained not only by the state but also by the conservative mass media, Christian, veterans’, and various civic organizations. These groups’ political sinew was demonstrated during the liberal government of Kim Dae Jung. In October 1998, one of the conservative monthly journals accused the well-known Professor Ch’oe Changjip of praising north Korea in his account of the Korean War and demanded that he be removed from his position as head of the Presidential Policy Planning Committee. Ch’oe was forced to resign by the combined forces of the conservative opposition political party, various associations of former military leaders, and veterans’ organizations.[6] More recently, conservative mass media and right-wing grassroots organizations accused Shin Eun-mi, the Korean American author of a bestselling travelogue of north Korea, of allegedly making “supportive comments” about north Korea in her book and in a series of public forums, which prompted the state to eventually deport her to the United States and barred her from entering south Korea for five years.[7] Anticommunism: Historical Context A nation’s concept of “the Other” is usually not a primordial or stable social category but rather is contested and reconfigured throughout its historical development. The communist as the Other in south Korea is a product of its specific colonial and postcolonial condition, as well as its political development. During the colonial period, Japanese authorities vilified communists as “criminals” and “sinners,” as they did anyone opposing Japan at the time; in Manchukuo, a puppet government in Manchuria set up by the Japanese (1932-1945), bandits were commonly called communists. Korean communists enjoyed widespread support among the Korean people, despite their brief existence as an organized party and factionalism, for their persistent resistance against Japanese. The onset of the cold war regime in Korea changed this attitude. Korea’s independence from Japan came in the end not as a result of their own struggle but as a result of the end of World War II. The United States, anxious about the possible move of the Soviet Union—who was invited by Roosevelt to expel Japanese and whose troops had already moved in the northern Korea—to occupy the whole peninsula, divided the country into half, occupying the southern part and ruling it under a military government. The leftists, frustrated by political constraints not of their own making and believing that their sacrifices during the anticolonial struggle conferred on them a historical and moral mandate, pushed relentlessly for their own vision of a socialist Korea. The rightists, with little historical or moral claim to the nation’s leadership, were equally adamant about their right to chart the future of Korea on their own terms. Despite efforts by those in the middle of the political spectrum (chungdop’a) to bring about a unified Korea, separate regimes in the south and north were established in 1948 with extensive backing from the United States and the USSR. In 1950, another effort to reunify the country by force resulted in the Korean War. The turning point for the public reception of leftists in the south came with their decision to support the agreement at the Moscow Conference of December 1945. Members of the Moscow Conference agreed to set up a provisional Korean government first before considering a four-power trusteeship of Korea.[8] In part through media manipulation on the part of the U.S. military government (1945-48) and rightist Korean elements, however, many Koreans came to believe that the agreement would establish a trusteeship in Korea and that the United States opposed the trusteeship (in fact, the United States had endorsed it) while the Soviet and the leftists, following the orders of the Soviet Union, supported it. Many Koreans could not accept the idea of foreign rule implied in the trusteeship, and they vehemently opposed it. The left, encouraged by the proposal for a provisional Korean government, declared its support for the “full text” of the agreement without clarifying its position on the issue of trusteeship, which it did not support.[9] Regardless, many Koreans in the south came to see communists as inveterate lackeys of Moscow, individuals with no concern for the nation’s future.[10] Although internal division between the leftists and rightists accounted for much of the political mayhem in the immediate post-1945 period, U.S. policy in Korea was decisive in helping consolidate the power of rightists rightists’ power to ascend, while eliminating that of the communists and leftists. Dictated by U.S. military and security interests in Asia, at the heart of U.S. policy in south Korea was “the containment of the spread of Soviet communism, the establishment of political stability, and the securing of Korean allies who would promote an American style democracy and capitalist development.”[11] In essence, the American ideals of freedom and democracy guiding Korean political development served, as Bruce Cumings succinctly points out, as “code words for anti-communism.”[12] The U.S. military government in Korea proved to be a highly effective proselytizer for anticommunism in postcolonial south Korea.[13] By the time the Republic of Korea was established in 1948, the revolutionary situation of the first few years after 1945 was brought completely under control. Leftist groups that had mounted a vigorous challenge to the regime were driven underground, and General Douglas MacArthur declared south Korea “an impregnable bulwark against all dissident elements.”[14] In this heated cold-war environment, the variegated sociopolitical issues that defied easy categorization were reduced to a simplistic and volatile binary between anticommunism and pro-communism, as exemplified by the trusteeship case. Those individuals whose previous political allegiance and activities would have been a target for the post-1945 purge of pro-Japanese elements were given a new political life and identity as anticommunists. In this world of stark divisions between communism and anticommunism, communists, or anyone accused of being one, had become not only “antinational” but also an “impure element.” They were branded as “thieves, bandits, seditious, heretic, vampire, and evil spirits.”[15] Society was to dispose of these elements, “[j]ust as chapkwi [sundry evil spirits] are feared and exorcised as evil in the shamanic rituals.”[16] They were not only denied full citizenship, they were deemed to be less than human beings. Under the system of yŏnjwaje—punishing family members and relatives of those accused of a major crime such as lèse-majesté—the family members and relatives of an alleged leftist were barred from employment as public servants and in corporations, entry into military academy, and travel abroad. Throughout the postcolonial period, the elimination of perceived dissident elements in south Korea was conducted with a brutality and violence that was unparalleled even during the Japanese occupation. The “red hunt” in the south was carried out with added ferocity when Christians fleeing from the north joined in. Christians in north Korea had suffered severe persecution in the early stages of the north Korean regime, giving rise to their vehement anticommunism. The police also made frequent, indiscriminate arrests of those they claimed might be leftist. A Chicago Sun-Times reporter visiting Korea during the U.S. military government period noted in 1946 that “the victim was already damned as a Communist and Enemy [sic] of the State. To ‘prove’ their case, the police set about wringing a ‘confession’ from them.”[17] The mass murder and rape of those considered leftists and dissenters were not isolated incidents in the immediate post-1945 period. The massacre of the Cheju people occurred two years before the Korean War, in 1948, and is now known as the Cheju Uprising. The combined forces of police and paramilitary groups, with the guidance of American military officers, killed more than ten percent of the island’s population. Soldiers belonging to the Sixth and Fourteenth Regiments and stationed in Yŏsu and Sunch’ŏn refused to participate in the suppression of the Cheju Uprising. Their rebellion led the state to round up the residents of these cities as collaborators.[18] Thousands were summarily executed and imprisoned; those who were left in prison were executed during the Korean War. Many of their family members were subsequently barred from employment and other social activities—one observer was led to comment, “It is no wonder that Chŏlla Province is void of the talented.”[19] The case of the National League of Guidance (Kungmin podo yŏnmaeng) again speaks to the south Korean regime’s brutal suppression of leftists. Organized by the state in 1949 to weed out remaining leftists, the league lured former leftists with the false promise that they would be forgiven their former political allegiances. As soon as the Korean War broke out, however, most of the league’s members were summarily executed; the whereabouts of their bodies became known only in the 1990s.[20] Another group of roughly 50,000 people was subjected to indiscriminate execution, torture, or various restrictions, all for their alleged cooperation with the north during its brief occupation of the south during the Korean War.[21] The Enemy Within and Without: Espionage Cases From the early 1960s onward, the south Korean state strengthened and amplified anticommunism by instituting anticommunist education. The central focus of anticommunist education was to instill in children enmity toward north Korea; there was little discussion about the history or main tenets of communism or discussion of why or what to oppose about communism. With the conciliatory U.S. policy toward the communist bloc and a series of north Korean armed incursions in the late 1960s that I have mentioned above, military training was introduced in high schools and universities in 1969 on the grounds that the military threat from north Korea demanded adequate preparation on the part of all south Korean youth. With the emergence of the Yusin system in 1972, anticommunist education became more systematic in its content and its emphasis on national security. School activities and performances, such as photo exhibits, lecture series, speech contests, and essay contests to strengthen national defense, were held regularly during the Yusin period. Instructions on how to report north Korean spies to state authorities were part of the curriculum.[22] As anticommunist education and the state security apparatuses prepared south Koreans to fight against the “enemy,” the real and presumed existence of the enemy was taken for granted. The enemy was not geographically specific or bound; it was ubiquitous and unrelenting. The enemy was not only north Korea but also, more broadly, anyone perceived to harbor a notion different from that of the south Korean state on how society should be changed. Those with dissenting views from the state were made into enemies of the state through legal measures such as the NSL and the Anticommunist Law. This discourse of enmity and the chararacterization of disparate dissenting elements as a unified, presumably pro-communist force against the state were effective ways to quash dissent and discipline society. The existence of these enemies was performatively confirmed in the routing out of “espionage rings,” the exposure of which became the most important function of the KCIA (Korea Central Intelligence Agency) and which occurred periodically throughout the post-1945 period. I do not mean to suggest that all espionage cases were manufactured by the KCIA or to impute that the state’s operation of KCIA was not without some basis in logic. There certainly were and are north Korean spies operating in the south just as south Korea has also its spies in the north. Regardless of the actual role of north Korea in these espionage cases, many of which were in fact underground vanguard organizations, what remains paramount is the general function of espionage cases in south Korea. The KCIA’s exposure—and manufacture—of espionage incidents served as the regime’s routine mechanism through which the dual function of warning the public about the danger of dissent and eliminating dissenting social forces was fulfilled. Most espionage cases were announced after major political events in south Korea, such as presidential elections or particularly violent student or worker demonstrations. In the 1960s alone, there were at least three major espionage cases involving intellectuals, university students, and “progressive forces” (hyŏksin’gye)—individuals who had participated in various leftist organizations in the immediate post-1945 era and in the social movements of the 1960s. The first case was announced on August 14, 1964, when south Korean society was still gripped by the nationwide protest against the Normalization Treaty with Japan. The KCIA announced the so-called “Inmin Hyŏngmyŏngdang [People’s Revolutionary Party] Incident”; university professors, journalists, and students were alleged to have directed the student protest to bring about socialist revolution under the direction of north Korea. Many of the implicated were well known, such as the noted scholar of Chinese literature Im Ch’angsun, economist Kim Pyŏngt’ae, journalist Chŏng Toyŏng, and other individuals whose names were familiar to the intellectual community in Korea.[23] Most were also active in the protest against the Normalization Treaty. This espionage case was clearly the Park Chung Hee regime’s warning to both south Korean progressive forces and north Korea; the progressive forces had resurfaced again with the growing protest against the Normalization Treaty. All of the accused vehemently denied the existence of any vanguard organization, let alone claims that they were north Korean agents. Indeed, there was no conclusive evidence that these individuals had any “organizational or continuous” contact with the North. Regardless, the majority of the forty-seven arrested were severely tortured, leading some prosecutors to resign in protest, a rare act of courage for the judiciary that had been generally regarded as a handmaiden to the regime.[24] The second major espionage case of the 1960s was announced in July 1967, soon after the presidential and general elections—elections which were widely regarded as rigged and were followed by widespread protests. The KCIA accused a group of Koreans residing in Europe (hence the name Tongbaeknim [East Berlin Incident]), including Yun I-sang, an internationally renowned composer, of spying for north Korea. Altogether, fifteen university professors, a medical doctor, artists, and civil servants were said to have frequented the north Korean Embassy in East Berlin, some visiting Pyongyang and receiving secret training to carry out spy activities.[25] A few days later, the KCIA announced another espionage case involving faculty members at major universities who were studying or had previously studied in Europe, who were reputed to have been in contact with the East Berlin group. According to the KCIA, Hwang Sŏngmo, a well-known professor of sociology at Seoul National University, and a number of other university professors had formed an extracurricular circle in their departments in order to “establish the base for socialist revolution,” to “instill seditious ideas” among students, and to instigate various protests aiming to destabilize society, thereby aiding north Korea.[26] In 1974, in the midst of the intense protest against Park Chung Hee’s Yusin measures that did away with democratic rules and procedures,[27] the regime accused a group of individuals of organizing the second People’s Revolutionary Party, and eight of the accused were executed only eighteen hours after the Supreme Court‘s decision to dismiss the final appeal.[28] Some thirty years later, the first and second cases of the People’s Revolutionary Party were found to have been fabricated by the KCIA in order to suppress the anti-Yusin movement, according to the “Committee to advance [Korean society] through examining the truth about the past incidents in which the National Intelligence Service (NIS [formerly KCIA]) was involved; hereafter Committee of NIS” (Kukka chŏngbowŏn kwagŏ sakŏn chinsil kyumyŏng ŭl t’onghan palchŏn wiwŏnhoe”).[29] The case involving Koreans in Europe was also aimed at routing out pro-democracy movements abroad that were gaining momentum at the time.[30] In the final count, 194 intellectuals were said to have been involved in these spy rings. Two received death sentences and the rest received prison terms from three and a half years to life.[31] The composer Yun I-sang was kidnapped by the KCIA in 1967 from his home in West Berlin (where he had lived since 1957), taken to Seoul, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Released in 1969 after a worldwide petition led by renowned musicians, he returned to West Berlin. He died in 1995 without ever fulfilling his wish to return to his homeland. As the East Berlin Incident indicates, Korean communities abroad were not immune to the threat of red-baiting and persecution, under the guise of national security, by the south Korean state. Koreans in Japan were the diasporic community most hard hit by the accusation of espionage—throughout the 1970s and 1980s, approximately two hundred zainichi Koreans were charged with violation of the NSL and imprisoned in south Korea.[32] The most well-known case involved the Sŏ brothers, Sŏ Sŭng and Sŏ Chun-sik. They were Korean residents in Japan (zainichi kankoku chosenjin), and their case was emblematic not only of their marginalized place as a minority in Japan but also of the insidious impact of the division of Korea.[33] In no other country outside Korea were the everyday lives of Koreans so deeply affected by the legacy of division. Indeed, the Korean community in Japan has been divided into two groups since 1945: one group that identified politically and socially with north Korea (Ch’ongnyŏn, or the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan) and one with south Korea (Mindan, or the Korean Residents Association in Japan). It is important to point out here that the decision on the part of some zainichi Koreans to identify with Ch’ongnyŏn has historically had more to do with the intensity of Japanese discrimination against Koreans than with where they originally hailed from. Ch’ongnyŏn, from its very inception in the immediate post-1945 period, had advocated a nonassimilationist policy and, through its various institutions and programs such as Korean schools and its own business ventures, has made it possible for zainichi Koreans to live with some semblance of cultural pride and political identity. Furthermore, many became Ch’ongnyŏn members as they were inspired by the north Korean leadership’s erstwhile anti-colonial resistance, its contemporary decolonizing effort in the context of the bipolar allegiances required throughout the Cold War, among others. The status of north Korea as an enemy of south Korea also applied, in broad-brushed fashion, to the members of Ch’ongnyŏn, making them persona non grata in south Korea until the early 1990s. In this regard, throughout the Cold War, members of Ch’ongnyŏn were also unable to easily reunify with their family members in the south. Not surprisingly, most Koreans from Japan visiting south Korea until the end of the 1980s were Mindan members. Those zainichi Koreans who wanted to study in South Korea faced the prospect of grueling ideological screening. Only after undergoing “special education” were these Koreans eligible to attend regular schools in south Korea. Once in the south, many zainichi Koreans found it difficult to adjust to the political repression and the accompanying self-censorship of intellectuals in Korea. Even Mindan members grew up in an atmosphere relatively tolerant of leftist perspectives insofar as half of the Korean community in Japan were members of Ch’ongnyŏn and the Communist Party maintains both legal standing and a sizable minority membership in Japan. Some had visited north Korea before coming to south Korea, as in the case of the Sŏ Brothers. Sŏ Sŭng and Sŏ Chun-sik were Mindan Koreans studying at Seoul National University when both were arrested by the KCIA in 1971. They were charged with violations of the NSL and the Anticommunist Law on the grounds that they instigated student protest against the government. Their other “crime” was a visit to north Korea.[34] As Sŏ Chun-sik wrote in his memoir, his price for a sojourn of eight days in north Korea was seventeen years in prison, averaging a two-year prison term for each day spent in north Korea.[35] In his memoir, Sŏ wondered if it would ever be possible for the south Korean state authorities to understand the stages of his painful journey; as a second-generation zainichi Korean, Sŏ had spent his high school years longing to be in his homeland, Korea. In ninth grade, after prolonged agony over his identity, he decided to affirm his identity as Korean openly in a school-wide speech contest. He then changed his name from Fukuda to Sŏ (until 1985 the naturalization process in Japan required adopting a Yamato name) and at the age of nineteen, he went to south Korea where he began to study the Korean language at Seoul National University. Coming from relative material comfort in Japan and long wishing to be with his fellow Koreans, Sŏ was shocked to see so many beggars, prostitutes, young children laboring as paperboys, shoeshine boys, and gum sellers, not to mention the ubiquitous English-lettered billboards and advertisements in Seoul. His days in Korea were filled with shock, anger, and pain at the “misery and suffering” of his fellow Koreans. His intellectual predilection for “social scientific analysis,” combined with his search for “true human liberation,” led him to socialist and Marxist ideas. To the south Korean authorities who repeatedly denied his release for ten years, even after he had served his original sentence of seven years, he was simply too “dangerous to society,” for he “still believed in the superiority of socialism.” The espionage cases involving zainichi Koreans were especially risky for south Korean dissidents or human rights groups to get involved with, as they could easily be branded as pro-north Korea or, even worse, as spies, and the two brothers languished in prisons for nearly twenty years each, with little support from Korean activists. The older brother, Sŏ Sŭng, suffered serious burns as a result of a suicide attempt in prison, and the younger brother, Sŏ Chun-sik, spent ten more years in prison under the Public Security Law (PSL), after having served his original sentence of seven years.[36] While the persecution of the Sŏ brothers was the most well-known and possibly most severe case among those involving zainichi Koreans, there were numerous espionage cases involving zainichi Koreans and south Koreans visiting Japan. In 1974, a south Korean novelist’s chance meeting with zainichi Koreans was turned into a matter of espionage by the KCIA.[37] As the former human rights lawyer (and current mayor of Seoul) Pak Wŏn-sun remarked, any zainichi Korean traveling to south Korea was a potential candidate for a KCIA-manufactured espionage case in the 1970s and 1980s.[38] Out of necessity, communities of the Korean diaspora had to be extremely cautious about any unintended link with north Korea. Anticommunism and Korean American Community The geopolitics of the continuing Cold War and the unfinished Korean War have transmitted south Korean society’s longstanding anxiety, fear, and distrust of north Korea; its normative discourse of anticommunism; and its binary logic of “us” and “them” to communities throughout the Korean diaspora. In the United States, the politics of the Korean American community have been particularly vulnerable to Cold War logic, given how U.S.–South Korea relations are underpinned by U.S. military dominance in Asia and the explicit anticommunism of U.S. immigration policy, among others.[39] Surveillance of Koreans and Korean Americans in the United States, both by the south Korean and U.S. governments, has also added another layer of complexity to the politics of the Korean American community. In the 1950s in Los Angeles, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) collaborated with the south Korean state by deporting a number of Korean Americans who were critical—mostly in the pages of their bilingual newspaper called the Korean Independent—of Syngman Rhee, the U.S. occupation of Korea, and U.S. intervention in the Korean War.[40] The interpenetration of the U.S and south Korean intelligence apparatuses was again demonstrated by the Western Illinois Campus Spy Ring of 1985, which involved two Korean Americans and three students from Korea who came to the United States between 1982 and 1983 to pursue their graduate degrees at Western Illinois University. During their stays in the United States, Kim Sŏng-man and Yang Tong-hwa, both majoring in political science, were said to have read widely about the political system of north Korea, met with north Korean officials in Hungary and East Berlin, received political indoctrination and instructions on how to engage in antigovernment activities, and passed on information about the south Korean student movement to the north Koreans. In fact, what they had done was show a documentary about the Kwangju Uprising on campus. All three south Korean international students were arrested and severely tortured. Kim Sŏng-man and Yang Tong-hwa were sentenced to death, and Hwang T’ae-gwŏn was sentenced to life in prison.[41] Because of their U.S. citizenship status, Lee Chang-sin and Sŏ Chŏng-gyun were spared imprisonment and torture, but their names were plastered over all the Korean-language newsapers in the United States. The close collaboration between the U.S. and south Korean governments in this case was revealed by a former FBI agent, Jack Ryan, who was ordered to conduct a background check on the accused after they had already been arrested. He noted that the background check was carried out “as part of the foreign policy of south Korea, which is also part of [U.S.] foreign policy.”[42] It was also based on the assumption that their “espionage activities” might have involved activities harmful to U.S. interests, as presumbably the three were working for north Korea, an “enemy” of the United States.[43] Ryan also notes that the U.S. government allowed the government of south Korea to plant security agents—in this case an army major in the guise of a graduate student—in American universities to monitor any dissent among Korean students.[44] Just as in south Korea, individuals who were active in the democratization movements of Korea were arrested as spies. The targeted head of a spy ring, Sŏ Chŏng-gyun, a member of the Korean American community in New York City, was also active in the fight for democracy in South Korea and for Korean reunification. He published the Newsletter of Diasporic Koreans (Haeoe Hanminbo) from 1973 until 1985 and edited the monthly publication of the North American Council for Reunification of the Motherland (Pukmiju choguk t’ongil hyŏphoe) from 1987 on.[45] Unlike zainichi Koreans in Japan, many Korean Americans are originially from the northern part of the peninsula and have family and relatives in the north. There is lingering fear and weariness that that by unwittingly mentioning north Korea in a positive light, they might provoke the suspicion and wrath of the community or even the south Korean regime; likewise, they worry that any overt or inadvertent negative remarks about north Korea might endanger family members and relatives who still remain in the north. Until very recently those who have visited north Korea to look for family members or relatives have more often than not been branded as “pro–north Korea” and shunned by the community. The exact number of those who have visited north Korea is not available, nor are their experiences typically aired in public.[46] Once labeled a communist or a north Korean agent, those so accused have had little meaningful recourse, including clearing their name in court, to regain their reputation and standing in the community. Instead, the accused are deemed dangerous and therefore to be avoided at all costs, and they bear the lingering consequences of the unresolved Korean War. The present-day Korean American community is still not free from the grip of the unfinished Korean War and the anticommunism of the south Korean state. This has been demonstrated most recently in the case of Shin Eun-mi. But it would be a grave mistake to characterize the community as seized only by Cold War fear. There have been many individuals and groups who have clearly and forcefully articulated the need to overcome the division and to bring about peaceful reconciliation of the two Koreas, and the current Legacy project is a contribution to these ongoing efforts. Namhee Lee is an associate professor of modern Korean history at UCLA and the Co-Director of the Center for Korean Studies. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute and part of the Legacies of the Korean War Online Oral-History project. [1] Portions of this essay are based on Chapter 2 of Namhee Lee, The Making of Minjung. I would like to thank Christine Hong for her meticulous editing, incisive comments, and suggestions in an earlier draft of this paper. [2] This is a conventional periodization of the Korean War, but given that there were numerous border skirmishes well before June 1950 and that there was no peace treaty signed, the year 1953 marks only the cessation of fighting, not the end of the war. [3] Sŏ, Cho Pong-am kwa 1950-yŏndae, vol. 1, 149. [4] Quoted in Shaw, ed., Human Rights in Korea, 184. [5] Ibid. [6] See Koryŏ Taehakgyo taehakwŏn chŏng’oegwa, “Ch’oe Chang-jip kyosu.” [7] See Shin, “A Korean American Housewife Confonts South Korea’s National Security Law.” [8] For a detailed discussion of the Moscow Conference, see Cumings, Origins of the Korean War, vol. 1, 215-27. [9] Ibid., 223; Pak, Han’guk chŏnjaeng, 92-96. [10] Pak, Han’guk chŏnjaeng, 97. [11] Kim, “Politics of Repression,” 20. [12] Cumings, Origins of the Korean War, vol. 2, 28. [13] Kim, Pundan kwa Han’guk sahŏe, 44. [14] Quoted in Kim, “Politics of Repression,” 25. [15] Quoted in Kim, Pundan kwa Han’guk sahŏe, 47, note 8. [16] Kim, “Chronicle of Violence,” 290. [17] Gayn, Japan Diary; quoted in Kim, “Politics of Repression,” 193. [18] Cumings, Origins of the Korean War, vol. 2, 259-67. [19] Kim, “1948-nyŏn Yeosun ponggi,” 249. [20] Han, “Kungmin Podo Yŏnmaeng.” [21] Pak, “Chŏnjaeng puyŏkcha.” [22] Han, “Yusin cheje pan’gong kyoyuk,” 334-35. [23] Pak and Kim, 1960-yŏndae ŭi sahoe undong, 215. [24] Yi, Haebanghu Han’guk haksaeng undongsa, 247. [25] Kong’an sakŏn kirok, 17; Yi, Haebanghu Han’guk haksaeng undongsa, 255-56. [26] Kong’an sakŏn kirok, 24-58. [27] On October 1972, Park declared martial law and the Yusin Constitution and a series of measures, which gave him the power “to appoint one-third of the National Assembly; to dissolve the National Assembly at will; to appoint all judges; and to appoint all members of the constitutional committee, which determined whether laws passed by the National Assembly were constitutional.” These measures also allowed Park to take whatever emergency measures might be needed, whenever “the national security or the public safety and order is seriously threatened or anticipated to be threatened.” Hart-Landsberg, Rush to Development, 186. [28] Kong’an sakŏn kirok, 102. [29] See Yi and Pak, “Inhyŏktang, Minch’ŏnghangnyŏn sakŏn ŭn chojak.” The committee was created by the NIS in part to gain public trust through investigating incidents its predecessor was involved in, and it was composed of civilians and NIS officials. [30] Koreans residing in Europe, Japan, and North America began to form pro-democracy groups in the early 1970s. Most of these groups, however, were far from “revolutionary”—they mostly discussed Korea-related issues, published newspapers, and demonstrated occasionally in front of Korean consulate buildings. A few individuals with family members and friends in the North had visited North Korea via East Germany, giving the south Korean regime justification to brand them as north Korean agents. [31] Kongan sakŏn kirok, 19, 59. On January 26, 2006, the previously mentioned “Committee of NIS” concluded that while some of the accused had visited north Korea and had received money, they had not engaged in espionage activities. [32] Mun, “Uri, Taehanmin’guk ŭi yaman,” 379. [33] I use “zainichi Koreans,” meaning “south and north Korean residents in Japan,” to refer to both groups of Koreans in Japan (referring to their legal status as permanent residents), bearing in mind that Koreans in Japan use various terms. [34] See also Suh, Unbroken Spirits. [35] Citations in this and the following paragraphs are drawn from Sŏ, Naŭi chujang, 225-40. [36] The PSL was created in 1975 to monitor and to detain “preventively” those who had refused to “convert” by denouncing communism or those who had been released without conversion due to the expiration of their sentences. Sŏ Sŭng was first sentenced to death. His sentence was reduced to life and then to twenty years. For more than seventeen of those twenty years, Sŏ Sŭng was held in isolation with limited facilities and restricted access to reading and writing materials. He was released in 1990. Sŏ Chun-sik was released in 1988. [37] Im, “74-nyŏn mun’in kanch’ŏptan sakŏn.” [38] Quoted in Mun, “Uri, Taehanmin’guk ŭi yaman,” 379. [39] On U.S. anticommunist immigration policy in the post-1945 era, see, among others, Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 414–416. [40] Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun, 455. [41] See Minjuhwa Silch’ŏn Kajok Undong Hyŏbŭihoe, ed., 10-tae chojik sakŏn, 51–68. [42] Engleman, “Agent of Change: Jack Ryan’s Odyssey From the FBI to the Peace Movement.” [43] Kang Un-ji, “‘Kumi yuhaksaeng kanch’ŏptan sakŏn’ susahan chŏn FBI yowŏn, Jack Ryan Chŭng’ŏn.” The Korean magazine that interviewed Jack Ryan in early 2001 also relays that Prof. Jae-hyŏn Lee, a former south Korean diplomat who defected to the United States in 1973, suggested at the time that the south Korean government probably requested the FBI to conduct the background check. It was his opinion that the background check would be used to justify the harsh sentencing of the students, as there was increasing publicity surrounding the case, with the president of the university and several members of the Senate demanding their release and commutation of their death sentences. [44] Ibid. [45] Yi, “Chaemi ŏllonin Sŏ Chŏng-gyun ssi pyŏlse.” [46] One of the few notable exceptions is JT Takagi and Hye Jung Park’s North Korea: Beyond the DMZ (A Third World Newsreel Production, 2003), a documentary about a Korean American woman’s visit to north Korea on a search for relatives. References Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, 1990. _____. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005. Engleman, Paul. “Agent of Change: Jack Ryan’s Odyssey From the FBI to the Peace Movement.” Chicago Reader, Nov 28, 1991. http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/agent-of-change/Content?oid=878726. Accessed September 14, 2015. Gayn, Mark. Japan Diary. Rutland, VT: Charles Tuttle Co, 1981. Han Chi-hŭi. “Kungmin podo yŏnmaeng ŭi chojik kwa haksal” [Organization and massacre of the National League of Guidance]. Yŏksa pip’yŏng 35 (1996): 290–308. Han Man’gil. “Yusin cheje pan’gong kyoyuk silsang kgwa yonghyang” [The reality and impact of anticommunist education in the Yusin system]. Yŏksa pip’yŏng 37 (1997): 333-47. Hart-Landsberg, Martin. The Rush to Development: Economic Change and Political Struggle in South Korea. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993. Im Hŏn-yŏng. “74-nyŏn mun’in kanch’ŏptan sakŏn ŭi silsang” [The truth of the 1974 spy case involving writers]. Yŏksa pip’yŏng 11 (1990): 283–301. Kang Un-ji, “‘Kumi yuhaksaeng kanch’ŏptan sakŏn’ susahan chŏn FBI yowŏn, Jack Ryan Chŭng’ŏn: “80nyŏndae chŏn mi taehak e Han’guk chŏngbu pŭrakchi itŏtda” [Testimony of Jack Ryan, the former FIB agent who invested the case of the ‘North American International Students’ Spy Ring’: “There were South Korean security agents in all of the U.S. Universities in the 1980s”]. Minjok 21, Vol. 6, September 1, 2001. http://www.minjog21.com/news/quickViewArticleView.html?idxno=798. Accessed Aug. 18, 2015. Kim, Hyun Sook. “The Politics of Repression, Resistance, and Revolution: Statemaking in Postwar Korea, 1945–1948.” PhD diss., New School for Social Research, 1991. Kim Kye-yu. “1948–nyŏn Yeosun ponggi” [Yeosu-Suncheon rebellion of 1948]. Yŏksa pip’yŏng 15 (1991): 248–98. Kim Tong-ch’un. Pundan kwa Han’guk sahŏe [The division and Korean society].Seoul: Yŏksa pip’yŏngsa, 1997. Kim, Seong Nae. “Chronicle of Violence, Ritual of Mournings: Jeju Shamanaism in Korea.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1989. Kong’an sakŏn kirok. [A report on public security incidents]. Seoul: Segye, 1986. Koryŏ Taehakkyo taehagwŏn chŏng’oegwa. “Ch’oe Changjip kyosu e taehan Chosŏn Ilbosa ŭi waegok-ŭmhae podo kwallyŏn charyo” [Materials on the distortion and calumny of the Chosun Ilbo’s reports on Professor Ch’oe Changjip]. November 1998. Lee, Namhee. The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea. Ithaca: NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Minjuhwa silch’ŏn kajok undong hyŏbŭihoe, ed. 10–tae chojik sakŏn [Ten manufactured incidents]. Seoul: Ach’im, 1989. Mun Pusik. “Uri, Taehanmin’guk ŭi yaman ŭl ijŏnnŭn’ga” [Have we forgotten the savagery of the Republic of Korea]. Tangdae pip’yŏng 7 (1999): 370–85. Pak T’ae-sun, and Kim Tong-ch’un. 1960–yŏndae ŭi sahoe undong [Social movements of the 1960s]. Seoul: Kkach’i, 1991. Pak T’ae-gyun. Han’guk chŏnjaeng [The Korean War]. Seoul: Ch’aek kwa hamkke, 2005. Pak Wŏn-sun. “Chŏnjaeng puyŏkcha 5–man yŏmyŏng ŏttŏk’e ch’ŏri toeŏnna” [What happened to the 50,000 war collaborators]. Yŏksa pip’yŏng 9 (1990): 172–198. Shaw, William, ed. Human Rights in Korea: Historical and Policy Perspectives. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991. Shin, Eun-mi. “Hyun Lee Interviews Shin Eun-mi: A Korean American Housewife Confronts South Korea’s National Security Law,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Jan. 27, 2015. Sŏ Chung-sŏk. Cho Pong-am kwa 1950–yŏndae [Cho Pong-am and the 1950s], vol. 1. Seoul: Yoksa pip’yongsa, 1999. Sŏ Chun-sik. Naŭi chujang: Pan sahoe anjŏnbŏp t’ujaeng kirok [My claim: A record of the struggle against the Public Security Law]. Seoul: Hyŏngsŏngsa, 1988. Suh, Sung [Sŏ Sŭng]. Unbroken Spirits: Nineteen Years in South Korea’s Gulag.  Translated by Jean Inglis. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Takaki, Ronald T. Strangers from a different shore: A history of Asian Americans. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. Yi Chae-o. Haebanghu Han’guk haksaeng undongsa [History of the postliberation student movement]. Seoul: Hyŏngsŏngsa, 1984. Yi Myŏng-gŏn and Pak Hyŏng-jun. “Inhyŏktang, Minch’ŏnghangnyŏn sakŏn ŭn chojak.” [Incidents of the People’s Revolutionary Party and the National Federation of Democratic Youth and Students are fabricated]. Dong-A Ilbo, December 8, 2005. http://japanese.donga.com/srv/k2srv.php3?biid=2005120836048. Accessed August 8, 2006. Yi Su-kang, “Chaemi ŏllonin Sŏ Chŏng-gyun ssi pyŏlse” [Korean-American journalist Sŏ Chŏng-gyun deceased]. Midiŏ onŭl, June 20, 2005. http://www.mediatoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=37794. Accessed August Aug. 18, 2015. #KoreanAmericans #KoreanWar #peacetreaty #AntiCommunism #NationalSecurityLaw #Armistice

Members of the Missing Pieces Project (photo by K.W. Lee Center for Leadership) By Ramsay Liem and Christine Hong | October 30, 2015 Co-published with Foreign Policy in Focus and Legacies of the Korean War. Legacies of the Korean War, an online oral-history project that documents the stories of Korean American survivors of the war and their descendants, is pleased to announce the launch of its website. A few summers ago, Barack Obama addressed a crowd of American veterans and South Korean dignitaries at the U.S. Korean War memorial. Declaring that Korea “was no tie” but “a victory,” Obama referred to the Korean War, among other curious word choices, as a distinctly “American story.” The war may have “finally ended” in July of 1953, but its bright legacy, he asserted, persists into the present. That might come as news to Koreans, including those living in the United States, still dealing with the war’s fallout. Most Americans fail to appreciate the outsized role of U.S. policy in the history of Korea — from the initial partitioning of the peninsula at the 38th parallel by U.S. forces after World War II to the outbreak of full-scale war and the failure to follow up a 1953 ceasefire agreement with a proper peace treaty. Referred to as the “forgotten war,” the Korean War, which was never resolved with a peace treaty, registers murkily in the U.S. historical record. When commemorated at all, the first hot war of the Cold War is typically framed as a sacrificial action on the part of the United States to safeguard South Korean democracy. (Less remarked upon is the fact that Washington actually bequeathed South Koreans a military dictatorship, which democratized decades later not because of U.S. policy but in spite of it.) In fact, the Korean War was pivotal to the emergence of the United States as a global superpower. It ushered in the national security state, the military industrial complex, the empire of U.S. bases that stretches across the globe, and permanent warfare as defining features of U.S. foreign policy. As historian Bruce Cumings writes, the militarized reality we inhabit today is “a product of Korea whether we know it or not.” (Obama seems to agree. In his speech, he praised the war as evidence of the U.S. commitment to “maintain the strongest military the world has ever known, bar none, always.”) Without a better-informed public, the Korean War and its geopolitical legacies are destined to endure — a Cold War bequest for generations to come. The war’s invisibility, however, comes with another hidden cost: Even now, 70 years after the division of the peninsula, Koreans themselves have been mostly written out of the U.S. account of the war. Missing are the sobering perspectives of ordinary Koreans who bore direct witness to the conflict’s extraordinary devastation: the killing of more than 3 million civilians, the decimation of social and physical infrastructure, and the separation of 10 million people from their families with few prospects for reunion, even many decades later. A Rising Challenge An increasingly vocal challenge to this silence is being mounted within the Korean American diaspora — whose very existence is a direct legacy of the war. At the start of the Cold War, when racist quotas restricted Korean immigration to 100 people per year, the entry of thousands of Korean military brides into the United States laid the foundation for the rapid chain migration that ensued when national quotas were lifted in 1965. Added to this was the pressure on Koreans who migrated southward during the war, for whom Cold War ideological fervor and political repression in South Korea created intolerable economic and political hardships, motivating many to emigrate. The war also spawned a continuous wave of international adoptions to the United States, making South Korea the main source of transnational adoptees until 1991. More than any other demographic in the United States, Korean Americans understand the human costs of conflict on the Korean peninsula: Even today, over 100,000 of them remain tragically separated from family members in North Korea. For Korean Americans schooled in the Cold War narrative about the U.S. “liberation” of South Korea from communism, it has long been considered a matter of self-preservation to foreclose any talk that calls into question the U.S. role in the conflict. “In the U.S., we’re still under the influence of ideology,” observed Min Yong Lee, a Korean War survivor, in an interview with psychologist and oral historian Ramsay Liem. “We paint family stories with political issues and then we’re scared, and we hide it all,” Lee stated. There’s “no chance to open ourselves. No personal history after 50 years, no real identity.” An early crack in this structure of silence emerged during the lead-up to the first summit meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea in June 2000 — more than four decades after the signing of the 1953 Korean War armistice. Prior to this moment, there was virtually no open discussion about the Korean War among Koreans living in the United States, and no published accounts of their war memories. Yet that historic North-South opening — and the possibility of reconciling across entrenched ideological differences — reverberated throughout the Korean diaspora. Now, with the thawing of Cold War tensions, Korean Americans have increasingly been willing to speak out about the war. Critical Remembrance Over the past decade and a half, Korean Americans have turned to the arena of public culture as a space to critically remember and reckon with the human costs of the conflict. Ramsay Liem’s oral-history project, Korean Americans Remember the Korean War, paved the way for the 2005 exhibit, Still Present Pasts: Korean Americans and the “Forgotten War,” which paired installation, performance, and interactive art with documentary film and archival materials. On tour nationally and in South Korea for nearly eight years, this exhibit created a rare space of collective memory about the war, evoking individual, family, and community reflections — and simultaneously grappling with the war’s erasure from the U.S. national narrative. Highlighting Korean American survivor perspectives on the unresolved Korean War, Memory of Forgotten War, a 2013 documentary produced and directed by Liem and Deann Borshay Liem, also emerged from these projects. “Bridge of Return” by Yul-san Liem and exhibit participants, Still Present Pasts (Photo: Tim Lindgren) Numerous other initiatives also followed. The New York-based organization, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, for example, has a new community-based project called Intergenerational Stories to Break the Silence: A Korean-American Oral History Project. Initiated by second-generation Korean Americans, it aims to address gaps in personal, family, and community histories, to bridge community divides, and disrupt prevailing narratives about the war and immigration. What stands out about this work is its egalitarian process. Interviewers and interviewees — and at times audiences — all participate in the narrative process, motivated by the goal of pursuing justice for war survivors. Bridging Across Generations with Oral History: A Collaborative Theatre Project (Photo: Danny Kim) In Los Angeles, the intergenerational Missing Pieces Project presented the visions of second- and third-generation Korean American high school students for peace in Korea. Moved by what they called “the heartbreaking stories of division and loss that we heard from the forgotten elders of our community,” they interviewed their own relatives and elderly community members whose hometowns are in North Korea. The Missing Pieces Project partnered with the National Coalition for the Divided Families in a U.S. congressional hearing, testifying to the urgent need for a pathway to family reunions for elderly Korean Americans separated from relatives in North Korea. Members of the Missing Pieces Project (photo by K.W. Lee Center for Leadership) Most recently, a new project was launched this October at a standing room-only event at UC Berkeley in front of a multiethnic and multigenerational audience of nearly 200 people. Dubbed Legacies of the Korean War: Korean Americans Remember the “Forgotten War”, this online multimedia archive joins these other projects in its goal of foregrounding ordinary Korean American perspectives as essential to U.S. discourse on the conflict. The Legacies project brings together community activists, scholars of critical Korean studies and Asian American studies, and award-winning documentary filmmakers in a far-reaching collaboration that includes participants in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Seoul. Ramsay Liem speaking at “Legacies of the Korean War” event at UC Berkeley, October 17, 2015 (photo: Peter Schroepfer) Underscoring the lived experiences of Korean American survivors of the Korean War and other members of the war-formed Korean American diaspora, the nuanced stories gathered in the Legacies archive span the political spectrum and bridge generations but dovetail in a shared call for peace and reconciliation on the Korean peninsula. For Korean Americans who bore witness to the Korean War’s “violent, unnecessary deaths,” stated Suntae Chun, an immigrant from a divided family, the obligation is to “work hard to make a world without war, between nations, people, and religions.” Yet pointing out that “technically, the war’s not over, 1.5-generation Korean American Eun-Joung Lee states that “there’s definitely a place for second-generation people in terms of facing what the impact of the war has been about.” The goal, In-Sook Lee, a survivor of the war, states, is “peaceful reunification.” Silent no more, the voices that are surfacing in these Korean American oral history projects offer prospects for breaking years of Cold War silence, raising awareness of the continuing human costs of the un-ended Korean War, and rethinking U.S. policy regarding the Korean peninsula. **For a fuller exploration of the politics of silence around the Korean War in the Korean American community, please see Ramsay Liem’s essay, “Silenced No More: Korean Americans Remember the ‘Forgotten War.'” Ramsay Liem is a professor emeritus of psychology, a visiting scholar at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College, and the president of the Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation and KPI Advisor.  Christine Hong is an assistant professor of transnational Asian American, Korean diaspora, and critical Pacific Rim studies at UC-Santa Cruz and an executive board member of the Korea Policy Institute. Legacies of the Korean War, an online oral-history project that documents the stories of Korean American survivors of the war and their descendants, is pleased to announce the launch of its website. #KoreanWar #peacetreaty #Reunification #Armistice #ChristineHong #RamsayLiem #Dividedfamilies

Elaine Kim, author/filmmaker and professor. By Elaine Kim | October 17, 2015 Co-published with Legacies of the Korean War This essay is the fifth in a series of articles that is part of the new Legacies of the Korean War online oral-history project that documents the stories of Korean American survivors of the war and their descendants. Frequently characterized as “the forgotten war” in the United States, the 1950-53 war in Korea took an estimated four million lives and resulted in uncountable injuries, separated ten million families behind a historically unprecedented U.S.-imposed partition, and literally flattened northern and central Korea with air strikes that destroyed not only buildings and houses but also dams, irrigation, roads, bridges, and farms, exceeding the total bombings in Europe during World War II. For the most part, Americans think that the Korean War is over, although it was never resolved by a peace treaty and has thus never ended. And the Korean War lives on in terms of psychic and material effects on the lives of millions in North and South Korea as well as in Korean diasporic communities all over the world. Indeed, although it has been more than six decades since the armistice, the reverberations have passed from generation to generation, like the after-effects of a traumatic injury or death that affects to one degree or another not only the injured and dead but also whatever and whomever that person’s life touched. Even descendants who were born and grew up on the other side of the globe long afterwards can be profoundly affected in diverse ways by this ancestral trauma. Thus, Korean Americans like me might feel angry and resentful when we hear the war, which was perpetrated by the United States, described in this country as “forgotten.” Forgotten by whom? By Americans who’d never heard of Korea and came to know it as a dirty, poor, nonwhite, God-forsaken little country at the ends of the earth?[1] Forgotten for what reason? Because the United States didn’t emerge as the heroic winner of the Cold War battle? I will never forget the morning of June 25, 1950. I was eight years old and living with my parents and brother in the Washington, DC. area. My parents stayed in bed much later than usual, speaking to each other in hushed and fearful tones.  They told us that war had broken out in Korea, but I could not fully understand what that meant.  I knew something had changed when children who used to hold up the corners of their eyes chanting “Ching Chong Chinaman” began to recognize our answer whenever they demanded to know whether we were Chinese or Japanese. Now they had heard of Koreans.  People started to feel sorry for us for being connected to such a terrible place, since the news media carried many stories about starving, ragged refugees and later about orphans and prostitutes in desperate need of American help. Back then, everyone assumed that Asians could not be Americans but were always foreigners on a sojourn in the United States. By the time I was in college, they routinely asked if I was from North or South Korea. Just as they had no idea there could be Asian Americans, they did not know that until 1945, there had been no such thing as a division and no such thing as a North and a South Korea. Since I learned only a little more about Korea and Korean history than my American college peers, when I first visited South Korea as a twenty-year-old in 1966, I had no idea that the extreme poverty and lack of modern infrastructure was largely due to that destructive war. The mountains were virtually treeless from Japanese colonial deforestation. I saw ramshackle buildings, dusty unpaved roads, beggars and peddlers of pathetic wares everywhere, women and children in patched clothing, obviously literate day laborers with A-frames strapped to their backs reading newspapers posted on the walls as they waited for work, young women wearing bright red lipstick clustered around the U.S. military base gate. I just assumed that Korea was poor because Korean people, just like people everywhere in the Third World were backward because of their own ineptitude and cultural predisposition. It took a long time for me to understand the dialectical relationship between empire and under/development. When I was in my early twenties, I returned to Korea to work for a year in the English Department at Ewha Womans University. I had just finished an MA in English and wanted to take a break before going on to a PhD program. Everything was a struggle for me: I couldn’t speak much Korean, and at the time Korean people were not familiar with Korean Americans. I knew little about traditional gender roles, as my mother had grown up in the United States and my father only knew the men’s world. Although living in South Korea was very difficult for me, it forced me to think of things in new ways and helped shape the person I eventually became. I met many young Korean men who were eager to fight in the ROK army in Vietnam. Not only did they want the U.S.-level military wages and benefits, including death insurance to be paid to their families, but also they wanted to know what it might be like to be on the giving as opposed to receiving end of “help” from a powerful protector against communism. Their ideas were in stark contrast to those of many young people I knew in the United States, who were protesting vigorously against U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. Outraged by the carnage that was being beamed nightly into American homes by television news media at that time, they revolted against the idea of young Americans being drafted to fight and die in that “immoral war.” I slowly awakened to some of the reasons for and historical contexts of the enormous gap between the political ideas of In 1966, then-President Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson, who were regularly vilified by college youth in America, came to Korea for a state visit. They were treated like royalty. It felt like all of South Korea was being prepared for months: photos of LBJ and South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee shaking hands were plastered on buses and cigarette packages; a “Texas-sized” bed was being prepared for LBJ at Walker Hill Resort; and plans were made to set up walls of corrugated steel to hide the slums along the road from Kimpo Airport to downtown Seoul so as not to offend LBJ as he rode by in his limousine. On the day LBJ arrived, offices and schools were closed, and buses weren’t even running. Everyone was encouraged to line the streets waving American flags and tossing flowers as his caravan passed by. At that time in my life, I had been questioning anticommunism as a rationale for these American wars in first Korea and then Vietnam, noticing how anticommunism in South Korea was considered a legitimate excuse for governmental abuse of citizenry. South Koreans weren’t even permitted to listen to Russian music composed after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and South Korean writers and filmmakers who presented North Koreans as being capable of human emotion or Americans as anything but benevolent were subject to arrest and imprisonment under the National Security Law. My very American education, which assumed the intellectual and cultural superiority of the West but taught me little about world history and nothing about Korean history, had led me to associate postwar economic devastation with Korean incapabilities. The same education, rooted as it was in the principles of the Enlightenment and the so-called “stages of development,” led me to think of South Koreans as ideologically backward and underdeveloped and provided me with absolutely no understanding of how ideologies might develop differently in different societies. I knew some of the facts of South Korean history, but I had no understanding of what it might be like to live in a U.S. client-state under a right-wing dictator. Nor did I know anything at all about partisan struggles and the strands of political thought that undergirded what I now see as one of the world’s longest and most courageous struggles for democracy, from the partisan struggles of the 1940s and 1950s to the student activism that overthrew Syngman Rhee in 1960, to the spectacular labor movements of the 1970s and the nationwide movement for constitutional governance in the 1980s. I was also slow to understand the relationship between anticommunism and U.S. wars in Asia and slow to come to awareness about the connections between U.S. wars in Vietnam and Korea. In the late 1960s, it was finally beginning to dawn on me that as one U.S. war was being waged against communism in Vietnam, another was still being prosecuted on the Korean peninsula. Indeed, at the time few people in the United States, even those active in anti-war, radical, and Third Worldist struggles, recognized the connections between an unfinished U.S. war in Korea and the ongoing U.S. war in Vietnam. After starting graduate school at Berkeley, I was hired as a graduate student instructor in freshman Reading and Composition. While searching for curriculum material, I came across some military recruitment films in the ROTC curriculum showing Ho Chi Minh as an Asiatic villain. Ominous music played in the background as the narrator recounted how Ho was an evil communist manipulator. This propagandistic portrait of the yellow red peril felt all too familiar. I also saw films representing Mao Zedong and Kim Il-Sung in exactly the same way, down to the scary music and scripted narration. In these films, Vietnamese—or Chinese and Korean—civilians were represented as mindless obedient hordes. Then, by chance, I saw some footage in one of these films of the Korean War. I have not forgotten those images: an old man with a long white beard in a white durumagi (traditional overcoat) and a horsehair hat scurrying to escape U.S. aerial bombings. Generally at that time, Korean people didn’t think it was dignified, especially for the elderly, to run, which is part of the reason that image is burned into my memory. But what really struck me back then was that the Americans who bombed that village thought of the villagers as being more like insects than as equal human beings, while to me that old man could have been my own grandfather. That’s how I began thinking about the combination of U.S. imperialism in Asia and domestic racism against Asian Americans as well as other people of color in the United States. After being recruited in 1969 by the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) to support the student strike for Ethnic Studies, I learned about the connection between empire and racism through reading and discussions. AAPA organizers asked me to prepare a lecture about Korea for their new class in Asian American history. I spent almost a whole semester reading books and articles about Korea and Korean history just for that one-hour lecture. In my lecture, I highlighted the contrast between North Korea’s notion of juche, or self-reliance, and South Korea’s acceptance of sadaesasang, or loyalty to superior power, described successful deployments of guerrilla strategies to overcome the powerful in Korean history, such as Admiral Lee Sun-sin’s tactics during Japan’s Hideoyoshi invasions at the turn of the sixteenth century. Students could see that there were points of affinity between Korean and Vietnamese history and Japanese colonial rule of Korea and the operations of white supremacy in the United States. During a historical juncture in which the Black Panthers and radical Asian American movement activists were traveling to North Korea in the interest of international solidarity, the students in the AAPA class could also see North Korea in a light other than one of enmity. Why is remembering the Korean War important to Asian American Studies? From the early days of Asian American Studies to the present, the Korean War has not ended. It must not be buried and forgotten. Learning about the Korean War helps Korean Americans, in particular, understand how important it is for us to work towards the peaceful reunification of Korea. It can also help everyone develop a complex understanding of the Cold War and U.S. imperialism in Asia. But even more, understanding the Korean War—that it has never ended, that the almost universal demonization of North Korea is rarely called into question, and that U.S. wars in Asia and domestic racism are closely linked—helps us grasp today’s supposedly post-Cold War, post-race moment in which the United States is locked into another war without end, a war against “terror” while continuing a shameful and often murderous assault against black people and immigrants of color. Now, almost five decades later, anti-war, anti-racist politics are as important today as they were in Asian American Studies’ inaugural moment. [1] As Christine Hong has pointed out, the term “forgotten war” has most often been used by U.S. veterans seeking recognition for their service, pointing to “how war commemoration in this country tends to privilege the perspective of ‘heroic’ veterans while almost entirely disregarding the experiences of, in the case of the Korean War, immigrant survivors of that war and their descendants” [Christine Hong commentary, 15 September 2015]. Elaine Kim is Professor Emerita in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and the author/editor/co-editor of ten books, as well as a film producer/director.  Kim co-founded Asian Women United of California, the Oakland Korean Community Center, and the Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, and is a Korea Policy Institute Advisor.  She is part of the Legacies of the Korean War project team. #Armistice #ElaineKim #KoreanWar #peacetreaty

The U.S. military expansion in the Asia-Pacific is destroying peaceful communities, local democracy, and nature. By Koohan Paik | November 7, 2015 Originally published in Common Dreams Last September, I attended a remarkable gathering in Okinawa of impassioned young people from all over the Asia-Pacific. They convened at a critical moment to urgently discuss ramped-up militarism in their region. Thousands of hectares of exquisitely wild marine environments, peaceful communities and local democracy are now under extreme threat. Participants hailed from: Taiwan; Jeju (South Korea); the Japanese Ryukyu islands; Indonesia; New Zealand; and the Japanese Ogasawara islands. I was invited to represent Hawaii, where the headquarters for the U.S. Pacific Command (PACCOM) are located, and where decisions are made that have profound consequences for these young activists, and the rest of the world. These include missile base-building on pristine islands, rampant navy war games that destroy coastlines, reefs and other vital ecosystems, not to mention adding to climate change, pursued with no regard for local opinion. It’s all a result of the “Pacific Pivot,” announced by President Obama in 2011, to move 60% of U.S. Navy and Air Force resources from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific. The stated goal is to maintain “balance” in the ongoing battle with China for regional military and economic hegemony. A particularly dangerous expression in this effort came a few weeks ago, when a U.S. missile-carrying warship challenged China by passing through disputed waters surrounding China’s artificial island bases in the South China Sea. It is the latest example of brinkmanship after years of provocative moves by the U.S. in the so-called interest of balance. But, the grim fact is there is no balance in the Pacific. The little publicized reality is that the United States, located thousands of miles from China’s coast, already maintains over 400 military installations and 155,000 troops in that part of the world. Meanwhile China, even with its newest artificial island-bases in the South China Sea, will have a grand total fewer than ten. At the conference, entitled “Peace for the Sea Camp” it was noted that one of the most destructive developments has been Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s 2015 campaign to forge a new network of aggressive bilateral agreements with militaries from other countries such as South Korea, the Philippines, Australia — and most insidiously, Japan — to augment American dominance. These alliances are reinforced economically by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an essential component of the fool’s endeavor to contain China within its own hemisphere. However, no one at the conference took sides with one hegemon or the other. China was also criticized for having smothered thousands of acres of healthy reef with concrete and crushed coral, to build its artificial islands. To be sure, one of the primary purposes of the gathering was to establish a global voice against all military desecration of islands and the seas. Here’s the full story on the crisis and resistance. Outsourcing Military Force A seismic event took place on the first day of the conference that underscored the gathering with new urgency. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had managed to push through highly unpopular legislation to disempower Japan’s “peace constitution,” implemented in 1947 by General Douglas MacArthur. Abe acheiieved this despite 100,000 protestors shouting “NO WAR” for weeks in front of the Japanese Diet. The following day, Abe’s public approval rating plummeted to 38.9 percent. Now, Japan’s military is permitted to act offensively, no longer only in self-defense mode. It can also surveil other countries for the first time in modern history, and establish a global arms industry (imagine, Honda-quality drones and tanks). According to a Pentagon official, this will give Japan “greater global presence.” According to The Nation’s Tim Shorrock, it will turn Japan into America’s proxy army in Asia. China is correct to view the watered-down constitution as yet another provocation, especially since it has cleared the way for a turbo-charged reworking of the 64-year-old U.S.-Japan Security Treaty to take effect. The revised treaty essentially encourages Japanese aggression toward its neighbors — a 20th century scenario that Asia-Pacific people do not want to relive. For them, Abe’s politics are like a zombie risen from the dead. Since taking office in 2012, Abe has boosted the military budget, taken an aggressive stance toward China and has also denied Japan’s role in forcing hundreds of thousands of women into sexual slavery for its troops during World War II. He is the perfect, barbaric accomplice to carry out the Pentagon’s audacious designs on Asia. For islanders like those at the Okinawa conference who live on the front lines of this new world, the new treaty poses immediate threat. It allows four lovely islands in the Ryukyu archipelago to be transformed into state-of-the-art military bases — with missiles pointed at China. It’s a way the U.S. can “outsource” base-building to client states like, in this case, Japan. Outsourcing base-building is a fairly new Pentagon strategy. It came about partially due to the U.S. wearying of growing global disgust with its foreign basing. For example, the routine protests of tens of thousands of intractable Okinawans has already succeeded in stalling new base construction there for the past 20 years — a big headache for the Pentagon. The solution, surrogate base-building, is also an enormous cost-saving measure. For example, the construction of the Jeju naval base is South Korean in name, but it fulfills the Pentagon’s directive to contain China. It will also port U.S. aircraft carriers, attack submarines and Aegis-missile carrying destroyers. Because the base is “officially” South Korean, costs are externalized — of construction, of environmental responsibility, and of policing eight years of still ongoing protests. Now four Japanese Ryukyu islands will also be put to service to menace China — at no direct expense to the U.S. The Ryukyu basing project, now under construction, would not have been able to move forward without the culmination of a longstanding collaboration between the U.S. and Japan to finalize three milestones during 2015. The milestones, which work together symbiotically, are: 1) Disabling Japan’s pacifist Constitution; 2) Beefing up of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty; and 3) Reaching a TPP agreement which would work hand-in-glove with military force to pair economic dominance with military hegemony. More on this later. Environmental Impacts The Ryukyu Islands stretch like a strand of emeralds 900 miles south from mainland Japan to Taiwan. They are rich with crystalline rivers, vital reefs, and endemic flora and fauna. The Japanese people, still coping with the post-apocalyptic effects of a triple-reactor meltdown at Fukushima, understandably celebrate the Ryukus (those which are still pristine) as priceless natural treasures. But alas, Japan’s government has begun carving up mountains, dredging coral and bulldozing forests in order to rapidly build the massive, multi-island military infrastructure. To witness the lush habitats of hundreds of remarkable species ripped off the face of the Earth is a sobering spectacle, equivalent to the Taliban blasting away the 1,700-year-old Buddha statues carved into Afghan cliffs. Though the bases would be Japanese in jurisdiction, their function would be essentially American. They are intended to extend the encirclement of China started by South Korea’s Jeju base and those on Okinawa. Three lush, wondrous islands — Amami-Oshima, Miyakojima, and Ishigaki — are now slated for missile-launching capability and live-fire training ranges. On Yonaguni, so far south it is only 69 miles from Taiwan, the plan is to build microwave radar antennas to spy on China — an activity that would have been illegal before the implementation of the new constitution. Yonaguni residents are not happy. “There’s a lot of worry that the island could become a target for attack if a base is built there,” a Japanese defense ministry official told the Mainichi Shimbun. Oddly, the defense ministry first revealed the base construction plans directly to the national media, but not to the island residents. Mayumi Arata, a respected elder of Amami-Oshima, the most northerly island slated for construction, said the only information that people were given was a 15-minute talk by a government official in July 2014. The bureaucrat said troops would be stationed on the island. Nothing was ever mentioned of the missile base, the radar station, the firing range, the heliport, or any accoutrements. It wasn’t until newspapers published the plans that the people learned they were to be heavily militarized. Anti-base groups quickly formed on all the affected islands, but not without blowback from the draconian Abe regime. On Miyakojima, a lawsuit was filed against the government for blacklisting protestors from employment. The 275-square-mile island of Amami-Oshima is a place so teeming with biodiversity that it has been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status. Seventy-three thousand people live on 30 percent of the island. The other 70 percent is comprised of rolling hills that are entirely wild and carpeted with a thick green tangle of endemic, original forest. A crab-filled mangrove swamp is set inland. Ringing the island is a coral reef with adorable pufferfish noted for sculpting astonishing undersea sand mandalas, and loads of calico-shelled cone snails. Drinkable water bleeds from cracks in fern-covered cliffs. The island is home to 300 species of birds, butterflies as big as your hand, jade and gold frogs, salamanders, sea and freshwater turtles, the unique Ryukyu ayu fish, endemic orchids and rare ficus trees. The small-eared Amami rabbit, one of many species found only here, is sometimes called a “living fossil” because it represents an ancient Asian lineage that has elsewhere disappeared. There has even been a sighting off the coast of the extremely rare North Pacific right whale, a species of which it is believed only 30 remain. Needless to say, a firing range in the forest and state-of-the-art missile base will decimate Amami-Oshima’s natural wonders. Mamoru Tsuneda, a natural park counselor of the Environmental Ministry, laments, “There are no laws to protect the nature on this island.” Residents have economic concerns as well. Kyoko Satake, an artist and boutique owner, observed, “We see how the United States has only the very rich or the very poor. That’s because you spend all your money on war. We don’t want to be like that. We want to keep our middle class.” The most southerly island to be militarized is the 11-square-mile island of Yonaguni. It is strategically positioned less than 100 miles from the uninhabited Senkaku islands, a piece of geography being hotly contested with China. When I visited Yonaguni before the activist gathering began, I saw herds of wild, endemic ponies roaming freely on fenceless pastures and even on streets. But now their main watering hole has been replaced by bulldozers churning out a radar surveillance station, scheduled for completion in 2017. Entomologists are alarmed that the radar will kill many of the island’s celebrated, but fragile, butterfly species. As on Amami-Oshima, there has been no transparency in its construction, let alone any kind of Environmental Impact Statement. Residents were told that such information is “top secret.” It wasn’t until the bulldozers began that they saw that the high-intensity microwave antennas were to be only about 600 feet from neighborhoods, including an elementary school. Several mothers with young children decided to move off the island forever. At a certain point, all this preparation for war becomes indistinguishable from war itself. The fight against terror becomes terror itself. No one knows that better than the Jeju islanders of South Korea, whose farms, fisheries and freshwater springs were destroyed to build a base. The Okinawans also know it. They live daily with military jets and helicopters searing through the skies. It seems the same hellish fate is in store for all people and creatures of the islands targeted for militarization. A high school science teacher and Amami-Oshima native, Hirohumi Hoshimura, observed, “Tokyo says my island is for defense. But to me, this is my home.” Meanwhile, defense industries on both sides of the Pacific are salivating. Japan’s Ministry of Defense has a proposed a record-high budget, to equip the new bases with 17 Mitsubishi anti-submarine warfare helicopters, 12 Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, three Northrop Grumman Global Hawk drones, six F-35 fighter planes and Aegis destroyers (both manufactured by Lockheed Martin), one Kawasaki military transport aircraft, three Boeing Pegasus tanker aircraft, and 36 maneuver combat vehicles. Other purchases include BAE Systems amphibious assault vehicles and mobile missile batteries. And Japanese arms manufacturers have begun – for the first time ever — producing armaments for export. It’s a merger between militarism and corporate capitalism. Butter, Guns and the TPP From a strictly trade perspective, the TPP is confounding. From a geopolitical perspective, it makes a lot of sense. Jean-Pierre Lehmann elaborates in Forbes: “TPP is a really strange mélange of 12 members, including five from the Americas (Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru and the US), five from Asia (Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam), along with Australia and New Zealand. … Missing are large Asian economies, notably South Korea, India and Indonesia, all three members of the G20. Also missing of course is China; but that would seem to be deliberate … to contain China. Thus TPP is above all a geopolitical ploy with trade as a decoy.” Given the dearth of economically significant Asian member nations in the pact, it is not perplexing why many analysts were predicting early on that the whole deal would collapse if Japan never signed on. It finally did in 2013. But as recently as April 19, 2015, gridlock prevailed at a Tokyo meeting between U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Japan’s Economic Minister Akira Amari. The U.S. wanted Japan to eliminate its extremely high tariffs on agriculture — hundreds of a percent on rice and beef. Japan wanted to sell more cars in the U.S. but wasn’t keen to reciprocate by buying American cars. It took the perceived threat of China establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and other international deals to loosen the logjam. “The growing Chinese presence in the region has prompted Japan and the United States to speed up talks,” Masayuki Kubota, chief strategist at Rakuten Securities in Tokyo, told Agence France-Presse at the time. “Japan and the United States are feeling pressed to take the initiative before China crafts its own rules.” So, only eight days after the Tokyo trade meeting flopped in April, Shinzo Abe arrived for a much-regaled week-long visit to Washington. He landed the same day that his Defense Minister Nakatani and Foreign Minister Kishida met in New York with Secretary of State John Kerry and Ashton Carter. There, the four cabinet members settled on a new set of defense guidelines that would expand Japan’s military. The new guidelines articulated that Japan would now be permitted to take part in “an armed attack against a country other than Japan,” a radical departure from the original treaty. Other new activities included minesweeping to keep sea lanes open, intercepting and shooting down ballistic missiles, and disrupting shipping activities providing support to hostile forces – all responsibilities that the Ryukyu missile bases would be perfectly positioned to execute. Apparently, granting Japan military powers was what it took to secure the TPP concessions. The next day, Abe and Obama were all smiles and waves in the Rose Garden, boasting about their new defense treaty in the same breath that they stressed they were committed to reaching a “swift and successful conclusion” to the TPP. And the very next day, Abe promised Congress he would have “his” legislature dismantle the peace Constitution by summer, so the new defense guidelines could take effect. He got a standing ovation. It was not the following summer, but rather in autumn, that Abe made good on his word, managing to push through his aggressive interpretation of the constitution, much to the sorrow of the Japanese people. Sixteen days later, like clockwork, the TPP was reached. TPP: It’s Not Just about Tariffs and Toyotas When Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in April, “The TPP is as important to me as an aircraft carrier,” he revealed the inextricable connection between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and militarism. Until that statement, the TPP had been treated as nothing other than the biggest, baddest free trade agreement to come along since NAFTA, CAFTA, TTIP and the rest. However, unlike the TPP, none of these other global trade deals were implemented to thwart a rival world power. President Obama summed things up last spring when he said of the TPP, “If we don’t write the rules, China will write the rules in that region.” So, TPP provides the rules; the Pentagon enforces them. A look at the map clarifies how forces at play in the Asia-Pacific give a geopolitik context to the TPP. Off the southeast coast of China lies the South China Sea, through which over $5 trillion worth of trade passes annually, after squeezing through the Strait of Malacca. This is also the gateway through which all oil from the middle-east passes before it reaches China, Japan, and South Korea. Whoever controls the Strait of Malacca and South China Sea controls Asia’s economy, which, in turn, drives the world economy. In order for the U.S. to maintain authority over these far-flung hotspots, it must project military might – the most resented and costly form of power. That’s why Ashton Carter needs the TPP so bad: to justify mega-militarizing Pacific trade routes. Is it any coincidence that all the Asia-Pacific TPP signatories, with the exception of Japan, Australia and New Zealand, can be found surrounding the South China Sea? Those nations are Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and Vietnam. For years, they, along with the Philippines and Taiwan, have been in heated disagreement with China over territory that includes critical sea lanes. China is claiming most of the sea for itself, a move which would castrate the TPP. (What good is a trade agreement without access to trade routes?) The stakes are so high that China went so far as to build seven artificial islands, totaling 2,000 acres, in the middle of the disputed Spratly Islands. China claims sovereignty over the new islands, as well as the surrounding sea within twelve nautical miles. In such unpredictable circumstances, solid alliances with the China-vulnerable countries are indispensable to the Pentagon. Their membership in the TPP exacts deference to U.S. hegemony. In exchange, they get the American muscle they need to stake out their own territorial claims, such as the warship that Carter sent directly into the contentious waters surrounding the artificial islands. This military excess is shaping 21st-century Asia, warping cultures, destroying countless ecosystems, and costing billions of dollars. Other examples: four Littoral Combat Ships (at about $700 million apiece) have been ported in Singapore; Marines have begun rotating between bases in Australia, Okinawa, Guam and Hawaii. Most ecologically destructive are the unprecedented number of joint naval exercises taking place in the western Pacific with tens of thousands of troops at a time. Participating militaries come from Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand, and Timor Leste. Across both northern and southern hemispheres, the fury of torpedoes, sonar and bombs blasts through reefs and marine habitats almost year-round with no meaningful environmental regulation whatsoever. To put it bluntly, the TPP is not merely a set of rules; it locks in and justifies a defense empire to counter China. But many U.S. lawmakers need more incentive to sign onto any trade deal. “When the administration sells me on this, it’s all geopolitics, not economics: We want to keep these countries in our orbit, not China’s,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. “I agree with that. But I need to be sold on the economics.” Teens Stand Up to Oppose War Law In Japan, those who remember the horrors of war have always been stalwart pacifists. So it came as an enormous surprise when legions of the younger generation camped out for a month in front of the Diet, chanting and beating drums, as Abe forced through his despised militaristic legislation. Spearheading the movement has been Students’ Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs), a group that skyrocketed to popularity by incorporating a hip-hop aesthetic into its political messaging. Other organizations sporting their own acronyms have popped up like mushrooms: Teens Stand Up to Oppose War Law (T-ns SOWL), MIDDLEs and even OLDs. Regardless of age, though, they all brandish signs with the same message, such as “War is Over,” “Change the Prime Minister” and “TPP – NO! People’s Pacific Partnership – YES!” Equally significant is the wide-sweeping, movement of young Asia-Pacific visionaries that seemingly came out of nowhere to organize Peace for the Sea Camp. Its very trans-national quality flies in the face of what a Pentagon official on Guam once told me: “Unlike European countries, Asian countries will never be able to get along – that’s why we’re there, in Asia.” But they didn’t come out of nowhere; they had emerged from the highly organized Christian movement opposed to base construction on Jeju Island, South Korea. The ferociously peaceful opposition had attracted pilgrim pacifists from across Asia, and every other peopled continent. They had come to take part in daily religious services that blocked traffic at the gates of the construction site for the past eight years. It was a tearful irony that it was during the Peace for the Sea Camp when the first Aegis-missile destroyer ported at the Jeju base. One evening of Peace for the Sea Camp was devoted to screening a 2014 Irish documentary about the Jeju navy base protests. The announcer voice-over posited that the completion of the base will herald the beginning of the Cold War in the 21st century, between the U.S. and China. Hindsight has proven him correct; in only one year, tension has increased with the U.S. race to solidify an anti-China political bloc through Japan’s shady new legislation, trade, and epidemic joint military exercises. Not to mention the inflammatory plan to lasso China with a string of new missile bases in the Ryukyu Islands. Shortly after the conference, the activists produced a manifesto to articulate the voices of those impacted by the Pacific Pivot. Here is an excerpt: “We fully understand that this shift will not bring about greater human security but will instead yield the conditions for a far greater risk of war and tremendous environmental destruction. We further recognize that these changes have been fueled by the global weapons industry, which reaps enormous profits from increased military tension and conflict, while ordinary people and the wider ecosystem suffer the inevitable consequences. We cannot leave this work to political leaders and governments, which largely answer to corporate interests and the military-industrial complex. We challenge the prevailing assumptions behind the current configuration of geopolitics that takes for granted the precedence of nation-states, military interests, and capitalist accumulation. We will instead create another kind of geography. Through our Peace for the Sea Camp and similar projects, we are already creating alternative political communities based on a sustainable economy, the ethics of coexistence, and our shared responsibility to preserve peace.” Apparently, the Pentagon official’s belief that Asian countries are incapable of getting along, is wrong. Koohan Paik is a journalist, media educator, and Campaign Director of the Asia-Pacific program at the International Forum on Globalization and a former KPI Fellow. #AsiaPacificpivot #TPP

By Gregory Elich | November 12, 2015 Originally published in Counterpunch. In a climate of increasing repression, the Park Geun-hye government in South Korea is launching the latest in its series of attacks on working people. A retrograde labor reform plan is being set in motion that promises to drive down wages and undermine job security. There is broad and determined resistance to the plan, and workers and farmers are taking the battle to the streets. The labor reform essentially implements a wish list of measures long advocated by corporate leaders, who hope to see their profits soar as a result. “From the demand side, we should reduce the burden of businesses hiring workers by making the market more flexible,” argues Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan. (1) The envisioned “flexibility,” not surprisingly, is expected to be provided solely by workers. One of the plan’s chief aims is to broaden the use of temporary labor. Among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, South Korea already ranks the highest in its reliance on temporary workers, who currently comprise over one-fifth of the workforce. (2) Temporary workers typically receive few or no benefits, and their wages amount to just two-thirds of their permanent counterparts. For part-time workers, the situation is more dire, with wages amounting to barely over half that received by permanent employees. (3) For obvious reasons, businesses are keen on expanding this arrangement to a wider segment of the workforce. The labor reform doubles the length of time a worker can be employed on a temporary basis, extending the period to four years. The range of industries in which temporary workers can be utilized is expanding as well. Once a worker’s term of employment expires, there is nothing to prevent a company from rehiring the same worker for another four years period, at the same low wage. Another measure would eviscerate job security protections by allowing companies to arbitrarily dismiss workers at will, based on subjective factors. The Labor Reform also grants businesses the right to unilaterally change workplace regulations. Business groups point to Japan’s 2007 Labor Contract Law as a model to emulate, as it allowed companies “to modify employment rules without workers’ consent….in order for enterprises to flexibly respond to business environment changes.” From the standpoint of corporations, South Korea’s low rate of unionization is still too high, and “the use of substitute workers should be allowed to respond [to] trade unions’ unreasonable demands through strikes.” (4) The most controversial aspect of the labor reform is the introduction of a peak-wage system, in which companies would be not only allowed, but encouraged, to slash the wages of workers once they reach the age of 55. The government is selling this concept as a solution to the high youth unemployment rate. The argument is made that with all the money businesses save by slashing the wages of experienced workers, they can afford to hire more young people. The logic is dubious. A company is staffed with the number of workers it feels it needs. Cutting pay for a segment of the workforce does not automatically create new positions. Furthermore, from the corporate standpoint, the prime advantage of hiring young people is that they can be paid low starting wages. By reducing the salaries of experienced workers, there would be less motivation to hire the young. Companies are awash with cash, yet they are shy about spending. The government reduced the corporate tax rate by three percentage points, in a failed bid to encourage investment. Instead, the tendency for companies has been to let cash reserves mount. (5) The 1,835 companies listed on the Korea Exchange possess cash reserves totaling 845 trillion won – which translates to about $730 billion. That is an increase of 159 percent since 2008. (6) Furthermore, over the last four years, Korean companies have tripled the amount of cash they have stashed in overseas accounts. (7) There is no reason to believe that adding more money to the mountain of corporate cash would induce companies to hire more young people. Meanwhile, the government has announced its intention to extend to 70 the age at which people can receive a meager pension and benefits. Already nearly half of senior citizens live below the poverty line, and their numbers will only increase under the plan. Those who are fortunate enough to retain their jobs will be compelled to work for less pay while others must rely on their children in order to survive. With the new retirement age, older workers will occupy jobs for a longer period that the government is supposedly so eager to free up for young workers. The feigned concern for young people is sugar-coating to mask who the real beneficiaries of the labor reform will be. Companies stand to reap enormous profits from cutting the wages of older workers and increasing their reliance on temporary labor. Attempting to pit the young against the old is from the tired bag of neoliberal tricks aimed at distracting workers from connecting the political dots. The business-backed plan has only more temporary jobs to offer young people and a narrowing of horizons. Education plays a significant role in the lives of the young, and Finance Minister Choi has a vision for its future. He has announced that once progress has been made on labor reform, the government intends to restructure the educational system. “Colleges should be able to provide the kind of talents that industry wants,” he claims. This is another argument from the neoliberal bag of tricks, in which the concept of an education that produces informed, well-rounded citizens is thrown out the window. Instead, the proper role of education is conceived as being nothing more than job training. After all, what is the good of knowledge that does not directly serve corporate profit? Many students remain skeptical about the government’s position. A student group calling itself the Misfits sent a letter to Choi, which said: “We are not angry because the regular workers are overly protected. We are angry because temporary workers are not ensured the benefits regular workers receive.” (8) Businesses need to cut the pay of older workers, the Park Geun-hye government argues, because they become less productive as they age. For the same reason, businesses should have a free hand in dismissing workers as their perceived value goes down. What is the basis for this claim? No evidence is offered to back this presupposition, and indeed older workers generally have accumulated much expertise in their positions. Productivity is lagging due to excessive protection of workers, the government and businesses contend. Yet, in the period of 2007-2012, real wages declined 2.3 percent while labor productivity rose nearly ten percent. (9) So who is it that is losing out? Growing labor productivity coupled with falling pay equals increased exploitation of workers. Business leaders’ real complaint is that the rate of exploitation is not rising fast enough to suit them. The government’s labor reform is not being introduced in isolation. Already the government has outlawed the teachers union and the government employees union, as well as the labor-oriented Unified Progressive Party based on trumped up charges. Police have repeatedly raided union offices, seized records, and arrested union officials. In a vindictive trend, corporations are taking workers to court over “loss of profits” when workers go on strike, and courts are consistently ruling in favor of the companies. In a recent case that typifies the trend, the Seoul High Court ordered 139 workers to pay a combined total of $2.8 million to Ssangyong Motor Company for holding “unauthorized” strikes. (10) That is more than $20,000 from each worker. Those in power “have created fear among workers that struggle can lead to losing everything,” explains Han Sang-kyun, chair of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). “Astronomical fines and seizure of property for so-called damages, warrants for imprisonment, termination from employment, destruction of democratic unions – these are the forms of punishment for those who dare to fight. The skewed playing field, in which the government is unequivocally on the side of capital, seriously undermines the rights of workers.” Han speaks from experience, having been imprisoned for three years for his role in a sit-down strike at a Ssangyong Motor Company production plant. He currently cannot leave his office, which is surrounded by hundreds of police, waiting to arrest him the moment he leaves the building. In an attempt to intimidate the KCTU, on November 6, around 200 police raided the headquarters of one of the confederation’s members, the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union. Police confiscated files and a computer hard drive, and then proceeded to intrude and attempt to search the offices of affiliated unions. Arrest warrants have been issued for twelve union members. Workers are being squeezed hard, but not enough to mollify business. South Korean corporations view the labor reform as only one stage in rolling back the gains of workers. A statement signed by the Korean Employers Federation, the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and three other business groups complained that the labor reform plan is “insufficient to make the labor market more flexible,” and “is not even close to the labor reform that our society needs.” Workers can expect more attacks. “Business will not stop to put effort to make the labor market more flexible,” the statement warns. (11) Resistance is mounting, and a mass mobilization in Seoul is planned for November 14 that is expected to draw as many as 100,000 militant demonstrators. Fifty-three organizations have banded together to organize the action, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the Korean Peasants League, and the National Alliance of Women. Separate rallies will be held in locations throughout Seoul, and then all of the groups will converge for one mass demonstration at Gwanghwamun Plaza. While the immediate impetus for the demonstration is the labor reform plan, the grievances against the conservative government are many. The coalition has issued a wide range of demands around which the demonstration is focused, and the overarching theme is to call for an end to repression and a move to a more people-centered society. (12) Farmers are expected to show up in force, given their anger over the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture points out will “break down market barriers for U.S. exporters.” (13) That will come at the expense of Korean farmers, many of whom can be expected to be driven into bankruptcy. Kim Yeong-ho, chair of the Korean Peasants League, condemns the Park Geun-hye government for having “made permanent a structure of exploitation.” He adds: “They’re even trying to roll back democracy….That’s why we are mobilizing for November 14 – for the workers, farmers, youth and students to expose what’s happening and sound the alarm.” The KCTU has “staked everything in this fight,” says KCTU Chair Han Sang-kyun. If the government proceeds to implement the labor reform, “we are prepared to launch a general strike. And this time, it will not be a one-day strike. We’re talking about stopping production, freight trucks stopping in their tracks, railroad and subway workers on illegal strikes, and paralyzing the country so that the government will feel the outage of the workers. That’s what we’re preparing for.” The struggle is heating up in South Korea, one which the Western corporate media are sure to ignore. But that does not mean we have to follow in their path of disregard. The Korean people are counting on our solidarity in their time of need. Notes. 1) “Rethinking Labor Reform,” Korea Times, August 17, 2015 2) Choonsik Yoo, “In South Korea, Park’s Revamp of Rigid Labor Laws Faces Opposition,” Reuters, September 23, 2015. 3) Kim Bok-soon, “Comparison of Wages and Working Conditions by Size of Enterprise,” Issue Paper, Labor News, No. 160, Korea Labor Institute, August 25, 2015. 4) Statement, “Business Stance on the Labor Reform,” The Korea Employers Federation, The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, The Federation of Korean Industries, The Korean Federation of Small and Medium Business, The Korea International Trade Association, August 31, 2015. 5) “S. Korean Firms’ Cash Reserves Hit Record High,” Korea Herald, February 16, 2015. 6) Samsung, Hyundai Motor Groups Pare Cash Reserves in H1,” Yonhap, September 13, 2015. 7) Michael Herh, “Korean Companies’ Offshore Balances Tripled Over Last 4 Years,” Business Korea, October 1, 2015. 8) Kahyun Yang, “With Jobs Scarce, South Korean Students Remain on Campus,” Reuters, January 5, 2015. 9) Wol-san Liem, “Overview of the Korean Labor Movement: the Current Moment,” Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union. 10) “Ssangyong Labor Union Ordered to Pay Compensation for Strikes,” Yonhap, September 16, 2015. 11) Statement, “Business Stance on the Tripartite Agreement,” The Federation of Korean Industries, The Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry, The Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business, The Korea International Trade Association, the Korea Employers Federation, September 15, 2015. 12) A sampling of demands: Employment and Labor (Stop Retrogressive Labor Market Reform); Agriculture (Stop rice imports, Oppose the TPP); People’s Livelihood/Urban Poor (Abolish the disability ranking system, Stop crackdowns on street vendors); Youth/Students (Open the safes of chaebols to create meaningful jobs for youth); Democracy (Stop state repression, Abolish the National Security Law, Free all prisoners of conscience); Human Rights (Stop government/municipality violation of human rights); Peace and Self-determination (Oppose THAAD deployment om the Korean Peninsula, Improve North-South relations); Sewol (Carry out the salvaging of the Sewol ferry); Environment (Abandon plans for cable car construction in national parks); Public Service (Stop privatization of healthcare, railroad, gas, and water); Chaebol Responsibility (Reclaim chaebol reserve assets to implement a minimum wage of 10,000 won). 13) “Why Trade Promotion Authority is Essential for U.S. Agriculture and the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, April 2014. Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is a columnist for Voice of the People, and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. #TPP #GregoryElich #SouthKorea #globalization #Labor

US comic books published about the Korean War during that conflict represented the war as an opportunity for US boys to become men through bloody, hand-to-hand combat. Korean War comic book representations of Asian men and women fell into a few basic types. The messages in US war comics were constrained by the need to avoid discouraging military recruitment. Download the pdf: pos234_02Rifas_FF

The Guest (Sonnim), Hwang Sok-yong’s 2001 novel, offers a sustained meditation on conditions of possibility for inter-Korean reconciliation. Featuring memories of what happened in Sinchon, a North Korean town where an estimated thirty-five thousand civilians were killed during the early months of the Korean War, the novel explores the relationship between official and unofficial narratives of the Korean War, and between different versions of official histories that have sustained the nationalist logics of Korean division. The novel also moves beyond representation to a performance of reconciliation by turning the narrative into a ritual space in a reinvigorated implementation of Korean funerary tradition. In the process, The Guest both couples and decouples truth and reconciliation. While seeking validity for its version of the Sinchon massacre by offering up its fictional narrative as a truthful revision of official histories, The Guest incessantly undermines the empirical ground for its version of history. What opens up as a result is the gap between cognition and affect, law and lawfulness; reconciliation emerges not as the natural consequence of establishing truth but as an agonizing attempt to close the gap between truth and justice. Where truth may actually hinder the cause of reconciliation, what is the price of arriving at truth without reconciliation, and of implementing reconciliation without truth? Situating The Guest in the context of Hwang Sok-yong’s own commentary, this essay examines the relevance of these questions for contemporary Korea. Download the pdf: pos234_03Ryu_FF

This essay reads the work of Rolando Hinojosa for the ways in which it invites a consideration of the two wars that the United States fought in the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—the US-Mexico War and the Korean War, respectively—as part of a continuous history of US empire. It examines the array of cross-racial identifications operant in his Korean War trilogy—Korean Love Songs, Rites and Witnesses, and The Useless Servants—which attach variously to Japanese and Korean civilians as well as to North Korean and Chinese soldiers. In so doing, this article shows how Hinojosa’s war writings are part of an Orientalism that is deployed in the service of anticolonial and antiracist critique but that also recapitulates aspects of the colonial imaginary. These works also engage in an auto-critique of how certain segments of the Chicana/o population came to be beneficiaries of a liberal Cold War racial dispensation that enabled limited forms of upward mobility for some communities of color. Download the pdf: pos234_04Kim_FF

By Martin Hart-Landsberg | November 30, 2015 from his blog: Reports from the Economic Front Tens of thousands are expected to gather in Seoul on December 5 to protest South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s proposed anti-worker labor market reforms, as well as her pursuit of new free trade agreements and plans for public schools to use a state authored history book. They hope to build on the momentum generated by the November 14 rally, when nearly 100,000 people, mostly farmers, workers, and students, marched in the country’s capital to call for her ouster. The South Korean National Police Agency has banned the upcoming gathering but the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), calling the ban “unconstitutional,” remains committed to the protest.  Workers see the fight to stop the labor market reforms as critical to the future of the South Korean economy. The reforms are designed to make it easier for companies to fire workers and unilaterally restructure work conditions, as well as increase their use of temporary and sub-contracted labor. The South Korean government has responded to the protest movement by cracking down on organizers and protesters. It has come under widespread criticism for its excessive use of force against demonstrators on November 14.  A 69-year old farmer remains in critical condition after being doused with tear gas and water cannons. Since November 14, the government has intensified police raids on labor unions and issued an arrest warrant for the president of the KCTU, Han Sang-gyun, for his role in organizing the protest. The police have surrounded the Jogyesa Buddhist Temple, where Han has sought sanctuary. Han has said he will voluntarily turn himself in to the police if the government will abandon its labor market reform plans. However, if the government refuses to change course, the KCTU vows to launch a general strike. According to Han, “We’re talking about stopping production, freight trucks stopping in their tracks, railroad and subway workers on illegal strikes, and immobilizing the country so that the government will feel the outrage of the workers.” President Park has also come under fire for comments she made likening protesters to Islamic State (IS) terrorists.  At a recent National Assembly meeting to discuss new counterterrorism bills she is reported to have said, “Rallies where protesters wear face masks should be banned. Isn’t that how IS does it? Hiding their faces….”. The South Korean experience is far from unique. With the deepening of corporate-led globalization processes, governments everywhere seek to weaken labor movements and worker protections and restrict options for public education and democratic debate. As a consequence, the KCTU’s efforts to revitalize its own union structures through its first ever direct election for top officers and renewed internal education and anchor a broad coalition of social forces around an alternative social vision deserves widespread support and serious study. #globalization #Labor #SouthKorea

Through an analysis of two recent films, Deann Borshay Liem’s In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee (2010) and Jane Jin Kaisen’s The Woman, the Orphan, and the Tiger (2010), this essay argues that Korean transnational adoption is constituted by militarized and gendered diasporas that mark the ongoing presence of the US military in South Korea. The analysis highlights the ways in which Borshay Liem’s and Kaisen’s films make visible how such diasporas, linked to the larger diaspora produced by the Korean War, unsettle linear narratives of migration, arrival, and settlement. The failures and contradictions of the rescue narrative illuminate how the very problems that transnational adoption putatively resolves—those of displacements wrought by war, global inequality, uneven development, reproductive injustice, severed kinship, and gendered racial hierarchy—loop back in disturbing and unending proliferations. The militarized and gendered diasporas of Korean transnational adoption constitute a particular mode and temporality of migration whose specificities and complexities cannot be captured sufficiently via general tropes of immigration, refugee displacement, and adoption. The essay thus conceptualizes Korean transnational adoption as a militarized diaspora and gestures to the pervasive force of militarization as a logic that structures not only international geopolitical relations but also the intimate scales of adoptee kinships and subjectivity. Moreover, this militarized diaspora is also gendered, revealing a transnational and transgenerational economy of reproductive injustice for Korean women. The essay concludes with an analysis of how a regime of reproductive injustice is a significant and gendered biopolitical effect of the Korean War. Download the pdf: pos234_09Kim_FF

For over two decades, Kim Dong-Choon has written about the history of violence leveled at the population since Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule and partitioned by Soviet and US forces in 1945. His research and theoretical reflections on state violence—committed by US forces, the South Korean police, military, and right-wing groups, as well as by leftist guerillas and the Korean People’s Army—offer unique insight into what he calls the war politics that established and consolidated North and South Korea. Rather than ending the war, the armistice that halted the fighting in 1953 institutionalized this war politics, sustaining not only a near-war situation along the DMZ but also a “state of exception” within both Koreas. In the interview, conducted by Henry Em and Christine Hong in 2012, Kim Dong-Choon explains how the division system, and the war politics that sustains it, function as a bulwark against the consolidation of democracy in South Korea. Download the pdf: pos234_10Em_FF