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Los Angeles, May 29, 2009— A policy brief from the U.S. based Korea Policy Institute is being released just as the recent nuclear test by North Korea and resulting condemnation by the international community demonstrate how rapidly tensions in Northeast Asia can escalate. The U.S. is once again seeking ever tougher sanctions against one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, as North Korea threatens to restart its Yongbyon nuclear reactor. How did this come about and is there any way to pull out of this downward spiral of posturing and brinkmanship? The policy analysis, The Case for a Peace Treaty to End the Korean War, addresses these questions, and includes recommendations for the Obama administration. This policy analysis was developed from the presentations of Korea scholars, policy experts, and community advocates at a U.C. Berkeley conference this past October. It posits that for the past fifty years the primary rationale for sheltering South Korea under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and maintaining troops there has been to deter a potential North Korean invasion. Conditions globally and on the Korean peninsula, however, have changed a great deal, but U.S. policies in dealing with North Korea have not. Further, “It is evident that the U.S. and North Korea never shared a common understanding of the purpose of the Six Party talks,” said Paul Liem, President of the Korea Policy Institute. “Washington regarded them as a means to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear programs, whereas Pyongyang viewed them as a way to normalize relations with the U.S.” Says Liem, in summarizing the brief, “this failure to end hostilities with North Korea stemming from the Korean War is the foremost obstacle to addressing nuclear proliferation by North Korea, ensuring peace and stability on the Korean peninsula, and maintaining long-term U.S. strategic influence in the Northeast Asia region. It’s time to end the Korean War.” The brief concludes with several recommendations for the Obama administration as it continues to develop its Korea policy. Click here for the full report.

Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the former director of the Century Foundation¹s Project on the United States and the Future of Korea. Specializing in South Asia and East Asia for fifty years as a journalist and scholar, he has visited North Korea over ten times and on two occasions, met with the late Kim Il Sung. He is the author of six books on Asian affairs and U.S. relations with Asia, including Korean Endgame: A Strategy For Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, published by Princeton University Press in May 2002. Dr. Harrison serves as an advisory board member of the Korea Policy Institute (KPI). With the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) preparing to launch a satellite and the Obama administration preoccupied with reviving the moribund U.S. economy, KPI caught up with Dr. Harrison on March 27 to gather his assessment of current conditions. [Paul Liem]: Before we talk about current events, I’d like to gather your thoughts on Pyongyang’s outlook on the denuclearization issue when you visited North Korea—last January, was it? [Selig Harrison]: I visited North Korea from January 13 to 17, 2009. [Paul Liem]: In your [February 2009] Washington Post op-ed, you wrote that “Pyongyang is ready to rule out the development of additional nuclear weapons in future negotiations, but when, and whether, it will give up its existing arsenal depends on how relations with Washington evolve.” For this to happen, in their view how would they like to see relations with the U.S. evolve? [Selig Harrison]: Well they would not like the approach that has been defined by the U.S. all along and that has been first denuclearization and then normalized relations. What North Korea is now saying is that normalized relations must come first and then they will consider denuclearization at that time in the light of what the relations are with the U.S.—whether they continue to feel threatened from the U.S. So I think that it’s in the interest of the U.S. and South Korea and Japan to work toward normalized relations with North Korea because that will open up North Korea to more outside influences and strengthen all the pragmatic humane elements in North Korea. Strengthening the pragmatic elements in the leadership will improve the chances that we will get complete denuclearization at some point. [Paul Liem]: Regarding the issue of taking samples at their nuclear facilities do you think this is something that they’re willing to negotiate if conditions do normalize between the two countries or is this forever going to be off the table? [Selig Harrison]: Well no. I think they have outlined in the next phase of negotiations a place for verification—for taking samples from the nuclear waste sites. This issue goes back to 1994 when the U.S. was afraid that before the Agreed Framework North Korea had already accumulated some hidden nuclear material, hidden in nuclear waste sites, and we’ve been trying to get at those sites ever since. What North Korea is saying is that they are prepared for verification of inspections at these nuclear waste sites, but of course that was only on certain conditions. And now the conditions have become stricter. They want in return for access to those waste sites inspections in the south, of U.S. bases in South Korea, and if necessary, South Korean facilities to make sure that there are no nuclear weapons in South Korea. The U.S. of course said in 1991 that it had withdrawn all nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula but North Korea is saying how do we know that? We want reciprocity in inspections. So that’s made things much more difficult. Now, of course, they don’t want to do the inspections themselves in South Korea. What they’re saying is that the six-party denuclearization working group should conduct inspections in accordance with their July 12, 2008 declaration that denuclearization should cover the entire Korean peninsula. So they envisage a six-party working group of some kind coming in and maybe making pro forma investigations in South Korea, in U.S. air bases in South Korea, or maybe they’re more serious about it, we don’t know. But anyway, that is the price they’re now asking, and they also want a declaration, they want the U.S. to make a declaration of all the nuclear weapons it brought into South Korea, what they were and whether they were removed—a detailed declaration just like North Korea has been expected to make of its own nuclear program. So, they imposed these terms for inspections and verification. And it should be noted that the 38 kg of plutonium that they declared in the previous denuclearization negotiations, they told me on my visit to Pyongyang in January, have now been weaponized, already weaponized. So that plutonium, which was originally intended for inspection, can no longer be inspected because it is now military weapons. So all they’re talking about inspecting now is the nuclear waste sites where we fear more plutonium than they have declared may be hidden. [Paul Liem]: From the points of view of the U.S., China and Russia how do you think these three countries would respond or have responded to this idea of reciprocity on inspections throughout the peninsula? [Selig Harrison]: Well, all of the six parties have said in the July 12, 2008 statement, as announced by the Chinese chairman of the working group, that they accepted the principle of denuclearization of the entire of Korean peninsula as being the goal. Therefore I think that they would certainly accept the need to do something consistent with the statement. How much they would want to do, how serious the inspections process in South Korea and of U.S. bases in South Korea would be – a lot would have to be negotiated. But it would be difficult in light of that July 12, 2008 statement not to accept the principle of denuclearization in the entire Korean peninsula. [Paul Liem]: Did you have an opportunity to talk with officials in North Korea about how they see getting beyond this issue of the uranium enrichment program? This has been a real point of contention with the U.S. [Selig Harrison]: Well of course there’s a big problem here. The U.S. still suspects that they might have a secret uranium enrichment program however they completely deny that they’ve ever attempted to ever do any uranium enrichment. And the military in North Korea, I’ve learned on my visits there, thinks it’s a good idea to keep the U.S. guessing because they see this as a deterrent, part of the deterrent. If we think they might have a uranium program, then we’re more likely to be deterred from any attack. Don’t ever forget that North Korea views the danger of a military attack by the U.S. as real. So they think keeping us guessing about uranium is good for their deterrent. However there’s no evidence that they had imported enough significant equipment to put together an actual enrichment program. So when the CIA in 2002 predicted that by mid decade North Korea would have a weapons grade uranium enrichment facility it was really making a wild exaggerated projection and that of course has caused a lot of trouble. And of course the U.S. has backed off from accusing them from having weapons grade facility. The U.S. still demanded an accounting for what the North Koreans had done with the equipment they were known to have imported. We confronted the North Koreans with evidence that they had imported aluminum tubes just like the famous aluminum tubes in Iraq. The North Koreans were forced to answer because there was specific evidence. So they took American inspectors to factories and showed them that the aluminum tubes had been used for non-military, not for nuclear reasons, not for nuclear purposes. But for the other equipment that the U.S. is accusing North Korea of having imported for uranium enrichment, there’s no concrete proof with which to confront them. For example Pakistan has said, President Mushariff said in his memoirs that Pakistan transferred nearly two dozen prototype centrifuges to North Korea. Well, there’s no evidence provided, just a bald assertion, and the North Koreans deny this. So that’s one of the reasons why this issue is still alive. And the U.S. is afraid that if it gets evidence to put in front of North Korea proving that these centrifuges were transferred, then they would have to take sanctions against Pakistan as a nuclear proliferator. But we’re in bed with Pakistan against Al Qaeda. On the denuclearization issue, to be clear what North Korea is offering, they’re now saying that they have weaponized the 38 kg of plutonium that they declared. That’s enough for 4 or 5 weapons. And they said that’s off the table now. They’ve weaponized it already. But they are now offering to draw the line there, and to cap their program at the 4 or 5 nuclear weapons which that plutonium could be used for. So the next stage of the denuclearization negotiations should focus on capping their nuclear arsenal at 4 or 5 weapons, by negotiating the terms of the Yongbyon reactor dismantlement as was envisaged in the previous negotiations. But of course the whole future of the six-party talks are up in the air because we’re threatening sanctions for this satellite launch that’s expected. The North Koreans are saying if you do that, the whole thing is off, we’re no longer bound by the 2005 denuclearization agreement. [Paul Liem]: Do you feel that if the U.S. and North Korea actually concluded a peace and normalized relations and actually denuclearization was proceeding across the entire peninsula as envisioned in the six-party talks, that there is still a possibility North Korea would disarm its nuclear weapons, the 4 or 5 it has produced? [Selig Harrison]: Yes, I believe so. I believe that the development of nuclear weapons was a response to what they considered a threat from the U.S. If we really have normalized relations, they trust us and no longer fear us, and we’re working very close together, I think the more moderate leaders would grow stronger and as part of the process of tradeoffs, in which they get things for being good boys, that they would gradually give them up. [Paul Liem]: Before we talk more about missiles or satellites or whatever it is, I want to ask you about how the new administration’s North Korea policy is evolving. President Obama alluded in his campaign a new willingness to engage bilaterally with adversaries. Now it doesn’t appear on the surface that this approach has really been developing in terms of U.S. – North relations. I was wondering if you have any knowledge on how U.S. policy is developing in this area. [Selig Harrison]: The Obama administration is preoccupied with other things, the financial crisis, Middle East, Iran. And so they really haven’t given much attention yet, in high levels, as to what to do with North Korea, and would just as soon not have this missile, this satellite launch, confronting them making it necessary to adopt policy responses. They haven’t even gotten their team together. They have appointed Stephen Bosworth as the negotiator but they haven’t appointed a new Assistant Secretary for East Asia even though there’s talk of Kurt Campbell in that job. So they don’t really have a full policy process in play. They haven’t given real attention to this. They’re improvising in the face of developments and it’s going to be many months before there’s a real Obama administration North Korea policy. We just have to hope that events don’t close the door on many options – that the satellite issue does not lead to a break in the six-party process. [Paul Liem]: In terms of laying the groundwork for future U.S.-North Korea relations, as you say, the administration appears to be developing its policy as it goes. But the Secretary of State did make some statements last month during her trip to Asia, one which appeared to indicate that the U.S. wanted North Korea to dismantle its programs as a precondition to normalization, and also some comments she made indicating concern for how the health of the North Korean leader might effect prospects for negotiating with the North Koreans. How do you see the effect of these statements on shaping U.S.-North Korea relations at this point? [Selig Harrison]: Well, they certainly reaffirmed that they haven’t acceded to the North Korean idea that normalization should come first. They reaffirmed the standing existing policy that denuclearization should come first. However, I don’t think they’ve closed the door to anything. When I learned last January that they had weaponized their declared plutonium, I raised the question of the missile negotiations reopening. As you know missile negotiations had been taking place in the last days of the Clinton administration. In reply the North Koreans said okay we can have missile negotiations, and there have been some indications from the new administration that it’s interested in such a dialog. The administration has made statements that have basically kept U.S. policy right where it has been. But they haven’t made statements talking about regime change as the Bush administration did. So I would say they’ve kept the door open and we’ll see what happens. And we just have to hope that the satellite launch doesn’t lead to military action by Japan or sanctions in the United Nations and that the North Koreans declare that the six-party process is over. [Paul Liem]: Regarding this satellite or missile launch, why do you think the North Koreas are making this launch at this time and what do you think would be the best way for the administration to respond to this impending launch? [Selig Harrison]: Well the way this is being presented in Japan and in the U.S. in particular is that it is a sort of a military move on the part of North Korea, a very provocative threatening military move. In fact I think the reasons for the launch have very little to do with the potential of a military missile program. I think North Korea is in bad economic shape. One of the main ways for it to get cash is to sell missiles and missile technology. So I think this launch, I think there are 5 reasons they’re doing it. First the launch is kind of an advertisement. There probably will be Syrians and Iranians there watching and they’re hoping to drum up some business. Secondly I think that this is timed in a very interesting way. It’s right on the eve of the Supreme People’s Assembly which is going to be the first time that the Supreme People’s Assembly, the highest body in North Korea, will have been convened in 6 years. And so the launch of the satellite is a big prestigious show for the Kim Jong Il regime. And we say all politics is local. It’s true in North Korea too. The regime will try to bask in the glory of this launch if it comes off. Of course they failed in 2006 and 1998 wasn’t much of a launch. The third reason is that it is an attempt to redeem failures of the unimpressive launches of the past and the people who are running the satellite launch program really have to deliver this time, or I think there are going to be some generals in difficulty in Pyongyang. I think it is true, the 4th reason, that they do want to get the attention of the U.S. This is a way of trying to counter the preoccupation of the U.S. with other foreign policy issues – to remind it that North Korea is there. So there is that element of it. Lastly, something that is generally not noticed is that South Korea has been planning a launch of its own satellite in July, the so-called KSLV Korean Space Launch Vehicle 1 – they spent a billion dollars on it. A satellite launch by North Korea, this month, would be a way to neutralize the prestige impact of South Korea coming up with a very successful launch of its own. Previous South Korean launches have been in connection with European space agency and I guess the U.S. but this time South Korea is trying to do it on its own. And Japan of course has had 25 satellite launches that are very similar to what North Korea is doing. So North Korea’s launch is not really a threatening move at all. And they’ve observed all the rules this time. They’ve notified all the relevant agencies, and have done this by the rules, the same rules that South Korea and Japan observe when they have satellite launches. So I think this picture of the satellite launch as a threatening military move is very misleading. Of course it will demonstrate North Korea’s capabilities to develop a missile program, but considering the military threats that they face, it’s not surprising that they want to have a missile program. [Paul Liem]: I was going back through my records and I noticed that the first time there was some kind of report of the North Koreans entering the space frontier was back in November 2008. They made an announcement to the effect that they were going to launch a satellite. I was wondering was there any response from the administration, the Bush administration, or anything, at that time? Was this viewed as a threat back then or is this something that just became a problem this year? [Selig Harrison]: I don’t think it was taken too seriously. I think however of course the U.S. has from the beginning warned this would be a mistake, a provocative thing to do, and it’s the wrong way to go, and they always warned that there would be sanctions. And that is the great danger. If we go to the United Nations for sanctions and are able to get them enacted, in spite of Chinese efforts to block them, then North Korea has said it will consider the 2005 six-party denuclearization agreement ended. We’d really be back to square one. But I think the Bush administration didn’t get into this in a very serious way. [Paul Liem]: If sanctions were to be on the table at the United Nations in the near future would it come before the Security Council? Or… [Selig Harrison]: Yes, I think so. Well, it depends on the way it’s introduced. [Paul Liem]: At this point if a resolution was put before the Security Council then Russia and China would also have to go along with this? [Selig Harrison]: That is right. [Paul Liem]: The last question I have for you is do you feel that at this point it would be appropriate for the President to get personally involved in this issue either by means of making a public statement or perhaps privately sending a message to the North Koreans? If so what do you think that message should be? [Selig Harrison]: I think the most important thing for President Obama now is to not say anything provocative to North Korea. If he’s not in a position to take a personal initiative by offering to meet the leaders of North Korea or get into these issues in a serious way, I think the best thing to do is not to stir up the waters. At a certain point I would hope that Obama himself would get into the North Korea issue and make overtures to North Korea. But first I think it has to be at the level of the Secretary of State and then at the Presidential level. But we’re way ahead of ourselves because the administration still has to get past this satellite launch, and see how things go. I hope that the U.S. will not push sanctions at the United Nations and not make more than what have so far been rather pro forma statements of alarm about the launch. Then we have to see what’s possible as the year progresses. But I think that the important thing is not to overheat this satellite launch issue and so far it’s been Japan that’s been most provocative I think, in that it has threatened to take military action, hitting the satellite on the launching pad and so forth. [Paul Liem]: Well we’ll be watching the news with great anticipation and hoping that we get past this without any military incidents. I look forward to talking with you about this issue in the near future. [Selig Harrison]: Very good to hear from you. Paul Liem is the President of the Korea Policy Institute.

(This interview was conducted on March 27, 2009. The interview took place in Korean and was translated by the interviewer. For Dr. Dong-Choon Kim’s accompanying paper, click here. For a video of the U.C. Berkeley conference on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, click here. For the announcement of the TRC conference, click here.) South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the first of its kind in northeast Asia. The establishment of the TRC represents a dramatic change from the silence that was imposed by past authoritarian regimes in South Korea about massacres committed by U.S. forces and the South Korean police and military before and during the Korean War. But the four-year mandate of the Commission is set to expire in April 2010, if it is not renewed to continue its important work. The work of the TRC was introduced recently to the American public in a speaking tour organized by the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea to various American college campuses, which included events at Lewis & Clark College, UC Berkeley, UCLA, NYU, Columbia University, and Boston College, culminating in a panel presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago on March 27, 2009. After the panel, I caught up with Professor Dong-Choon Kim, one of the Standing Commissioners of the TRC, to learn about his involvement with the TRC and his reflections upon his work as his term is coming to an end in November of this year. He is also Professor of Sociology at SungKongHoe University in Seoul, Korea, and has authored numerous books on the Korean War and social movements in South Korea. Among them, The Unending Korean War (Korean title: War and Society) has been translated into English, published by Tamal Vista Publications in 2000. [Suzy Kim]: How did you get involved with this kind of work? [Dong-Choon Kim]: The year 2000 was the 50th anniversary of the Korean War and a conference was organized on the theme of war and human rights, which led to legislative activities on behalf of victims of the Korean War. I became the Secretary-General of the non-governmental organization that was organized at this time, the Pan-National Committee for Truth Concerning Civilian Massacres Before and After the Korean War (한국전쟁전후 민간인학살 진상규명 범국민위원회). In February 2004, we submitted legislation to clear the records of those convicted as “leftists” before and during the Korean War, but it failed to pass the National Assembly. However, during his presidential address on the anniversary of Korea’s independence from Japanese colonial rule on August 15, 2004, then President Roh Moo-hyun addressed the need to set the record straight on Korea’s contentious past. This came at a time when the mandate of the Presidential Commission on Suspicious Deaths (대통령소속 의문사 진상규명위원회) investigating the mysterious deaths during the democracy movement of the 1960s through the 1980s was coming to an end, which resulted in the coming together of those interested in shedding light on the mysterious deaths with those investigating civilian massacres during the Korean War through the formation of the Pan-National Committee for the Clarification of the Past (과거청산범 국민위원회). I was working as the Executive Committee Chairperson of this organization when legislation establishing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea was passed on May 3, 2005. I was nominated by President Roh as one of the commissioners, and the Commission was officially established on November 2, 2005. [Suzy Kim]: How has this work with the TRC affected you personally and professionally? [Dong-Choon Kim]: Because there had never been a commission with such a broad mandate instituted by the government to look at its own past mistakes, I really had to start from scratch in terms of setting up guidelines for methods in investigations as well as administrative procedures, which were enormously challenging. While those coming into the commission as civil servants saw the commission as part of the administrative branch because that was where our funding came from, those of us without civil service backgrounds really saw the commission as a special, independent instrument created for the purpose of examining the governments in the past. For many providing oral testimonies, this really is their last chance because they are now quite elderly. Feeling situated at a very historic moment, I have presided over the collection of oral testimonies from approximately 20,000 people, but I’m not so sure yet how best to preserve these materials for the future. [Suzy Kim]: How widely does the South Korean public know about TRC’s work? How are the South Korean people reacting to TRC’s work? [Dong-Choon Kim]: There isn’t much interest in South Korea, especially with the current economic crisis, and our mandate doesn’t include public education. So, there is little funding to publicize and distribute the public reports of the commission. There’s been some media coverage based on our press releases, but generally you don’t see the kind of public rage that we saw with the prosecution of former presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, in 1996, for the Kwangju Massacre. There may be a sense of fatigue among ordinary Koreans about the successive projects of uncovering the past, although such attitudes have been largely instigated by the conservative press. Ideally, there should be documentaries, educational materials, scholarly publications, artistic and cultural productions as a way of coming to terms with the past uncovered by the TRC, but we don’t see that. [Suzy Kim]: Could you tell us about your experience of engaging with the American public during the speaking tour in the US? [Dong-Choon Kim]: I think the tour has been generally quite successful, and the events have been attended very well. As the Korean War itself has been relatively unknown to the public in the U.S., let alone the civilian mass killings during the war, people were generally very surprised by my presentation. [Suzy Kim]: What is the most important message you would like the American public to take away from the work of the TRC? What is the role of the American public, if any? [Dong-Choon Kim]: The TRC is an institution set up by the South Korean government, and therefore makes recommendations to the South Korean government. The TRC has uncovered many cases of civilian massacres committed by American forces during the Korean War, and has urged the South Korean government to address the U.S. government with its findings related to civilian victimization by the U.S. troops. But ultimately, the American government must conduct additional investigations and provide redress concerning such crimes when it receives our recommendation. There was just too much damage to simply dismiss as “collateral damage.” In that sense, the Korean War wasn’t just a “Korean” War but was also an “American” War. In Vietnam, the Vietnam War is called the “American War” and yet the American people don’t recognize this American War as American. The Korean War was the prelude to the Vietnam War, and to the current wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. The American public has a responsibility to have historical awareness of the Korean War to be able to put subsequent conflicts into perspective. The work of our commission may provide a chance for the public in the U.S. to reflect on what the U.S. has done to the Third World in the name of liberty and democratization. [Suzy Kim]: What are the ways in which the investigations of the TRC challenge the main narrative of the Korean War? [Dong-Choon Kim]: The main narrative of the Korean War describes the hostile North Koreans invading the peaceful South in an attempt at a communist take-over with the support of the Soviet Union, thereby prompting a potential Third World War, until the United States came to rescue Korea’s freedom. However, what you see through the detailed and rich cases investigated by the TRC is that practices deployed during the Korean War originated in the [Japanese] colonial period, and were reinstituted by the American occupation in the ensuing Cold War. Summary executions, preventative detentions, peremptory inspections, and martial law were mechanisms used during the colonial period. Although such practices were abolished by law upon liberation, this was only on paper and the practices continued to be used by the military and police under the US occupation. The massacres were not the result of antagonisms between the left and right, but were the result of fostering pawns and agents [among the Korean population], which began under colonial rule. Those who worked with the Japanese colonial police and military became the South Korean police and military, and some of them acted as perpetrators of massacres, in addition to those who fled the North. Anti-communism brought these disparate elements together in common cause as many of those who fled the North became chiefs of police and military personnel in the South hunting down alleged communists. [Suzy Kim]: Most of the emphasis on the TRC’s work seems to be on finding the truth. So, what about reconciliation? How is the TRC pursuing reconciliation? [Dong-Choon Kim]: To be honest, we have not yet been able to devise concrete measures or tools to achieve reconciliation. But reinstating the victims’ honor and performing memorial services for the dead as part of reconciliation can happen only after truth is uncovered. One possibility is that the TRC can provide a forum to bring together the victims and perpetrators once they are identified, and to offer official government apology to the victims and their families. In that way, the confirmation of the truth and the official recognition of the victims may provide the first steps for reconciliation. But true reconciliation can only be reached when perpetrators can provide heartfelt apologies to their victims. [Suzy Kim]: How would you like to see the issue of massacres before and during the Korean War resolved? How should the work of the TRC be continued and concluded? [Dong-Choon Kim]: The primary role of the TRC should remain to verify what really happened at the time of the incidents that have been filed with the commission. Like Chief Joseph says “It does not require many words to speak the truth.” Unfortunately, Korea has not seen this applied often in past years under authoritarian rule. No arbitrarily imposed political agenda should hinder these stories from coming out any longer. The victims and their families have already suffered enough, and we cannot simply keep on veiling them and leaving them out of history. What we do, hopefully, can provide an initial step towards the truthful reconciliation between the victims and perpetrators, thus achieving social justice in the long term, and I hope history will be able to reflect this in the future. Suzy Kim is a Fellow at the Korea Policy Institute. She is currently a visiting professor of history at Boston College. Before joining academia, she worked at MINKAHYUP Human Rights Group as the international secretary in Seoul. She continues her human rights advocacy work as the Korea Country Specialist for Amnesty International USA. Her current research focus is North Korean social history, particularly mass mobilization in everyday village life from 1945 to 1950.

featuring KIM DONG-CHOON Standing Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Korea, Professor of Sociology, and Director of the Human Rights and Peace Center, Sungkonghoe University, South Korea. In 2005, the South Korean National Assembly established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Korea (TRCK) to “reveal the truth behind civilian massacres during the Korean War and human rights abuses during the [South Korean] authoritarian period and the anti-Japanese independence movement”-histories actively suppressed during three decades of U.S.-supported military dictatorships in South Korea. Please join us to learn of recent evidence of U.S. and South Korean responsibility for the massacre of civilians before and during the Korean War as well as the urgent struggle to write truth into Korea’s modern history. 5pm-7pm, Wednesday, April 1, 2009 Heller Lounge, Multicultural Center, MLK, Jr. Student Union, UC Berkeley For a detailed account of the critical historiographical work of South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, please see Kim Dong-Choon and Gavan McCormack’s article, “Grappling with Cold War History: Korea’s Embattled Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” For more information, please contact Christine Hong at trck.berkeley@gmail.com. THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Sponsored by the Korea Policy Institute, the Institute for International Studies, the Human Rights Center, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the Townsend Working Group on Asian Cultural Studies, and Berkeley Teach-in Against America’s Wars.

For Dr. Suzy Kim’s interview of Dong-Choon Kim, click here. For a video of the U.C. Berkeley conference on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, click here. For the announcement of the TRC conference, click here. The Other War: Korean War Massacres More than 2 million people were killed during the Korean War period. The casualties included not only military personnel but also innocent civilians. Few are aware that allied forces massacred hundreds of thousands of South Korean civilians at the dawn of the Korean War on June 25, 1950. The existing academic research and the survivors’ testimonies tell that the mass killings committed by South Korean and United Nations forces occurred before and during the Korean War (1950.6-1953.7). These incidents are categorized into four types. The first category involves summary executions against suspicious civilians and political prisoners suspected of rebelling against or threatening the Republic of Korea (ROK) regime. Under orders of “preventive detention,” authorities arrested the victims shortly after North Korea’s attack.1 Most of the detainees were political prisoners including members of Bodoyeonmang (National Guidance League or NGL), a government-established organization composed of former and converted communists. Although NGL membership was declared voluntary, in actuality, authorities involuntarily registered former communists or anti-government activists to easily monitor their activities and location. Over the course of time, potential membership expanded to include villagers who participated in anti-government organizations. The Bureau of Police would order regional police chiefs to fill a specific quota for NGL membership. These chiefs chose villagers due to their lack of access to information, which made them susceptible targets for membership. Thus, it is likely that this eventually led to a number of NGL members being innocent villagers with no political ideology or ties to anti-government organizations. In 1950, approximately 30,000 political prisoners were imprisoned in South Korea. Many were detained for violating the National Security Law. Most of these prisoners would later “disappear” after the outbreak of war. It is believed that a majority of them were secretly executed along with NGL members from July to August of 1950. The killing of NGL members surpassed other atrocities of the Korean War in its sheer size and brutality. The second category involves the arrest and execution of suspected North Korean collaborators by the ROK police and rightist youth groups. Both North and South Korean forces conducted executions to prevent people from supporting the opposition. As South Korean forces advanced to recapture their territory, they and local rightists would begin eliminating suspected “collaborators” without judicial proceedings. This occurred shortly after retreating North Korean soldiers conducted large-scale massacres as they fled the area. The third category includes killings conducted during ROK counterinsurgency operations against communist guerillas. The victims primarily resided near areas active with guerilla activities in the Southern Mountains. Witnesses residing in the targeted areas described the tactics used as “brutal and devastating.” The ROK employed a three alls policy (kill-all, burn-all, loot-all), which was a scorched earth policy used by the Japanese Imperial forces while fighting against anti-Japanese leftist rebels in China.2 These counterinsurgency atrocities also occurred in North Korean occupied territory. As the ROK police and rightist youth groups followed the U.S. military across the 38th parallel, they encountered people they suspected were communists and collaborators. A typical massacre case occurred in Sinchon (a county located in southern North Korea). North Korea accused American troops of killing 35,380 civilians, but newly released documents disclose that right-wing civilian security police, assisted by a youth group, perpetrated the massacre.3 The fourth category involves civilian and refugee deaths from bombings and shootings by the U.S. combat operations. Under the auspices of “maintaining and restoring international peace,” the U.S. deployed soldiers to the Korean Peninsula after North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. The Eighth U.S. Army, previously stationed in Japan, landed in Korea in July 1950 but proved ill-prepared to repel the communist forces. Due to confusion and panic, American forces killed a number of civilians in the largest single massacre in the No Gun Ri Incident. While some of the victims were left-leaning or sympathetic to North Korea, the majority of them consisted of innocent civilians. The U.S. and South Korean authorities ignored this incident, arguing that any disclosure of information would threaten the ROK’s constitutional order and national security. As a result, No Gun Ri remains a secret even to people who lived through the war. Considering the severity and number of massacres, these incidents may be called “the other war.” In order to prevent similar tragedies from reoccurring in the future and ensure peace on the Korean Peninsula, the truth must be investigated and publicized. A History of Silencing the Bereaved Families and Oppressing the Memories After the student uprising in 1960 toppled the U.S.-supported Rhee Syungman government, bereaved families initiated a series of demonstrations to demand an investigation into mass killings during the war. They established an organization, the National Association of the Bereaved Families of the Korean War Victims, which exhumed and properly buried the victims’ remains in a joint cemetery the members built to honor the dead. In response to an escalating number of petitions from bereaved families, the National Assembly quickly organized the Special Committee on the Fact-Finding of Massacres. However, after the May 16 coup in 1961, the new military government disrupted these efforts by arresting and prosecuting the leaders of the association and demolishing the joint cemetery. These actions were meant to send a clear message: that any person attempting to raise the issue of truth-verification on deaths during the Korean War would be regarded as a communist and considered a threat to the state. For 27 years (1961-1987) under the military dictatorship, all sympathetic discourse on raising awareness on massacres was subject to prosecution. The bereaved families suffered severe discrimination as authorities systematically alienated them from civil society and politics and placed them under constant police and Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) surveillance. The frantic McCarthyism in the U.S. heavily influenced South Korea’s political atmosphere from 1953 onward and resulted in society’s collective amnesia over the mass killings committed by ROK and U.S. troops. Politicians and major media outlets under the authoritarian regime were reluctant to cover or even mention the incidents. This attitude remains today as authorities and the media ignore investigations and the pleas of heartbroken victims. Instead, journalists copy foreign-based news sources, such as the Associated Press‘ story on the No Gun Ri Incident, whenever relevant material surfaces. The Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade never officially commented on the U.S. “No Gun Ri Report,” which argued that the mass killings occurred in the midst of combat operations and the dead were therefore deemed collateral damage. This ignorance led to the widely held view that the South Korean authorities killed the victims three times. First, their lives were taken in the massacres (1948-1953). Second, they were killed again when authorities disregarded their bereaved families’ requests for investigations. Finally, they were killed when their family members were branded as “communists” due to their guilt by association. The systematic alienation of these bereaved families lasted until the late 1980s. Just as the denial of the Holocaust is painful to Holocaust victims and their families, South Korea’s bereaved families suffer a similar pain as the state disavowed the incidents, and the previous authoritarian regimes politically repressed those considered guilty by association. This tactic was effectively used to exclude alleged political opponents and remove the very foundation of their subsistence from modern South Korean society. In this sense, the uniquely formed governing system utilizing “guilt-by-association” under the authoritarian regimes deepened the hurt the victimized families had borne in their hearts. The forced amnesia in such a strong McCarthyesque political atmosphere that grew under the military dictatorships silenced the survivors and the victims’ families from revealing their long untold stories. The political and financial hardships the survivors endured were often considered greater than the pain of actually losing their beloved family members. After half a century, these survivors have yet to completely recover from the trauma and terror of witnessing some of the most brutal acts humanity could inflict upon itself. The inhumane treatment and atrocious trauma the survivors experienced continue to haunt them, and the memories of the events remain deeply etched into their hearts. The prevalent public negligence and silence widely spread throughout the U.S. and South Korea are not just the result of the passage of time but also due to the collective amnesia imposed on society by the state. While scholars and journalists usually raise awareness of such issues like the untold Korean War stories, it is essential that an official institution be given the appropriate authority to investigate, verify these cases and thereby inform the public. This is the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Only after the Commission completes truth-verifications can people begin reinstating the honor of the victims and conducting memorial services for the dead. From Separate Past-Dealing to the Comprehensive Project After the demise of the military regime in 1987, the bereaved families of the Korean War massacres were able to express their repressed grievances. The victims’ families of the Guchang and Jeju April 3 massacres initiated the practice of revealing their suppressed suffering on the platform of political democratization. The Guchang Incident,4 one in a sequence of massacres that occurred during the Korean War, was a rare case. Shortly afterwards, the events surrounding it were disclosed and the military court prosecuted the commanders responsible for the killings. Shin Jung-mok, a National Assembly member representing Guchang, risked his life to reveal the massacre. After Rhee Syngman resigned his position after the April 19, 1960 Student Uprising, the surviving families assembled to expose the facts and identify the perpetrators. Under such democratic conditions, more survivors and family members of Korean War victims began to demand the settlement of the past. They insisted that the government prosecute the perpetrators and investigate the massacres. The National Assembly quickly organized a special committee to probe the incident and later issued a report. They also raised the necessity of enacting a law to comprehensively investigate the incidents and reconcile with the victims’ families and survivors. However, these efforts abruptly ended on May 16, 1961, when the military staged a coup. The National Assembly’s investigation immediately ceased and leading social movement figures were arrested as communist-related agitators. No one has yet assumed the role in arguing for the full clarification of the massacres or responding to the survivors’ suffering. The Jeju April 3 Incident5 of 1948 was also a unique case in terms of the time of the incident shortly before the first general election, the number of victims, and the lasting effect it had on the contemporary political community of Jeju Island. Embedded within a strong collective regional identity, the Jeju people’s sorrow is a popular theme for novels and poems. While the victims’ families initiated the activities to settle the Guchang Incident, intellectuals, activists, and the local media drew attention to the Jeju Incident. The transformation of the political and ideological landscape conditioned by democratization, along with supporters petitioning for reconciliation, emboldened the surviving families to divulge their stories. Scholars and reporters argue that most of the victims of the Jeju Incident were innocent civilians. Despite the opposition of right-wing fundamentalists, the civilian governments of Kim Young-Sam and Kim Dae-Jung finally passed several laws to settle these two unresolved historical cases. The Guchang Special Law was passed in 1996 with the objective of restoring the honor of the victims. This was followed by the Jeju Special Law, the Special Act for Investigating the Jeju April 3 Incident, and Recovering the Honor of Victims (2000). The final law, Recovering the Honor of the Victims, was enacted to investigate the facts and restore the honor of the victims who had long been branded as communists. These two special committees, tasked with the investigation and restoration of the honor of the victims, conduct difficult assignments. According to the Guchang Special Law, the tasks of recovering the victims’ bodies and establishing a memorial building are nearly complete, and the victims’ families are currently demanding reparations. The Jeju committee also finished the investigation and are preparing for the reconciliation project. However, doubt remains as to whether the Jeju committee can succeed in determining the truth of the Jeju Massacres, as well as the death toll and identities of the victims. The most sensitive investigation involved the role of the U.S. military during counterinsurgency operations against rebel forces. While the final report failed to confirm this role, it did conclude that 86% of the 14,373 deaths reported were committed by security forces, including the National Guard, National Police, and rightist groups.6 President Roh Mu-hyun officially apologized for the abuses perpetrated by the previous government and expressed his condolences to the Jeju April 3 victims. The report changed the existing name of the incident, April 3 Jeju Rebellion Incident, to the Jeju April 3 Incident. This change has raised serious disputes over which name should be used. Nonetheless, the South Korean government’s official recognition of the existence of the Jeju April 3 Incident civilian victims is a crucial step on the road of historical settlement of Korean War massacres. The Associated Press’ No Gun Ri report and the release of similar incidents attracted public concern about mass killings by U.S. forces. After the publication of the U.S. Army’s report, President Bill Clinton issued a statement of ‘regret’ for the killing of South Korean refugees, but this failed to satisfy many South Koreans who expected a formal apology. The U.S. military extended a friendly gesture to the victims by offering them one million dollars to erect a monument and a $750,000 scholarship fund. However, they did not offer restitution to the victims. The U.S. regarded these offerings as final compensation before closing the case. There would be no more investigations or offered money. The No Gun Ri Incident victims deemed the U.S. Army report and the presidential statement as insufficient restitution and rejected the offer, which was a symbolic reaction towards the U.S-related killings. The activities of the Jeju April 3 Committee and the No Gun Ri affairs attracted national attention and encouraged the leaders of other bereaved family associations to submit a petition to the National Assembly to settle their grievances. However, they thought it unjust and improper to settle isolated incidents while ignoring hundreds of other cases. Thus, they began demanding the enactment of the Special Act on Unveiling the Truth on the Massacres of Civilians in order to “correct the distorted history.”7 After over half a century, social movements have emerged in response to the outcry of the bereaved families and they have begun to campaign for the restoration of honor to the victims and survivors by rectifying the distorted history that buried the truth. Civil rights activists, sympathetic lawmakers, and the Roh Mu-hyun government concluded that if massacre incidents could be reconciled, then a special law with comprehensive measures should be enacted. After both the public and government approved of this, the Framework Act was drafted and passed. The Petitions 55 Years Later The death of the head of a family brought total ruin to a house. In order to survive, many widows remarried, which resulted in children of the first marriage becoming orphans. A lack of education, property, and social welfare reduced them to the lowest status of South Korean society. Victims and the bereaved families deserve to be informed of the truth of illegal killings and receive official recognition by government or society. The families also deserve sympathy and compensation for their losses. The primary mechanism for the government to initiate past settlement has been the survivors’ memories and the bereaved families’ petitions. The victims’ families’ long persistent demands for truth confirmation and official recognition of victimization culminated in the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and influenced its work. As the collective voice of the bereaved families represents an instrument for South Korean society to confront its tragic past, the primary objective for the bereaved families is to recover their family members’ dignity. The scope of their concern is usually restricted to familial problems. The families’ long period of suffering and estrangement from society prevented them from trusting relationships outside the family. While they desired official recognition of their parents’ illegal execution and government abuse, they struggled with a dilemma: should they demand settlement from the same state that condoned or even ordered the killings? Although the government perpetrated the massacre and discriminated against families, the bereaved families’ only option was to appeal to the same state for grievance settlement. The change of the regime emboldened them to appeal. Since the Commission’s inception, the bereaved families have submitted petitions for truth-verification. After the passing of more than five decades since many of the victims’ executions occurred, the government prepared to receive the petitions of the bereaved families. In some cases, all of the family members were killed in an incident, or the remaining members had either passed away or relocated. Without survivors or witnesses, the exact details of the victimization remain unknown. The over 50-year lapse of time limited the number of petitioners. For many families, it was too late to apply for truth-verification, and this is the reason they did not petition after the Commission announced a request for applications. Although some families were well aware of the Commission’s work, they remained reluctant to apply after remembering the oppression and abuse they suffered under the military government in 1961. This was followed by their subsequent estrangement from society. These traumatic experiences prevented them from submitting a petition. People who reached the high socioeconomic classes in society also refrained from applying based on the fear that such an act and the possible truth-confirmation would fail to yield any result, or in the worst scenario, it could damage their status. For South Koreans, the welfare of the child is most significant and a family would forgo the restoration of dignity through truth-verification due to the threat it poses to the descendants’ happiness. Thus, disadvantaged people among victimized families were usually the ones who petitioned for truth-confirmation. The experience of segregation, ignorance, and suffering led to avoidance or resignation by the victims’ families. This demonstrates the extent of their trauma. It is estimated that the 7,800 applications received by the Commission represent only ten percent of the total number of victims. The Investigation and Confirmation by the Commission The basic questions of the victims’ family members concern the identity of the killer, circumstances, time, and motive for the killing. The Commission must answer questions beyond individual cases and also investigate the second layer of truth — the historical and societal truth that includes the background, cause, situation, perpetrators, mechanism of killing, death toll, identification of the victims, and legal responsibilities of the governments involved. The Commission was assigned the work of answering the bereaved families and South Korean society’s questions regarding past incidents. By verifying the truth of historical events, the Commission fosters reconciliation between the victims and their perpetrators. The Commission is also entitled to offer recommendations to reinstate the honor of the victims, mediate reconciliation between the confessed perpetrators and victims, revise policies in order to prevent similar atrocities being repeated, and establish truth-finding research institutes. Although these duties are critical, the chief task of the Commission is truth-confirmation, and these results are to be published in a bi-annual report. The verification of most petitions filed at the Commission has been a difficult process. This is partially due to the span of time that has passed since the incidents occurred. Despite the Commission’s speculation and careful approach to drawing a draft, it continued to encounter constant doubts as to whether the truth could be verified without a strong authority to investigate the alleged perpetrators. Since most concerned figures and witnesses have already passed away and the related documents have been systematically destroyed or disappeared, it is almost impossible to reconstruct the events from 60 years ago. This does not prevent the Commission from acquiring some crucial testimonies and documents from the government, thus contributing to the reconstruction of the country’s incomplete history. Thorough listening to the bereaved families’ statements proved to be a crucial initial step towards healing. The investigators’ visits to the victims’ families were often the government’s first acknowledgement of the petition. Some of the petitioners confessed that they had not told their families’ tragic stories to anybody, including their children, for more than 50 years. When the Commission issues the final confirmation of the truth regarding the petitioner’s parents, confirming that their innocent parents were killed by the state, they feel a great sense of relief from the burden of their repressed trauma. According to the Commission, the truth is to be decided through deliberation and discussion during the commissioners’ meetings. The Commission is composed of commissioners who are expected to represent the different social sectors of South Korean society. The investigators conduct research on the cases or incidents and submit a final report after finishing the investigation of the petitioners’ statements, witnesses’ testimonies, and related documents. Afterwards, the sub-commission examines the results before transferring it to the Commission. The resolution of the Commission is reached after a series of long discussions and disputes during the meetings. The Commission delivers the final decision, entitled as the truth. Although the verified truth follows an institutional process to ensure objectivity, each party concerned may still reject it. While most petitioners accept it, some dismiss it as incomplete. When the perpetrators are military officials and police officers, they often blame the Commission for tarnishing their honor. In one particular case, a group of extreme rightists filed a lawsuit against the president of the Commission and accused him of betraying the truth and defaming their honor. However, the truth confirmed by the Commission should be valued, because it underwent an objective investigation and deliberation process. Remaining Tasks The Commission may not be the only method in the way of past settlement but its truth-confirmation activities would constitute the cornerstone. The Commission must complete its remaining tasks and achieve a concrete settlement of the past by revealing untold stories, thereby leading to reconciliation. Upon successfully completing its mission, the Commission will assist in building a more unified nation and constitute a role model for other nations that choose to pursue truth-seeking activities. Subsequent measures are to be implemented by the Recommendations Follow-up Board under the Ministry of Public Administration and Security. However, little progress has been made in the establishment of a truth-finding research institute. A specific example of its need concerns 54 cases involving civilian deaths by U.S. Air Force bombings (three incidents). The Commission has issued recommendations including an official state apology a memorial event and measures to compensate the victims through negotiations with the U.S. government. Despite this, both the South Korean and U.S. government8 have failed to reply to the Commission. President Roh Mu-Hyun publicly apologized for the government’s illegal exercise of public power. On January 24, 2008, President Roh expressed the government’s position regarding the settlement of historical issues and offered an official comprehensive apology regarding the illegal exercise of power by past governments. This official apology may mark a significant step for additional subsequent measures that should be taken by the government. The Commission also needs to plan the enshrinement of the victims’ remains and prepare for future exhumation work by instituting applicable regulations or laws and securing the necessary finance and procurement measures. Documentation of investigative records, including biannual reports to the National Assembly and the president and the utilization of these materials, are essential for any future academic research and promotion of the issue. Relevant laws and systems must also be supplemented, and all documented reports from the Commission’s investigations should be systematically categorized, filed, and stored at an archival institute such as the National Archives. The work of the Commission has been focused on these two highly demanded requests from the bereaved families and the civil groups. However, the Commission is still encountering widespread public negligence as a result of the government’s heavy influence on major media outlets. The petitioners are now asking for substantial, visible results of the Commission’s mandates, and the approach to answer those demands remains the duty of South Korean law-makers and society. *This article was originally presented at Boston College at an event sponsored by the Boston College Center for Human Rights & International Justice and co-sponsored by Asian Caucus, Asian Studies Program, Asian American Studies Program, History Department, Korean Students Association, Lynch School of Education, & Theology Department. Sarah Dong-Yi Park assisted in editing this article for KPI. Endnotes

John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and KPI Advisory Board Member, discusses the purpose of U.S. military bases in the Korean peninsula. (Video and transcript courtesy of TRNN.) http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/eKSmiKUVQ3k&fs=1&hl=en&showsearch=0 [Jesse Freeston, TRNN]: In Part 1 of our look at the US military’s network of foreign bases, Miriam Pemberton explained that the US maintains roughly 1,000 bases outside of its borders, excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at a cost to the US taxpayer of approximately $100 billion per year. For a better understanding of these bases and the roles they play, The Real News dug into one such location in South Korea, a country that 25,000 US troops call home. Most of those troops are moving into a brand-new, $13 billion garrison in Pyeongtaek. [John Feffer]: The major base in South Korea is, of course, the Yongsan base in Seoul. And it occupied—you know, it’s a major territory right in the middle of the city. And if you can imagine Central Park suddenly being a military base in New York City—. And there was also the location of a former Japanese military base, which—of course, the Japanese were occupiers of Korea in the first part of the 20th century, so this continuity was not always appreciated by Koreans. This relocation encountered considerable resistance from the inhabitants of Pyeongtaek. It was basically rammed down their throat by both the United States and the South Korean government. They resisted. They did a pretty good job of resisting, but it was very difficult to do so. They got a lot of media attention; again, they got international support; but they were up against some pretty substantial firepower in the United States and the South Korean government. They had a number of arguments. They argued specifically for kind of the environmental and social costs that are associated with a military base in South Korea. So, traditionally in South Korea there have been prostitution, an enormous amount of prostitution around the military bases. There’s the cost of the crimes that are committed by US soldiers, and in Korea those have included murder, rape, theft. There are the environmental costs, and some of those environmental costs are very obvious. I mean, there’s noise pollution from all of these very, very loud jets. There’s the mistakes that jets make when they’re going on bombing runs and the bombs fall on the wrong places. There’s the environmental costs of all the trash and all the chemicals that are produced on a military base. They also made a larger argument with these bases’ cost to the South Korean government. [Freeston]: The South Korean government is providing 90 percent of the $13 billion for the base. ~~~ Camp Humphreys Expansion VOICEOVER: Camp Humphreys is undergoing one of the largest transformations in the history of the Army and is rapidly on its way to becoming the Army’s premiere place to live, work, and play. ~~~ [Freeston]: It is clear from their financial commitment that the South Korean administration wants the US there. But what do the South Korean people think about this? [Feffer]: Public opinion has generally been expressed by the US alliance in general. And it waxes and wanes. I mean, public opinion in South Korea is extraordinarily volatile. So, for instance, at any given point you’ll find a poll that will say that the United States is the greatest threat to peace in the region. This tension between fears of abandonment and fears of embrace with the United States compete in the body politic, as well as in public opinion polls. They’re very upset about many of the things that the United States Army does in Korea. If you ask the question after the two young girls were killed by a US transport vehicle back in 2003, you’re going to get some very strong feelings against the US Army. And at the same time they’re very fearful of US withdrawal—a latent fear of regional instability, not just from North Korea. South Korea fears, just like North Korea fears, Japan and of remilitarizing. And it would prefer the United States to Japan. Latent fears about China as well. [Freeston]: The US-South Korea alliance has been in the spotlight as late, as North Korea prepares to launch a new rocket with the stated purpose of launching a satellite for domestic use. Meanwhile, the leadership of South Korea, Japan, and the US have contended that the launch is actually a test of a new long-range ballistic missile. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited South Korea in February. ~~~ [Clinton]: I commend the people of South Korea and your leaders for your calm resolve and determination in the face of the provocative and unhelpful statements and actions by the North. ~~~ [Freeston]: Since that time, North Korea has gone on to announce that it can no longer guarantee the safety of South Korean commercial flights in its airspace. For its part, North Korea claims it is only responding to what it believes to be the region’s real provocative act, March’s US-led war games, an exercise North Korea has condemned as a rehearsal for invasion. [Feffer]: Every year, the United States brings together its allies, and some observers as well, to essentially prepare for a war scenario. It requires an enormous number of troops from around the region, aircraft carriers bringing in jets, and so on, and they basically run through a variety of scenarios: if war were to break out, how would the United States respond to it? It’s actually rather difficult to coordinate, you know, different armies. I mean, you’re talking about different languages, different cultures, different weaponry. It’s critical, from the Pentagon’s point of view, to hold these exercises in order to actually see what coordination’s like, practically speaking; also to see what the interoperability of these systems are. That takes an enormous amount of support from these military bases. It couldn’t be done without these military bases. The other reason, of course, is to send a message, send a message to our adversaries of our military strength. In a sense, it’s why we bring in the observers in as well. We want the Chinese to see exactly how powerful we are; we want the North Koreans to know exactly how powerful we are. And what we want to demonstrate through our exercises is we have overwhelming power and we have overwhelming conventional power. The problem is it often, these kinds of exercises, achieves the opposite of what we want. (A) Countries who see that say, “Hey, you guys spend more money on the military,” and so we get into that arms race dynamic. Second thing is, if North Korea sees that our conventional forces are so overwhelmingly more powerful than their conventional forces, they say, “Well, we can’t compete. We actually can’t compete.” China might have the idea that it can compete. North Korea can’t, so it says, “Okay, that just reinforces our desire to get a nuclear deterrent and to keep a nuclear deterrent.” DISCLAIMER: Please note that TRNN transcripts are typed from a recording of the program; The Real News Network cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

“If North Korea is genuinely prepared to completely and verifiably eliminate their nuclear weapons program,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said before she departed for Asia, “the Obama administration will be willing to normalize bilateral relations, replace the peninsula’s longstanding armistice agreements with a permanent peace treaty, and assist in meeting the energy and other economic needs of the North Korean people.” Clinton’s acknowledgment of the need to replace the armistice with a permanent peace treaty is a warm welcome to millions of Korean-Americans and Koreans hoping for a peaceful resolution to heightening tensions on the peninsula. During her stop in Japan, however, she appeared to adopt the Bush administration’s In the West, the conventional wisdom is that North Korea engages in “provocative” activity like missile testing in order to blackmail the United States into negotiations. What is forgotten, however, is that in the absence of an ongoing peace dialogue, the status quo between the United States and North Korea is that of two countries at war, held at bay only by a fragile truce. For this reason, North Korea, as well as the United States and South Korea, routinely engage in war exercises and pursue modernization of their military technologies. In fact, the United States has committed to spending $10 billion on base construction in South Korea, and South Korea has begun to increase its military budget annually by 10 percent under its $665 billion Defense Reform 2020 Initiative. For nearly eight years, the Bush administration threatened North Korea with dire consequences for not acquiescing to demands that it disarm its nuclear weapons program before receiving the benefits of U.S. friendship. As a result, not only did the North continue testing its missiles – it also tested a nuclear weapon in 2006. Today, whether the international community likes it or not, North Korea is a nuclear power. But there is an alternative. A decade ago, North Korea agreed to a moratorium on its missile testing, and continued to mothball its plutonium reactor under an earlier agreed framework, as a result of a peace initiative launched during the Clinton administration. In this instance both countries agreed to take the first step toward peace together, not one before the other. The Obama administration has a plateful of domestic and international crises before it. Fortunately, in the case of North Korea, there is a wealth of experience and lessons. The foremost of these is that while the “you disarm first” approach of the Bush administration proved to be disastrous, the “let’s do this together” approach of the Clinton administration achieved positive results. Failure to heed this hard-learned lesson, by an administration that pledged to pursue diplomacy over bluster and war, would be tragic. Denuclearization of North Korea is still possible. But in the absence of a common commitment to peace secured by a permanent peace treaty, it is unlikely to occur. James Laney, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, recently advised: “A peace treaty would provide a baseline for relationships, eliminating the question of the other’s legitimacy and its right to exist. Absent such a peace treaty, every dispute presents afresh the question of the other side’s legitimacy.” Let’s dare to put peace first, for a change.

Since the collapse of the last round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003, Canada and the U.S. have rapidly signed several bilateral trade accords. South Korea, a major Asian economic Social movements in Korea have vigorously opposed the country’s succession into the WTO since the mid-1990s and have actively mobilized in opposition to the more recent bilateral trade initiatives. Opposition from Korean peasant movements to ‘free trade’ policies gained international attention in the September 2003 Cancun meetings when Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae took his own life in protest while holding a sign reading “WTO kills farmers.” Hundreds of thousands participated in street protests in Seoul this past summer to oppose recent changes to U.S.-Korean trade policy that was to allow U.S. beef to re-enter Korean markets. Sale of U.S. beef had been banned in Korea since the discovery of Mad Cow Disease in some U.S. cattle. Recent protests in Korea against U.S. beef imports mark the largest anti-government protests in decades. Opposition to U.S. trade policy in Korea extends past U.S. beef, to the recently negotiated U.S.-Korea bilateral trade deal – after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the largest regional trade agreement signed by the U.S. In December, scuffles broke out at the National Assembly in Korea as opposition politicians attempted to enter a locked-door session of the parliamentary committee on trade discussing the U.S. bilateral deal, which remains extremely controversial in Korea. In parallel with the U.S.-Korea deal, officials from the Conservative government in Canada have been pushing to sign a similar bilateral deal. Labour unions in both countries have opposed the deal, including the Canadian Autoworkers Union (CAW). The CAW stated, “We refuse to enter into a competition with Korean workers for future prosperity. Working people in all countries have the right to job security, fair trade, and economic and social development.” In an attempt to understand the drive from U.S. and Canadian officials to secure bilateral trade deals with Korea, Stefan Christoff spoke with Christine Ahn of Korean Americans for Fair Trade on the bilateral trade accords and grassroots opposition in Korea. Stefan Christoff: Concerning the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and also the Canada-Korea FTA, can you outline how this agreement will impact environmental and labour standards in South Korea, Canada and the U.S.? Christine Ahn: Impacts on working people stemming from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. make it clear that extending similar trade policies to Korea will only create further damage [for] all countries involved. Essentially, economic and trade policy being pushed on Korea through the WTO and the IMF-imposed structural adjustment following the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s have moved Korea from a relatively self-reliant, industrial and agrarian economy to an economy increasingly dependent on exports and international market trends. This economic transformation, led by structural adjustment, broke the backbone of the trade union movement. Today in Korea over 50 per cent of the workforce are now irregular workers. Trade unions in Korea had succeeded in creating a situation in which workers’ rights were beginning to improve in Korea in the early 1990s, whereas for decades under authoritarian regimes workers were seriously oppressed; now again under neo-liberal economic policies, workers’ rights are being seriously undermined. Past experiences of workers throughout North America under NAFTA and the plight of Korean workers under neo-liberal policies make it extremely clear that the Korea-U.S. trade agreement, the second largest U.S. trade deal after NAFTA, must be opposed. Christoff: Can you outline how the U.S.-Korea trade accord would impact different elements of Korean society, for example on the national healthcare system and also on the peasants which have a long history of political mobilization in Korea? Ahn: Pharmaceutical provisions that are included under this U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement are terrible. Korea does not have the best universal health care system but there is a public system intact. Under the U.S. trade agreement the current list of medications that are available to people through public healthcare would be challenged. U.S. pharmaceutical companies have been trying to push for a new pharmaceutical list, which would stack the list with U.S.-patented pharmaceuticals which are so much more expensive than generic pharmaceuticals, putting a major strain on Korea’s healthcare system and ensuring profits for U.S. pharmaceutical companies through Korea’s national healthcare system. Exporting the U.S. model for healthcare is a disastrous idea. In the U.S., there are over 45 million people who do not have healthcare, which is certainly a scenario not to encourage in other countries. Clearly workers’ rights will be detrimentally impacted by this agreement both in North America and in Korea. Under such agreements corporations can simply pick up their operations and move them to other countries that have weaker environmental and labour standards, lower production costs, while [the same companies] have the ability to send their produced goods around the world without paying any tariffs. Only 10 years ago, Korea once was a largely agrarian economy with around 10 million farmers and now there are only around 3.5 million farmers. A mass migration has taken place, people moving from the countryside into the cities, contributing to growing unemployment rates, as fierce competition has also driven down the wages in the country. Also, there is a massive depression of Korea’s rural economy due to the flight to urban centres. This mass internal migration has severely impacted the economy of Korea’s non-urban centres. Under NAFTA, the U.S. ensured that agribusiness was subsidized with hundreds of millions to ‘compete’ with the small-scale South Korean farmers. It is positive that rice is not included in this agreement because in Korea rice farmers make up the largest number of peasants in the country, who would be seriously impacted by imports of cheap rice from the U.S. Under WTO regulations, however, Korea will eventually have to erase the tariffs on imported rice anyway, so even rice farmers will be hit by cheap imports. The Korea-U.S. bilateral trade agreement is worsening the situation for people in Korea and in the U.S. The agreement will eliminate tariffs that protect local industries while granting further rights to corporations to privatize further many social and public industries. Christoff: Can you talk about some of the main issues that people highlighted on the ground in Korea as concerns this agreement? Ahn: A major issue is beef, which isn’t currently included in the agreement, however [it] has been used as a leveraging tool by the U.S. U.S. negotiators are pushing Korea to remove the 2003 ban on U.S. beef imports, imposed after Mad Cow Disease was discovered in the U.S., seriously impacting U.S. beef imports to Korea. During this process there were major education campaigns within Korea and also in Japan, educating the public concerning the potential harm stemming from U.S. beef. As a pre-condition to negotiations surrounding the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, negotiators on the Korean side are being pressured to weaken laws concerning the imports of U.S. beef. Essentially the U.S. has been using the beef issue within the negotiations as an exchange to allow Korean industries to export greater amounts of electronics, conductor chips and automobiles into the U.S. In the U.S. and Canada, autoworker unions are highlighting the major imbalance between the number of automobiles being exported by Korea into the U.S. and the limited number of automobiles that U.S. manufacturers are exporting to Korea; a trade imbalance. Autoworker unions in the U.S. and Canada are saying that these bilateral accords should only be signed if a certain amount of automobile exports to Korea are secured. Actually, on the Korean side there is concern about importing larger numbers of U.S.-manufactured automobiles because generally the engines are less environmentally friendly. So these bilateral agreements are flawed on both sides as they are fundamentally market-driven, agreements that doesn’t prioritize other critical points such as the environment, health or labour standards. People in Korea are very concerned that the U.S. is using this agreement as a wedge to dismantle health, environment and labour laws, and also the national healthcare system. These are real concerns in Korea as opposition to this agreement and are being most strongly pushed by peasants and farmers who have direct, first-hand experience of the impacts of neo-liberal economic policies in Korea. Korean peasants have really galvanized a strong opposition to neo-liberal economic and trade policies within peasant movements in the country, but also throughout the Third World. This opposition was strongly felt in Cancun, Mexico, during the WTO negotiations and again in Hong Kong. Essentially these bilateral accords are viewed by Korean peasants as [leading to] a loss of their dignity and autonomy. Stefan Christoff is a journalist and community organizer. This interview was originally produced for the Fighting FTAs project, an international project that provides a global picture on free trade agreements, and insight into struggles being waged by social movements fighting back. Christine Ahn is a Fellow with the Korea Policy Institute and a staff member of Korean Americans for Fair Trade.

February 13, 2009 The Honorable Hillary Clinton U.S. Department of State 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520 Dear Secretary Clinton: On behalf of the Korea Policy Institute, I congratulate you on your appointment as Secretary of State. Comprised primarily of Korean American scholars, professionals, and peace advocates, the Institute’s mission is to promote friendship between the peoples of the United States and Korea. We are optimistic that under your leadership, the United States will resume its journey on the path towards achieving a lasting peace in Korea. We are delighted that you will soon be traveling to Asia, particularly in light of news that North Korea may be preparing to test a missile and that the Defense Department has indicated that it may shoot it down. This is an unfortunate continuation of the previous eight years of hostility between the United States and North Korea, but it also presents an opportunity to clearly establish a new approach for diffusing such tensions. In this regard we were heartened to read today’s Reuters report of your announcement that the United States is willing to replace the Korean War Armistice with a permanent peace treaty if North Korea is genuinely prepared to eliminate their nuclear weapons program. Mindful of experiences during and since the Clinton administration, it is apparent that diplomacy with North Korea has been most successful when both parties are able to agree to take simultaneous steps towards peace and normalization of relations, and least successful when one party has demanded that the other go first. This is a critical lesson learned over the past eight years and we believe that if our actions are guided by it, the United States and North Korea will indeed achieve their mutual aim of burying swords for ploughshares. The Korea Policy Institute believes that if any progress is to be made in relations between the United States and North Korea, and between South Korea and North Korea, whether on issues of nuclear disarmament, human rights, or economic reform, the Korean War must end. Failure to resolve hostilities stemming from the Korean War has made it impossible to ensure peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. We therefore urge you to spare no effort on your visit to Asia to rally our allies and inspire them to boldly re-engage with North Korea, utilizing all avenues of diplomacy, with all parties concerned, to end the Korean War and bring forth a new era of peace and stability in the Northeast Asia region. In this effort, the Korea Policy Institute (www.kpolicy.org) is at your service. Yours truly, Paul L. Liem President, Korea Policy InstituteCc:Bruce Cumings John Feffer Selig Harrison Martin Hart-Landsberg Karin Lee Gi-Wook Shin Jae-Jung Suh Phil Yun

Last October, I hiked up Bukhan-san outside of Seoul to pay homage to my late parents whose ashes rest in a shrine near the temple my father helped rebuild after the Korean War. While there, I sipped tea with the sunim (monk) who asked why I was visiting Korea. I was in Korea to give a lecture about what the reunification of Korea looks like through Korean American eyes. The monk wanted to know why a Korean American of my generation cared at all about the reunification of a distant land my family and I had left behind. “What do North and South Koreans have in common?” he inquired, to which I reminded him that Koreans in the north and south speak the same language, eat the same food, share thousands of years of history, and are connected by a mountain range that extends from Baekdu-san to Chiri-san. Yet the monk’s question was more about the vast ideological divide separating Koreans, and for many South Koreans and Korean Americans, the cost of reunification is almost always couched in narrow economic terms, i.e. calculations of the economic costs to absorb the impoverished North. But what all the creative accounting often fails to consider is the cost of maintaining division. For one, division means the continued militarization of the Korean peninsula, which has tremendous costs—not just in terms of billions of won and dollars spent on the military—but in the way that fear continues to grip the Korean people and cloud their ability to envision a more just and peaceful society. Militarization of Korea When former President Bill Clinton visited the DMZ in 2003, he described it as the “scariest place on earth.” Along the 151-mile barbed-wire border dividing the North and South are 1.2 million landmines. For more than 60 years, the United States has spent over $2 billion annually to subsidize South Korea’s military, and South Korea has incurred tremendous cost to keep U.S. troops. The United States has committed to spending $10 billion on base construction in South Korea, and South Korea has begun to increase its military budget annually by 10 percent under its $665 billion Defense Reform 2020 Initiative. John Feffer, editor of Foreign Policy In Focus, estimates that spending will go towards purchasing “expensive, high-tech systems, such as new F-15k fighters from Boeing, SM-6 ship to air missiles, and rapid response teams with 2,000 advanced armored vehicles to handle a possible North Korean collapse.” South Korea is also preparing for 2012, when it will assume control of the U.S. Forces in Korea and bear the primary responsibility of the defense against North Korea. Although the 27,000 American troops now in South Korea will be reduced, thousands of American troops and a couple of U.S. military bases, in Pyongtaek and Osan, will remain to secure U.S. interests in the region. The two huge bases in Pyongtaek and Osan are now major listening posts for the U.S. military. Investigative journalist and longtime contributor to The Nation Tim Shorrock, while conducting exhaustive research for his book Spies for Hire on the privatization of U.S. intelligence, uncovered unsavory evidence that the U.S. military bases are eavesdropping on Korean civilian activities. According to Shorrock, Pyongtaek has become a key overseas intelligence outpost for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Although the primary target is the DPRK, U.S. intelligence activities at Pyongtaek and Osan also monitor China, Vietnam, and other countries in Asia. “Scariest of all is their potential power to monitor South Korean communications,” states Shorrock. Shorrock asserts that while the NSA must follow certain legal procedures to spy on Americans inside the United States, there are no restrictions on the NSA’s monitoring of overseas communications. Since 9/11, what is considered a threat has widened to include almost any activity that questions or challenges U.S. dominance. According to Shorrock, “That means that political activity aimed at curbing the buildup at Pyongtaek is very closely monitored. There may be certain restrictions on ROK authorities spying on Korean citizens; but the gloves would be off for U.S. authorities doing that.” In the course of his investigation, Shorrock discovered an article by a U.S. Forces in Korea official on U.S. cooperation with ROK police in monitoring U.S. bases: “It’s an amazingly frank assessment that tells me that the anti-bases movement is being as closely monitored, and probably more so, than Al Qaeda – and basically puts the movement in the same camp as global terrorists.” According to Jae-Jung Suh, professor at Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. military aims to transform into a 21st century global fighting machine, which includes realigning bases and further enmeshing South Korea and Japan into the U.S. military alliance. Not only does increasing the militarization of South Korea intensify military pressure against North Korea, Suh predicts that in the long run, it will exert pressure on Asian allies to fortify their militaries. This new arms race will further punctuate a deepening fault line between the U.S.-Asia alliance. But there are more than economic costs associated with increasing the militarization of Korea. According to Selig Harrison of the Center for International Policy, “The subsidy provided by the U.S. presence enables South Koreans to postpone hard choices concerning how fast and how far to move toward reunification.” In other words, the U.S. military presence enables South Korea to provide a high level of defense against North Korea at a reduced cost. “The withdrawal of U.S. forces would force Seoul to decide whether it should seek the same level of security now provided by the U.S. presence by upgrading defense expenditures,” writes Harrison, “Or whether instead, the goal of accommodation and reunification with the north would be better served by negotiating a mutual reduction of forces with the north.” The Militarization of Korean Civil Society Since division, both Korean governments have used national security concerns to censor ideas that challenge the existing political and economic system. In the south, the National Security Law (NSL), first introduced by Syngman Rhee to quash popular movements and silence progressive dissidents, is still used by the South Korean government to arrest trade union leaders and repress union organizing and strikes. Most recently, several leaders from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions were arrested for their involvement in organizing protests against the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. According to Martin Hart-Landsberg, professor at Lewis and Clark University, “Division of the country continues to offer the government a powerful weapon to use against those seeking change.” In July, the Ministry of National Defense prohibited all branches of the military from reading a list of 23 “seditious books” because they were considered either pro-North Korean, anti-government, anti-U.S., or anti-capitalist. Among the banned books are global best-sellers like Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, written by award-winning Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang. In August, Yonsei University professor Sei-Chul Oh and six others were arrested on charges of violating the NSL because of their involvement in a socialist organization, despite it being critical of North Korea. And during last summer’s massive candlelight vigils initiated by middle-school girls, a group of conservative South Koreans and Korea Americans held placards that read, “Anti-U.S. beef protesters are pro-North.” The division of Korea thus continues to legitimize government efforts in the north and south to suppress opposition on national security grounds. Hart-Landsberg points out that although North Koreans are in need of a new political economy, “it is important to keep in mind that the majority of working people in South Korea are also in need of and want significant transformation of their own system.” Today, 20 percent of South Koreans live in poverty (compared to 9 percent in 1996), and of the workforce, 54 percent are now irregular workers who on average earn half of what regular workers get paid. Growing poverty and inequality in South Korea today are the result of neoliberal policies stemming from trade agreements and structural adjustment loans imposed by the International Monetary Fund following the 1997 financial crisis. But it’s not just the law that represses dissent and stymies change, it’s the Cold War mentality that automatically labels those who fighting for equity, justice, and historical accuracy as a bbalgangi—a Communist. This really hit home for me in the winter of 2006 when I visited my brother-in-law in Seoul following my trip to Pyongtaek where I traveled with an international delegation to bring media attention to courageous elder farmers struggling to keep their land, homes and village from being seized and demolished to accommodate the expansion of the Camp Humphreys military base. In anticipation of my meeting with my brother-in-law, I prepared a slideshow of photographs I had taken during the villagers’ 811th candlelight vigil. After a few photos, my brother-in-law vehemently demanded that I promptly end my slideshow. From his point of view, the Communists had masterminded a scheme to exploit the elderly villagers to siphon more money from the government. He called me naïve and admonished me from being involved with bbalgangis. My heart sank. Conclusion: Now is the Time for Peace Now when I reflect on the Buddhist monk asking me why I care about the reunification of a nation thousands of miles away, I think back to when I stood there in front of the elderly Korean villagers in the barn where they held their 811th consecutive candlelight vigil. I remember introducing myself in my broken Korean and with tears pouring down my face apologizing to them for what the U.S. government was doing to their homes, their livelihoods, their dignity—all in the name of national security. I recently visited the website of the U.S. Army Korea Media Center and was very disheartened to see aerial photographs of the land once tilled by and inhabited by Pyongtaek farmers. The land is now being used to expand the U.S. military base, including the construction of water parks and golf courses to accommodate American military personnel and their families. This is particularly disturbing in light of the fact that the U.S. bears the lion’s share of responsibility for dividing Korea in the first place. Having this responsibility also makes our country especially accountable to help create conditions for reunifying Korea. There are many things we can do in the United States to help this process along. Foremost on this list is to finally end the Korean War by signing a peace treaty with North Korea. In the past decade, South and North Korea have taken bold steps towards reconciliation, and both Russia and China have diplomatic relations with both Koreas. The Bush administration primed the ground for President Obama to sign a peace treaty by removing North Korea from the U.S. terrorist list. Now President Obama is presented with a golden opportunity to finally end the Korean War. Last December in Seoul, James Laney, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea under Clinton delivered a talk where he said, One item should be at the top of the agenda, however, in order to remove all unnecessary obstacles to progress, that is the establishment of a peace treaty to replace the truce that has been in place since 1953. One of the things that have bedeviled all talks until now is the unresolved status of the Korean War. A peace treaty would provide a baseline for relationships, eliminating the question of the other’s legitimacy and its right to exist. Absent such a peace treaty, every dispute presents afresh the question of the other side’s legitimacy. Only with a treaty in place will both sides be relieved of the political demand to see each move as conferring approval or not. After more than half a century, it is time for us to come to terms with existence simply as a fact, and not see it as a concession. This March, the ROK government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be touring the United States and Canada to share the findings of their investigation into the history of mass political executions in South Korea during the Korean War. For the past three years, the Truth Commission has excavated mass gravesites, taken testimony from witnesses and family survivors and pored over police and military files in South Korea and in the United States. They have confirmed that the South Korean government conducted mass political executions of leftists and dissidents, including dozens of children, during the early stages of the Korean War. Declassified documents also confirm that U.S. military officers oversaw at least one killing and another sanctioned a mass political execution. At the Korea Policy Institute conference on reunification at UC Berkeley last fall, Bruce Cumings, the eminent Korea historian and University of Chicago professor spoke of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He said, “Their definition of truth is archival truth, forensic truth, the marks on the skeletons truth, personal or narrative truth, social or dialogue truth, events, healing and restorative truth, and not punishing people at the end of it, which was Nelson Mandela’s [approach]. And [the Truth Commission] said, by pursuing truth this way we reduce the number of lies that can be circulated unchallenged in public discourse.” At the end of his talk, Cumings reminded us, “Truth precedes reconciliation, reconciliation precedes reunification, and we are now luckily at least 10 years in the era of reconciliation.” Cumings is referring to the decade of engagement with the north initiated by former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung, as well as the period in which South Koreans started to openly discuss their own past of oppression. Millions of Koreans and Korean-Americans are invested in the movement for peace and reunification because they want to reunite their own families. Unfortunately for many of them, the process of reconciling the two Koreas may take longer than they have to live. If Cumings is right that truth and reconciliation precedes reunification, then all the pieces seem to be aligned for President Obama to allow the reunification process to unfold between North and South Korea by signing a peace treaty. But it will take political pressure to ensure that peace in Korea gets on President Obama’s agenda by Korean-Americans who must take action to eliminate the costs of maintaining this very expensive division and for lasting peace on the peninsula. Christine Ahn is a Fellow with the Korea Policy Institute.

Last October, I hiked up Bukhan-san outside of Seoul to pay homage to my late parents. Their ashes rest in a shrine near a temple my father helped rebuild after the Korean War. While there, I sipped tea with the sunim (monk) who asked why I was visiting Korea. I explained that I had been invited to give a lecture about what the reunification of Korea looks like through Korean American eyes. The monk wanted to know why I cared about the reunification of a nation my family and I had left behind. I explained that from my vantage point as a woman of Korean descent living in the United States, the costs of the continuing division of Korea were enormous. For over 60 years, the United States has spent over $2 billion annually subsidizing South Korea’s military. Although South Korea no longer lists North Korea as a major military threat, it plans to spend $665 billion on its military by 2020. In 2012, South Korea will assume control of the U.S. Forces in Korea and primary responsibility over North Korea, but thousands of American troops and U.S. military bases in Pyongtaek and Osan will remain to secure U.S. interests in the region. But there are more than economic costs associated with increasing the militarization of Korea. According to Selig Harrison of the Center for International Policy, “The subsidy provided by the U.S. presence enables South Koreans to postpone hard choices concerning how fast and how far to move toward reunification.” In other words, the withdrawal of these troops would force South Korea to decide whether to increase defense expenditures now provided by U.S. forces or invest in reunification. As it stands now, division means the continued militarization of the Korean peninsula and an environment of fear among the Korean people that clouds their ability to envision a more just and peaceful future. Since division, both Korean governments have used national security concerns to censor ideas that challenge the existing political and economic system. In the south, for example, the National Security Law (NSL), first introduced by Syngman Rhee to quash popular movements, is still being used to arrest trade union leaders and repress union organizing and strikes. In July, the Ministry of National Defense prohibited the military from reading a list of “seditious books” considered pro-North Korean, anti-government, anti-U.S. or anti-capitalist, such as the global bestseller Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism written by Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang. In August, Yonsei University professor Oh Sei-Chul and six others were arrested for their involvement in a socialist organization, despite the group’s critical views of North Korea. The United Nation’s Human Rights Council has even recommended abolition of the National Security Law, which marked its 60th anniversary in December. But it’s not just this law that is repressing dissent and styming change. Despite the end of the Cold War, the Cold War mentality still pervades the peninsula. I confronted its legacy in 2006 when I visited my brother-in-law in Seoul following my trip to Pyongtaek where I met courageous villagers struggling to keep their land and homes from being demolished to accommodate the expansion of the Camp Humphries military base. After sharing a few photos, my brother-in-law vehemently demanded that I promptly end my slideshow. He called me naïve for being involved with bbalgangis — Communists — who were exploiting the elderly villagers to siphon more money from the government. Sadly, many of my siblings have echoed similar admonishments of my work to fight for equity, justice and peace. Whether we realize it or not, division has painfully impacted the family of every single Korean American. Yet South and North Korea have taken bold steps toward reconciliation, and Russia and China now have diplomatic ties with both Koreas. Now Americans have a unique responsibility — especially in light of the fact that the United States was primarily responsible for dividing Korea — to help reunify the land and the people. And we can by pressuring President Obama to finally end the Korean War by signing a peace treaty with North Korea. On my way down Bukhan-san, I recalled how my mother, months before she died, shared how happy she was that I was able to see a part of Korea (the north) she never could. Then I thought about how those from her generation — the last to remember one Korea — will soon pass. That’s why our task for reunification is urgent, not just for peace at home and within our families, but also to support Korea’s right to build a democratic, just and peaceful future, reunified. Christine Ahn is a Fellow with the Korea Policy Institute.

Minjog 21, a leading progressive news journal based in South Korea, sponsored a roundtable interview with Thomas Kim, Executive Director of the Korea Policy Institute (KPI), KPI Fellow Christine Ahn, and long-time Korean American scholar-activist Professor Ramsay Liem. The interview was published (in Korean) in Minjog 21’s December issue. Minjog 21: What should we expect from the new administration on Korean peninsular issues within the context of America’s overall approach to Northeast Asia? How important will Korea be? Christine Ahn: According to remarks made by some of our panelists during the [October 10, 2008 Berkeley] conference, including Phil Yun and Karin Lee, North Korea as a U.S. foreign policy priority can range anywhere from being number eight to 40. Although it’s really difficult to gauge how important the Korean peninsula will be, it does look like President-elect Obama wants to continue working within the six-party talks framework and is looking to China to apply pressure, not just on North Korea but on Iran as well. One promising note is that Obama said, “As president, I will work from the very beginning of my term in office to secure the American people and our interests in this vital region. We must work with diligence and determination with our friends and allies to end this dangerous threat and to secure a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula.” Ramsay Liem: I have two comments. To gauge what he is going to do in the short run, we have to see how he handles China. However he develops his policy towards China is going to dictate a lot of what he does in the rest of East Asia including Korea. The other is that he has talked a lot about the Korea FTA and actually sounds tougher on free trade with Korea than the Bush administration. His first priority is going to be the U.S. domestic economy and he will push hard to open Korean and also Chinese markets. He has specifically targeted the Korean auto market. Obama has also said the Bush administration overlooked East Asia and he intends to make it a top priority along with Iraq and Iran. Again, I believe his economic and strategic policy toward Korea will be strongly influenced by his assessment of China as a potential partner but more likely, major competitor. To a lesser extent, this also applies to India. Thomas Kim: There is a general sense in the American foreign policy community that during the Bush Administration the U.S. did not pay sufficient attention to their relationship with various Pacific Rim governments, and that the U.S. lost influence in the region. It’s reasonable to assume that the Obama Administration wants to reassert American hegemony. The number one concern is the relationship with China. Of course, U.S. interests in the Pacific Rim since World War II have centered on developing Japan as a U.S. ally. The issues that most matter to Korea are unlikely to be the top priorities for the Obama Administration. That does not mean, however, that the U.S. won’t pay more attention to Northeast Asia more generally and Korea more specifically. On the FTA, while Obama came out a long time ago against the Korus FTA on the basis that it didn’t sufficiently open up South Korea’s auto markets, should Obama eventually decide to push passage of the FTA, it will be easier for him as a Democratic President facing a Democratic Congress than it would have been for McCain. If the South Korean government is willing to bend yet again and rewrite the terms of the FTA on autos, then the FTA will have a good chance of getting through the U.S. Congress. M21: Will Obama inherit the Bush administration’s North Korea policy? What will be the similarities and the differences? Liem: He is going to follow along the general lines of what the Bush administration has done for the past two years. If anything, he is even more likely than Bush to engage North Korea directly, bilaterally. Not only has he committed himself publicly to a path of negotiation with “enemies,” he has also stated his willingness in principle to send a high level representative of his administration to the DPRK. At the same time, he has voiced the standard line on North Korea’s denuclearization emphasizing the need for full and transparent disclosure and guarantees that North Korea will not engage in nuclear proliferation. Kim: Obama’s North Korea team is less likely than Bush’s team to work under the delusion that North Korea will collapse. Obama’s team will likely have several Clinton Administration officials who went through U.S.-North Korea negotiations from 1998-2000, and most of them walked away believing that the North Koreans were genuine in their desire to have peace with the U.S. So there’s a real opening here, and I expect that Obama will follow through on his campaign promise and engage in direct and meaningful negotiations with the North Korean government, but my concern is that given the lesser priority that North Korea holds for America, that the Obama Administration will delay their efforts and a window of opportunity will close. Ahn: Whenever McCain criticized Obama for his willingness to meet with enemies Obama has snapped right back that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs “only expanded while we refused to talk.” I think we can pretty much count on a pretty radical departure from Bush in terms of talk versus pre-emptive strike, but at the same time I think Obama will maintain a stance on aggressive diplomacy. Let’s not forget that Joe Biden will also be very instrumental in shaping Obama’s policies as the Vice-President. As the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has taken a conciliatory approach to working with Republicans on Korea security issues. Liem: There is some talk that Bill Richardson might become Obama’s Secretary of State. Of course this is only talk but if he does choose someone like Richardson, the prospects for engagement with the DPRK will be more favorable. M21: It seems that Obama wants to have direct engagement between the U.S. and North Korea. What is the prospect for the 6 party talks in the future? Ahn: I just returned from Korea where I participated in a conference where scholars and peace activists from the U.S., South Korea, Japan and China met to discuss how civil society from the six countries could work together to pressure our governments to freeze military spending. Sentiments, especially from the Chinese scholars, were pretty bleak that the talks would continue. People felt like the six party talk were starting to unravel and that there was no political will to reinstate the talks. I’m not entirely sure how taking North Korea off of the terrorist list derails the process, but it certainly puts direct talks between North Korea and the United States on track. Liem: South Korea is pretty upset that the Bush administration has sidestepped them in the latest round of negotiations that led to the recent delisting of North Korea. Ahn: As is Japan. Liem: But you know Japan, I don’t think Obama will cave in to their demands about purported abductees as a precondition for moving forward with the DPRK. Several years ago Japan’s chief negotiator at the 6-way talks, Kenichiro Sase, said publicly that unless there is regime change in North Korea, there is no point in even having talks with them. This is a non-starter. Unless Japan has softened its stance radically, there is no reason to think that Obama will allow Japan to stall the negotiations. Ahn: When I was in Korea, Keiko Nakamura of Peace Depot Japan said that they are quite hopeful that the opposition party, the Democratic Party, will take over power from the Liberal Democratic Party. I understand that Prime Minister Taro Aso has postponed the general elections, but it appears that the Japanese people will vote in a more progressive and peace-oriented leadership, which will definitely alter the political wind. Kim: The early rounds of the six-party talks were worse than useless because the Bush Administration’s goal was specifically to avoid engaging in meaningful diplomacy, and instead sought to develop a coalition for punishment. This is why neoconservatives like John Bolton stated that the 6-party talks failed after the talks started to bear diplomatic fruit—the neoconservatives had failed to accomplish their goal of isolating North Korea. The key to the frequency, tenor and direction of future 6-party talks is the political will of the Obama Administration. Will Obama decide that it wants to eventually transition America into a position as an honest broker on the peninsula? China and Russia both have relations with North and South Korea, but the U.S. still maintains its Cold War hostility toward North Korea even though the U.S. normalized relations with China and Vietnam. If the Obama Administration plays the role of honest broker, then you’ll have Russia, China, and the U.S. swinging their weight within the 6-party talks to establish a regional diplomatic agreement that could undergird the normalization of relations between the U.S. and North Korea. Japan is not going to go along with this unless it’s unavoidable, and the conservative Lee government of South Korea would be similarly unhappy. M21: Do you think it is possible for Obama to visit Pyongyang and normalize the relationship with North Korea during his tenure as President Clinton tried to do? What are the necessary factors (conditions) to make this happen? Kim: The major conceptual failure on the U.S. side has been to negotiate with North Korea within a narrow securitization framework. The U.S. pursues denuclearization (and demilitarization) because of its immediate security concerns, but real progress on demilitarization paradoxically hinges on whether or not the U.S. goes beyond their narrow concerns about nuclear weapons and missiles. The U.S. needs to fully recognize that normalization is both possible and profitable for U.S. interests. So long as the U.S. treats negotiations as only about North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, it won’t matter how much money or aid the U.S. sends to North Korea—you will not have peace. North Korea will still not have achieved its primary goal—a genuine, strategic relationship with the U.S. A relationship with the U.S. would simultaneously help North Korea maneuver with other countries and balance off the threat of China to North Korea. The relationship with America is one that North Korea believes it needs in order to revive its economy and, paradoxically, to maintain its independence. Liem: One thing I would add is that Frank Jannuzi, a senior analyst and staff to Joe Biden, understands that to make real progress in negotiations with the DPRK, you have to go to the top. He said this in a debate with East Asia policy advisers to John McCain. In the same breath he said that under the right conditions Obama would send high-level representatives to North Korea and might even consider going himself. The key, of course, is the “right conditions.” It would take great leadership on Obama’s part to go against the grain of more than a half-century of U.S. hostility toward North Korea to convince Congress and the U.S. public that mutually beneficial normalization with North Korea is possible. At the very least, it would require convincing progress toward verifiable denuclearization of North Korea. It could also mean that the Obama administration has decided that Korea is an essential strategic ally to counter China’s rising power. The question then would be whether or not North Korea and for that matter, South Korea as well, are willing to build an alliance on these terms. Ahn: Obama’s position on North Korea is a very safe one. He has been toeing the line that the goal of U.S. foreign policy with regards to North Korea is the full, permanent and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Even though North Korea has handed over 18,000 pages of documentation to the United States, the U.S. contends that many questions still remain about North Korea’s programs, such as its relationship with Syria. But given how Republicans are portrayed as hawks and Democrats as doves, I’m just not sure if the Democrats will have the courage and spine to fully normalize relations with North Korea. It’s one thing to take North Korea off the terrorist list and another to normalize relations and lift sanctions. Liem: I agree with Christine in this way. It has to do with the whole priority question. I think Obama is going to face unprecedented pressures at home and that his political honeymoon is going to be very short. A lot of what he might want to do in Korea will depend on how much political capital he can raise and maintain at home. Ahn: Another piece in this is the simmering arms race in Northeast Asia. The six countries involved in the 6-party talks account for 65% of the world’s military spending. Since 9/11 the U.S. has increased its military spending by 70% and South Korea also has increased its military spending by 70% since the late 1990s. The financial crisis presents an opportunity to cut the bloated military budget. M21: As you saw during the North Korea’s removal from terrorist list, the resistance and pressure from Japan was immense. What will be the Obama administration’s relationship to Japan should the U.S. proceed with efforts to normalize with North Korea? Liem: On the one the hand the U.S.-Japan relation is the core of U.S. security, economic, and political interests in Asia. The question is whether or not an Obama administration is willing to give up some of that up by investing more in its relationship with both Koreas and ultimately in developing stronger bilateral ties with China. A key signal will be how the administration and the Pentagon proceed with plans to refocus U.S. military objectives in the south from deterrence (of North Korea) to staging for regional conflicts, e.g. with China. Of course the Korean people will have their own say about the major shift in U.S. strategic interests in Korea. Kim: Japan has no obvious investment in seeing the U.S. develop normal relations with North Korea, and clearly the hardliners seeking to build Japan’s military would prefer that the U.S. and North Korea maintain a hostile relationship. Japanese hardliners want to continue to expand their military beyond the “peace constitution” imposed by the U.S. after World War II, and are eventually hoping to possess their own nuclear weapons. The desire to remilitarize Japan is one major reason why conservatives continue to use the abductee issue as a blockade for diplomatic engagement. The Obama Administration will be strongly, uniformly opposed to helping Japan develop its nuclear weapon program, so while the U.S.-Japan relationship will continue to be central to U.S. hegemony, his election means that the possibilities for Japanese nuclearization have narrowed. M21: Since the Lee Myoung Bak administration came to power, talk between North and South Korea has stopped. The South Korean government continues to connect the nuclear issue and bilateral talk. Some experts say that there will be a conflict between South Korea and the U.S. if Obama seeks to directly engage North Korea. What do you think about this? What is your advice to the South Korea government? Ahn: In South Korea there appears to be some concern that the Lee Administration knows no one in the Obama Administration given how conservative the Lee Administration is. Essentially there is already a political rift between the two governments, and the Lee Administration has to get to work. From most accounts, the Lee Administration was very upset that the Bush Administration took North Korea off the terrorism list without any substantive consultation or collaboration with them. But I’ve also heard other accounts that given how unpopular Lee already is, there is a sense in the State Department that what Lee says doesn’t really matter anyway, and that he should already be treated as a lame-duck President who doesn’t have the support of his people. On my recent visit, I got the sense that civil society groups are feeling the repression, whether it’s Lee trying to put pressure on corporations to deny funding to progressive pro-democracy groups or the Yonsei professor who was recently jailed for having a pro-socialist website or the military’s ban on “seditious” books that are anti-capitalist, anti-American, or pro-North. On any index measuring democracy and open societies, South Korea would not rank very high under this President Lee. Liem: The problem is that if Lee maintains the path that he’s on—hard line stance toward the North, failure to stem the tide of domestic economic decline, attacks on labor and progressive civic groups, then I’m not sure that we can have any meaningful advice for his administration. In spite of all the talk of the U.S.-R.O.K. alliance as a historic cornerstone of U.S. interests in East Asia, Lee needs to build a new relationship with the Obama administration. In doing so, he needs to be prepared for an Obama agenda that will pressure Korea to open its markets wider, elevate labor rights and environmental protections, support U.S. led negotiations with North Korea, and accept a realignment of U.S. military forces in the South. Is Lee willing to acquiesce to these pressures to preserve the U.S.-Korea alliance or can he change course and work earnestly to strengthen North-South relations and ultimately Korea’s shared national interests? Kim: The U.S. and South Korea have always had what might charitably be called a senior/junior partner relationship. The inspiring election of America’s first black President in a historically racist country hasn’t changed the structural dynamics of this relationship. The U.S. is still in a position to heavily influence the direction of South Korean government. This was evident when Nixon went to China, and it would be apparent today if Obama goes to Pyongyang. Just as Park Chung Hee suddenly found it in his interest to reach out to Kim Il Sung, so too should Lee Myong Bak find it in his interest to reach out to Kim Jong-Il. And since it appears that Obama will look to engage diplomatically with North Korea, the South Korean government ought to give serious consideration to reaching out first to North Korea rather than waiting for Obama to do so. Waiting until Obama makes the first move takes the initiative away from the Lee Administration, and it poses the risk that South Korea will appear irrelevant if Obama’s engagement policies start to make serious bilateral progress with North Korea. On the flip side, one powerful way that the Obama Administration could influence the Lee Administration to engage North Korea would be to decrease the level of U.S. military subsidies to the South Korean military budget with the eventual goal of phasing them out altogether. U.S. military subsidies to South Korea are a major roadblock for reunification as Selig Harrison among others has pointed out. Ending these subsidies would force the South Korean government to take seriously the challenge of how to get to a permanent peace with North Korea because without U.S. subsidies, South Korea could not maintain its military budget without bankrupting the rest of the government. And with the U.S. in a recession, it’s not obvious why American taxpayers should continue to subsidize the South Korean military as they have for over sixty years, especially if you take into account that the North Koreans have been seeking a peaceful, strategic relationship with the U.S. for about twenty of those years. The South Korean military is hardly weak, having benefited from decades of transfers of American military technology as well, and American military subsidies help maintain and expand South Korea’s military-industrial complex.