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By HOBAK (Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans) | April 5, 2021 Sangsuwon, a project of HOBAK (Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans), was a collaborative 2013 effort to show solidarity and build consciousness around the construction of a naval base on the embattled island of Jeju in South Korea.Though Jeju is an idyllic place, full of life, lush greenery, and wild beauty, its quiet surface belies the intense struggles that its people have endured through conquest, militarism, and a genocidal massacre under the guise of anticommunism. The people of Jeju themselves have pointed out the ways in which history threatens to repeat itself with the installation of a new naval base filled with American battleships and nuclear submarines: because of its strategic location in Asia and the Pacific, it has become a site of increased militarism and hostility towards China. As Koreans in the U.S. diaspora, HOBAK wanted to contribute this humble zine towards the struggle as we built connections with the villagers and activists on the forefront of resisting this base. HOBAK (Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans) is an organizing collective for anti-imperialist Koreans in the diaspora connecting social justice work locally in the Bay Area with international struggles.

By Leon Sigal | April 4, 2021 | Originally published in 38 North The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) reportedly fired two tactical cruise missiles into the contested waters of the West Sea (Yellow Sea) on March 21 in a tit-for-tat response to the just-completed US-South Korea joint military exercises. Pyongyang followed up four days later by test-launching two “new-type tactical guided” ballistic missiles eastward into the East Sea (Sea of Japan).[1] The launches were a stark reminder of what is in store if US-DPRK nuclear diplomacy doesn’t resume soon. The question is how to get to the negotiating table. Both Biden and Kim Need Negotiations In the current political environment, what are the prospects for diplomacy with Pyongyang? President Joseph Biden is pursuing a long-sought US goal of denuclearization of North Korea. Kim Jong Un, for his part, still seems committed to what his father and grandfather wanted ever since the late 1980s: to reduce the North’s dependence on China and hedge against its rise by transforming relations with the United States. The only way for either leader to get what he wants is to resume and sustain negotiations and see how far they can get. If Kim needs talks, why has Pyongyang failed to respond to Washington’s attempt to resume them? It’s doubtful that he has backed away from his forebears’ goal. More likely, he is playing hard to get, waiting for a conclusive sign that Biden is moving away from what North Korea calls “US hostile policy.” What’s behind this reluctance? On New Year’s Day 2018, Kim announced a significant concession—a unilateral moratorium that slowed development of a credible nuclear threat against the continental United States by suspending nuclear weapons tests before the North had a proven thermonuclear device and halting long-range missile test launches before demonstrating an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a reentry vehicle to deliver it.[2] From Pyongyang’s vantage point, Washington has yet to reciprocate. Pressure Is Counterproductive Asked about the administration’s review of North Korea policy during his consultations with Asian allies, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was careful to remain noncommittal: “We’re looking at whether various additional pressure measures could be effective, whether there are diplomatic paths that makes sense.” Kim Jong Un has warned that he no longer feels bound by the self-declared moratorium on nuclear weapons and long-range missile testing, but he has still not resumed such tests. Ratcheting up pressure on him will likely be counterproductive. If he does continue them, the North’s ability to develop, produce and field more and better weapons would only add to its superior leverage. By contrast, US sanctions pressure is increasingly leaky, especially since Beijing, well aware of Kim’s desire to woo Washington, is reluctant to tighten the economic noose. DPRK First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui reiterated Pyongyang’s point of view in her recent statement: We have already declared our stand that no DPRK-U.S. contact and dialogue of any kind can be possible unless the U.S. rolls back its hostile policy towards the DPRK…We will readily react to the sanctions leverage which the U.S. is so much fond of. It had better contemplate what we can do in the face of its continued hostile policy toward us. We already clarified that we will counter the U.S. on the principle of power for power and goodwill for goodwill.[3] What Might Bring Kim to the Table It is not clear what Kim will take as evidence of a change of heart in Washington. The principles of the Singapore Joint Statement have the North Korean leader’s personal imprimatur, making them a useful starting point for considering what steps to take. Those principles need to be reaffirmed by Biden and backed up by concrete measures. Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, recently highlighted the most obvious step: suspension of joint US-South Korea military exercises. The allies just concluded tabletop drills but, blaming COVID-19, held off exercising substantial armed forces in the field. They could commit to withholding all field exercises on the land, offshore, or in the air over Korea for a year—or longer if negotiations are making progress. Whether that would satisfy the North Koreans is not clear. Kim Yo Jong put it this way: “They say that the drill involves no actual maneuvers with its scale and contents drastically ‘reduced’….We have opposed the joint military drills targeting the compatriots but never argued about their scale or form.”[4] Last week’s launch of short-range missiles appears to be a shot across the bow, implying Pyongyang may not tolerate even tabletop exercises on Korean soil. A meaningful step would also be to follow up the Singapore Joint Statement with a pledge to work toward what former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once called “a fundamentally different strategic relationship” with North Korea. That pledge could be underscored in a letter to Kim Jong Un from Biden reiterating the commitment Pompeo made to him in a face-to-face meeting in October 2018: to negotiate an end-of-war declaration, as the starting point of a peace process in Korea. Another possible step might be to pledge to ease some economic sanctions by allowing exemptions from United Nations Security Council sanctions to permit the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Zone or the import of some oil by the North and/or the export of coal or textiles for two years, or as long as negotiations are moving ahead. Communicated in a letter from Biden to Kim, such an initiative would constitute a clear move away from enmity and fitting reciprocity for the North Korean test moratorium, as well as significant inducements to serious and sustained negotiations. While such a dramatic gesture may enjoy a warm embrace from the Moon Jae-in government in Seoul, it would doubtless prove contentious inside the Beltway. Yet, if Biden is to head off an unbounded nuclear breakout in Asia, the audience he needs to convince is, like it or not, in Pyongyang. A bold move would match the courage Biden has demonstrated in his domestic policy. There’s no guarantee that early actions would be seen as enough or whether Kim Jong Un might just demand further concessions. However, putting Biden on a slippery slope toward confrontation instead of negotiating in earnest would jeopardize the negotiations he needs, abandoning the regime’s long-time goal of reconciliation with Washington and leaving it nuclear-armed but politically and economically more dependent than ever on Beijing. Leon V. Sigal is the director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project in New York and the author of Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking and Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea. He was a member of the New York Times Editorial Board from 1985 to 1995. Prior to that he was a professor of government at Wesleyan University from 1974 to 1988, an International Affairs Fellow in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the Department of State in 1979 and special assistant to the director in 1980. He has conducted Track II diplomacy with officials from North and South Korea off and on for thirty years. [1] See also: “New-type tactical guided missiles test-fired,” Voice of Korea, March 26, 2021. [2] “Kim Jong Un Makes New Year Address,” KCNA, January 1, 2018. [3] “Statement of First Vice Foreign Minister of DPRK,” KCNA, March 17, 2021. Emphasis added. [4] “It Will Be Hard to See Again Spring Days Three Years Ago,” KCNA, March 16, 2021.

This interview will also be published in Minjog 21 here. [Paul Liem]: Mr. Sigal, several weeks have passed since North Korea conducted its second nuclear test since 2006 and declared that it would consider sanctions by the United Nations to be an act of war. What do you think are the issues being discussed at the Security Council and what do you think we can expect? [Leon Sigal]: Well, I think there are a number of sanctions that the U.S., Japan and South Korea are seeking and a number of provisions to make lawful, acts that otherwise would not be. A security council resolution creates new international law. I think the most important bone of contention is whether to legalize stopping ships at sea for the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and aircraft with respect to just North Korea, that is to say, deterring cargo to and from North Korea, that might be weapons-related. As you know, Resolution 1718 partially legitimated PSI but it said — it was a phrase stuck in, I suspect, by the Chinese — that said “consistent with international law”, and since stopping ships at sea is not consistent with international law under most circumstances, that was a significant loophole. I think the Americans and Japanese and others are trying to close that loophole and I’m not sure the Chinese are going to go along with it. So I think that’s the main bone of contention. After all, stopping ships at sea was the reason why the United States once went to war with Great Britain. The right of free passage, freedom of the seas as we used to call it here in America, is a pretty big issue. If we are going to stop a North Korean flag vessel or even a foreign vessel carrying North Korean things anywhere near North Korea, there’s a risk of a fire fight. And the North in its rhetorical way has called this the equivalent of a declaration of war and legally they’re correct unless the Security Council says otherwise, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to war. Stopping ships on the high seas is a very sensitive issue and my view is that it probably goes too far. I’m not sure it makes sense to do that. I think a more sensible way of doing things is, if anybody has suspicions about a freighter that is carrying illicit cargo, like drugs, when it pulls into port, the country in which the port is located has a right to inspect the cargo. Now if the Security Council calls North Korean missiles and missile components and things used by North Korea to make missiles or nuclear weapons illicit cargo, and authorizes boarding and seizing it, that would set a new peacetime precedent. I don’t think that’s quite as sensitive as stopping a ship at sea. And so that may be what the Chinese are willing to do, but that still has to be legitimated by Security Council resolution to make it fully lawful. That’s what we’re seeking — and requiring states to report what they’re doing to implement this because the feeling was nobody really implemented the sanctions under resolution 1718. Now the additional provision that I think we may be seeking — and here, I doubt if we’re going to get it, and I have some real reservations — are the financial sanctions, that is to say, attempts to shut down all North Korean hard currency accounts, as we did in the 2005-06 period. The North Koreans can’t borrow funds; nobody will lend to them so if they have to conduct ordinary trade, they have to do it in hard currency. To do so they need bank accounts, so that anybody selling the North Koreans something needs to access a bank account in order to get their money. It’s not like most normal commercial interactions. What the US Treasury did under a special provisions of the Anti-Terrorist Act, Section 301, in effect, was to frighten banks out of doing business with North Korea by saying they would not be able to have corresponding relations with U.S. financial institutions. There isn’t a bank in the world that could live without doing business with U.S. financial institutions so a lot of banks began refusing to do transactions for the North Korean accounts and that was a temporary problem for the North Koreans. The North got around it so that it didn’t really impact their trade adversely, but the North Koreans understood this to be an attempt at regime change and refused to go back to six-party talks, until the US negotiated with them bilaterally to remove the “financial measures” as they were euphemistically called. And when we refused to do that, they proceeded to test missiles on July 4th our time, July 5th Korean time, in 2006 and then conducted the nuclear test. Within three weeks of the nuclear test, Bush sends US negotiator Christopher Hill to negotiate with Kim Gae Gwan and they reach an agreement to bilateral discussions on ending the sanctions and the illicit activities. So this is a very important precedent for doing the same silly and somewhat dangerous thing again because the North is likely to react in pretty much the same way. This is not a way to stop the North Koreans from doing missile or nuclear tests, never mind making more plutonium, which is the next step they’re likely to take. This is a way to make sure that’s exactly what they do as opposed to stop doing, so I have a lot of trouble with a freeze on hard currency accounts that is not carefully tailored and I suspect the Chinese and Russians have trouble with that, too. [Paul Liem]: The New York Times reported this morning that the administration is implying to China that if China does not go along with these tougher sanctions for searching ships on the high seas and financial sanctions, that it may result in a higher U.S. military presence in the area as well as a nuclear arms race in that region. What do you think the United States is alluding to, and what are the prospects that China will go along with the sanctions the U.S. is recommending? [Leon Sigal]: Well, I think we need to separate what we’re saying to China from what may or not happen. It’s long been a U.S. message to China — Colin Powell told them the same thing back in 2003 — when we want them to do something like sanctions or pressure the North Koreans to make them more pliable. We say, “If you don’t do this, the Japanese and the South Koreans may go nuclear down the road; you don’t want that so you better do this.” The Chinese are well aware of that possibility, which is precisely why I don’t think they were not at all happy with the North Korean nuclear and missile tests. But it’s quite another thing for the Chinese to conclude that the only way to fix this is a little bit more sanctions. I think the Chinese position is that while they’re prepared to go along with some sanctions, the only way to fix this problem is to negotiate in good faith and this time, carry out our commitments, because the Chinese know, that it wasn’t just the North Koreans that reneged on past agreements. We often did so first. And so I think the Chinese view is, we recognize the danger of an arms race in Asia but sanctions alone won’t work with North Korea. In any case, the Chinese are not about to support stringent enough sanctions to bring down the regime in Pyongyang, which is what some people want. As far as increased U.S. presence in the region, I’m not sure, I think Sanger got that story somewhat inflated. I think that even if we do negotiate and I surely hope we do, because that is the only way out , negotiations are likely to be quite prolonged before we get to the point of getting rid of the nuclear weapons or nuclear material in North Korea. In that interim period, the United States is going to take steps to reassure its allies, because we don’t want the Japanese and the South Koreans thinking about acquiring their own nuclear weapons. We all understand that South Korea sought nuclear weapons in the past and that it wouldn’t take the Japanese very long to do that if they chose to. There’s no sign of Japan going nuclear right now, although historically what’s happened is every time the Japanese thought we were not taking care of their security needs by negotiating seriously with the North Koreans, we began to hear talk among center-right politicians in Japan that maybe they ought to reconsider the nuclear issue. It was a way to prod the United States and China to get serious about dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program, nothing more than that. But further out on the right wing in Japan, there are people who actually want to have nuclear weapons and if the right wing grows in strength, there will be a real problem. I think the Chinese are well aware that there is a problem, but I don’t think it’s the way to get the Chinese to do something they don’t think will work, which is to do sanctions. The only way out is to negotiate with the North Koreans. [Paul Liem]: In terms of future negotiations, President Obama himself stated very strongly in effect that, he will not go down the path of previous Clinton and Bush administrations by giving into what he describes as provocative behavior when North Korea breaks its promises. And so it doesn’t sound like he’s ready to negotiate yet, but I’m just wondering, what lessons do you think we should learn from the collapse of the previous agreements? [Leon Sigal]: I think the lesson is just the opposite of what seems to be his rhetoric. The United States did not live up to the Agreed Framework. We don’t know whether the North Koreans would have lived up to it because we reneged first. In the course of ’94-97 period, we were very slow to implement our commitments while the North did freeze its plutonium program, which was the only way it had to make nuclear weapons at that time or indeed even today. The North then retaliated in a number of ways for that renege. I wish they hadn’t, but they started to acquire the means to enrich uranium starting in late ’97 or early 98, they tested a Taepodong-1 missile in August 1998 and they began talking to Syria, not doing things, but talking about helping Syria construct a reactor. Then Bush comes in and tears up the Agreed Framework after confronting the North over the uranium enrichment issue and refusing the North’s offer to negotiate. The North then restarts its plutonium program, reprocesses the spent fuel removed from the reactor in 1994 and extract 5-6 bombs’ worth of plutonium. And so again, clearly both sides weren’t living up to the agreement, but timing matters and the timing’s a little funny if what you want to do is say the North Koreans were the sole offenders; it is not clear that’s true. Now, the lesson I draw from this is we’ve got to negotiate seriously to see whether the North Koreans will actually stop making plutonium, stop testing and improving missiles, and be willing to give up their weapons. And you do not do that by reneging on your commitments. If the North does not live up to its commitments, then you are not obliged to, but you shouldn’t be the first to renege. So all this rhetoric about North Korea cheating is based on a fundamentally false history, which is a troubling history. My view is, we don’t know if things have changed in North Korea and how far we can get down the denuclearization road, but we’ve got to find out, and the only way to find out is to negotiate, keep our end of the deal and see if they do. Any other option is not going to work. My hope is that some of the chest-thumping in Washington and Pyongyang is rhetorical excess and that behind the scenes some smart people know that sooner or later, we have to get back to the negotiating table and see how far we can get. But right now there’s not a lot of evidence for this proposition, but we’ll see. [Paul Liem]: Do you feel that the Obama administration had any alternatives in the manner that it chose to respond to North Korea’s satellite launch? [Leon Sigal]: When the Obama administration came in, it did not undo Bush’s renege of the October 2007 six-party agreement, under a lot of pressure from Japan and South Korea who were really enthusiastic about reneging on the October 2007 deal. And so in November of last year, the Bush administration tells Pyongyang, “We and the South Koreans and the Japanese are not going to give you any energy aid unless you give us a written verification agreement.” Well, there was no provision for verification in the October 2007 second phase implementation accord. That was the renege. The Obama administration comes in and doesn’t change the policy, in part because they wanted to improve relations with their allies, in part because they did not have time to do a policy review before the North Koreans, in retaliation for the renege, began preparations in February to test Taepodong-2 technology in the guise of putting a satellite into orbit. So the obvious thing to do is to try to send somebody to negotiate with the North Koreans and get them to call off the missile test by saying, “OK, we’re going to adhere to the October agreement and offer to move beyond it.” [Paul Liem]: I recall reading in the papers that the North was refusing to meet with U.S. officials. Can you elaborate? [Leon Sigal]: But nobody was allowed to go to Pyongyang. It’s a bit of a myth that the North turned down a visit by Ambassador Stephen Bosworth. The North was told he could not come unless they called over the test launch. I don’t know if we could’ve turned the North around at that point, but it was worth a try. [Paul Liem]: That is something that we really didn’t hear about. [Leon Sigal]: In any case I think there’s good reason to think that the North Koreans had already decided they were going to retaliate for the Bush renege, and they didn’t see any fundamental policy change by the Obama administration. I know many people were hoping, and I surely was hoping, that Obama would immediately turn around and get serious about negotiating, but it takes a new administration time to get confirmed and do a policy review and the new administration had plenty on their plate besides North Korea. Bosworth didn’t come into the job until April and we still don’t even have an Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia confirmed. These things take time. And so they got caught in a line shift. But I also think other people in the administration did not believe in the possibility of negotiating with the North and were not prepared to take the political risk of trying. I don’t know where they get this belief, but I don’t think you do things on faith, I think you find out whether negotiations will work by negotiating. But in any case, that’s where we are. Now we’ve adopted this sort of behavior that was standard in the administrations of George H.W. Bush, Clinton and certainly George W. Bush of saying, “The North has violated some agreement. We’re going to punish them.” We’ve had twenty years of the crime and punishment approach and it’s never succeeded. The way to deal with North Korea is to address their security concerns in a serious way and it’s only when we do that that we have a chance of rolling back its nuclear and missile programs. It may not work but it’s time we tried it in a sustained way. [Paul Liem]: There’s one theory I just wanted you to comment on which is the idea that the North Koreans are restarting their missile testing, and particularly the testing of the nuclear device, in order to shore up support for a possible leadership succession. [Leon Sigal]: I think it’s a preposterous thing. Nobody can even tell you a coherent story along those lines that makes sense, never mind provide evidence for that proposition. We know nothing to suggest that Kim Jong Il isn’t fully in charge. He will choose his successor if he hasn’t already done so. He is not beholden to the military; he tells them what to do. He had a nuclear weapon to test — the first test didn’t quite work. He had missiles to test. The “why” they did it, is probably because he never really believed that the Bush administration had turned around and was prepared to live with North Korea and drop what they call the hostile policy. By the summer of 2008 we began to back away from the October 2007 six-party agreement and gave him the pretext to test. After eight years they weren’t going to sit around and wait. They had a strategy which said on the one hand if you turn around and no longer treat us like the enemy, we won’t feel threatened, we can get rid of our nukes. On the other hand, if you don’t do that, we need deterrents and we’re going to go make nukes and missiles. Maybe they have now decided to embrace the position that they’re going to make nukes and missiles no matter what we say or do, but I don’t think we know that yet. All the talk about North Korean internal politics, about which we know almost nothing, driving decisions in Pyongyang sounded to me like a lot of people were saying, “Well, God, we don’t want to say we here in Washington, Tokyo and Seoul prompted the crisis, that we had anything to do with this. Let’s just blame it on something that nobody knows anything about, which is the internal politics in Pyongyang.” Some people were even alleging he’s really insecure on his throne and his successor is even less secure and he has to appease the army or he’s no longer in charge. There’s no evidence I’ve heard to support that. It could be true, but there’s no evidence for it. You’ve got to know more about what’s going on inside North Korea than anybody outside the inner circle in Pyongyang really knows. [Paul Liem]: Caught up in the midst of this posturing by all sides has been the fate of the two U.S. journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling. They have been sentenced, just today, to twelve years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korea and allegedly engaging in hostile acts and according to Reuters, the sentence follows Secretary of State Clinton’s warning yesterday that the U.S. was considering putting North Korea back on its list of states that sponsor terrorism. What do you make of the sentencing, and what do you think are the prospects of securing the release of these individuals and what does it mean to put North Korea back on the terrorist list? [Leon Sigal]: Let’s just separate out the state sponsors of terrorism list issue. That doesn’t have anything to do with the women. That was not a terrorist act; I know of no evidence of recent terrorist acts by North Korea nor have I heard of anybody making such an allegation credibly. Under U.S. law, they have to commit some new acts of terrorism to go back on the list. Actually, Hillary Clinton said something more careful – that we are just looking to see whether they did. Of course, the Aso government has been pushing us. They hated that Bush de-listed them and they know relisting them would impede negotiations. It is not the case, however, that the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea is covered under U.S. law and there are no new acts of terrorism that I know of or that anybody’s suggested so I see no basis for putting them back on the list of terrorist states. That would be tampering with U.S. law. I would hope this administration doesn’t do that, we already had an administration that did enough of that. With respect to the women, we don’t know all the details of what they did, but clearly, there’s some suggestion that they wanted to cross the border and that was a rather foolhardy thing to do. I would hope that the North Koreans would understand that these are not people you would want to hold onto, and I would hope we get negotiations going to secure their release soon, as we’ve done in past instances over the last ten, fifteen years. The really interesting thing is whether we can seize this as an opportunity to begin negotiations with the North Koreans, sending somebody who can reach officials at a higher level, ideally Kim Jong Il himself, and start to work our way out of the current jam over the nuclear and missile issues. But in any case, I would hope that we are quietly working the issue to get these two women out. You don’t want them to spend any time in any labor camp in North Korea. So far there’s no sign that they’ve been mistreated. Labor camp’s just not a place for anyone to be. [Paul Liem]: The Obama administration has stated on a number of occasions that it will not tolerate a nuclear North Korea, or North Korea as a nuclear state. Can you comment on what it means to be a nuclear state? Is this what North Korea is driving at and how might this affect negotiations between the two countries down the road? [Leon Sigal]: The practical fact is, if the second test worked, and we do not know that for sure yet, then North Korea is a country with nuclear weapons. It is quite another thing to say we accept the nuclear weapons status of North Korea or we refer legally to North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. “Nuclear weapons state” has a specific meaning under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. There are only five lawful nuclear weapons states. They are the “Permanent-5,” the U.S., Russia, China, UK and France. That’s what the treaty says. We have not called India a nuclear weapons state nor have we called Israel a nuclear weapons state even though they have long had nuclear weapons. We will not call nor should we call North Korea a nuclear weapons state or recognize it as such. The issue here is can we get a negotiation going that will at the end, negotiate away North Korea’s nuclear weapons? I do not know whether that will work. Nobody does. Many people seem to know the answer to that question, I don’t know how they know. Has Kim Jong Il told them that? I think it should be the objective of the United States to negotiate with North Korea to eliminate any nuclear weapons and fissile material it has. We should not give up on that objective. It’s going to be a long process. We should get started doing it now and we should keep our commitments. That’s the way I look at this problem. [Paul Liem]: In negotiations with the United States, should they occur, what do you think it is that North Korea is looking for down the road, or immediately, or in any case? [Leon Sigal]: Well, we know what they’ve been looking for in the past, which is they want concrete evidence, not just words on paper, that we are moving away from enmity — what they call hostile policy. And that can take many many forms. They have specified some of those forms over time. They’ve talked about establishing full diplomatic relations, they’ve talked about…the Agreed Framework talks about moving toward “full political and economic normalization,” meaning we end all sanctions and have normal diplomatic relations. Other times they’ve talked about having a strategic relationship with us — wanting us to be their ally. They want a peace treaty with us and South Korea to end the Korean War. So these are all pieces of how you reassure North Korea that you’re no longer treating them as an enemy and it seems to me that you do that in a set of reciprocal steps depending on which they want first in return for their taking steps to get rid of their nuclear and missile programs and weapons. That’s the basic structure of the negotiation. Have they (North Korea) changed their view on this? Some people say they have. The answer is, we’ve got no conclusive evidence of that, and I’ve got little hint of that in conversations with their diplomats but maybe they have. I think we have to find out. It’s no good that I or some other American talked to them; it’s got to be U.S. officials who negotiate with them. It’s got to be government to government. Let’s see what it is they want and whether we can give it to them and what it is they’re prepared to give up in return; that’s the way to negotiate. We seem to have a problem negotiating. We negotiate with some of the most awful people in the world, but we have trouble doing it with North Korea. They’re not nice. OK, granted. But if that’s what they want, we could possibly get somewhere on denuclearization, let’s see. [Paul Liem]: Well, let’s hope all the parties get back to the table soon. [Leon Sigal]: The sooner, the better. [Paul Liem]: Mr. Sigal, I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts on these issues and I hope we have the opportunity to continue this dialog as the situation develops. Many thanks, again. [Leon Sigal]: Yes, let’s hope we have made some headway turning things around by then. *Paul Liem is the President of the Korea Policy Institute. Sarah Park transcribed the interview.

An Interview with Anti-base Activist Choi Sung-hee on the Gangjeong and Jeju Struggle for Peace By Christine Hong | April 2, 2021 | Originally published in The Abusable Past Figure 1. Choi Sung-hee in the Bijarim-ro forest, 2020. If the second airport, which people suspect to be an air force base, is built in eastern Jeju, this forest will be greatly destroyed, as the adjacent road, which would lead to the airport, will be expanded. Photo by Oh Young-chul. CH: Sung-hee, you were at the heart of the International Solidarity Committee, tirelessly calling attention to the plight of the people of Gangjeong and their resistance to the remilitarization of Jeju. You first raised the alarm in the context of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and were instrumental to galvanizing a broad international movement against the naval base in Jeju. Could you speak about why you, as someone not native to Jeju, became involved in this struggle? SC: Initially I had no knowledge about Jeju Island, even about April Third. Around 2007, I learned that Hyun Ae-ja, a National Assembly representative then in Jeju, was conducting a hunger strike against the Jeju navy base plan. The story gripped my attention because at the time, I was very interested in missile defense, Korean division, and war and peace issues more generally. I did some research and I felt that it was my struggle. CH: You’ve just touched on two key instances of foreign—specifically U.S.—power and South Korean state power seeking to crush dissent and resistance in Jeju. I think it’s safe to say that few people in the United States know anything about Jeju, even though U.S. militarism, from the Cold War to now, has long impacted the island—its people, their lifeways, their relations not just to each other but also to the land, ocean, and all forms of life. Can you give us a fuller sense of this devastating “hidden history” between the United States and Jeju, both past and present? SC: People in the United States are perhaps familiar with the April Third uprising and massacre, whose official period started on March 1, 1947 and ended on September 21, 1954, after the Korean War. At the time, Korea had just been liberated from Japanese imperialism but was under the authority of the U.S. Army Military Government (USAMGIK). The U.S. Army Military Government dominated Korea, including Jeju, for a three-year period between 1945 to 1948. During that time, the U.S. Army Military Government ordered the killing of Jeju islanders, labeling Jeju a “Red Island,” a communist island, because the people resisted the U.S. policy of a separated Korea. The Jeju people wanted Korea to be independent. This is the background to the uprising of the Jeju people and their massacre by the U.S. military government and its puppet, the South Korean government. However, even before the liberation from Japan, people in Jeju could see U.S. bombers flying over Jeju Island. It is very important to remember that Jeju is located in a very strategic spot for any imperial power in the Pacific. Jeju was the only foreign land that Japan heavily militarized in its final confrontation against the United States and its allies during Second World War. For this reason, the U.S. military flew bombers over Jeju Island in its late-war face-off against Japan. Many Jeju islanders still remember the noise of the U.S. bombers flying overhead. After April Third, even though Jeju was a refuge for orphans during the 1950-53 Korean War, the United States operationalized former Japanese bases, including a radar base. After the Korean War, it still used Camp MacNab as a training ground and a resort facility. From 1958 to 1973, when the U.S. war in Vietnam came to a formal end, MacNab was used as a radar base for the U.S. 5th Air Force. The base was returned to Korea in 2005, as part of U.S. military realignment policy, but some people still recall the U.S. military’s presence. And now, even though there is officially no U.S. base in Jeju per se, the United States can use any South Korean military base and facility anytime it wants, thanks to the South Korean-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty, which was signed right after the Korean War in 1953. My point is that even though there is no U.S. base in Jeju, Jeju is still considered part of the United States in terms of its Indo-Pacific strategy. CH: To what degree do the people of Jeju hold the United States responsible for the violence of Sasam? SC: For the past few decades, there has been a constant people’s movement, including the efforts of the Jeju Catholic bishop Kang U-il, to have the United States apologize for its killing of Jeju islanders during the April Third period. The people have continuously claimed that the United States is responsible for the killing. Two years ago, Bishop Kang even made a speech at the United Nations about U.S. responsibility [during the UN Symposium on Human Rights and Jeju 4.3]. Since there has been no U.S. apology thus far, this is an ongoing task. During the April Third period, people were killed on the basis of the false claim that they were communists. This anticommunist ideology justified mass death. In the Gangjeong struggle, the rightwing protestors called villagers who were just trying to save their village “communists.” CH: How did Sasam reverberate in the struggle of Gangjeong villagers’ struggle against the construction of the naval base, which, as you’ve just described, is so critical to post-Cold War U.S. geostrategic policy in the region? SC: The essence of the struggle is the same. What I mean is that both April Third and the anti-navy base movement represent struggles against a foreign power and the central government dominating and controlling the island people, regardless of the islanders’ will. Let me offer a story about how the character of oppression during April Third massacre persists in the struggle in Gangjeong. Around 2012 or 2013 when the struggle was at its peak, right-wing protestors who were very pro-Jeju navy base came to the village. In response, the people of Gangjeong got very angry. One of the villagers who fought against these right-wing protestors was former Mayor Kang Dong-kyun. When he told them not to dare set foot in Gangjeong, they called him a “Red.” Mayor Kang was really annoyed because he had already been victimized by such distorted ideology. During the April Third period, people were killed on the basis of the false claim that they were communists. This anticommunist ideology justified mass death. In the Gangjeong struggle, the rightwing protestors called villagers who were just trying to save their village “communists.” I was shocked to witness the whole scene unfold because one of Mayor Kang’s relatives was killed during the April Third period based on the false assertion that he was a communist. Now, he was the one who was being red-baited. In this story, you can see how April Third continues in the Gangjeong struggle. I also remember when many policemen from the Korean mainland came to the island to suppress the protestors—the villagers and the activists—especially during the Gureombi Rock blast period in 2012. This, too, was a pattern of repression familiar from the tactics deployed against the islanders during the April Third period. CH: I remember the deployment of mainland police, too. What you’ve just shared reminds me of another terrible story. During the Gangjeong farmer Jeong Young-hee’s speaking tour in the United States in 2013, we organized with the Center for Korean Studies at UCLA for her to present on the anti-base struggle as part of an “Ending the Korean War” conference. Under the neoconservative Park Geun-hye administration, the Korean consulate closely monitored all Korean studies events in the United States for their political content. If you can believe it, someone from the consulate advised the center at UCLA that Jeong Young-hee was a terrorist. SC: I heard that story from Jeong Young Hee. It’s crazy that Jeong Young-hee and others—who are farmers—were called terrorists. That’s how the dominating class has oppressed people who resist in their fight for democracy not only in Gangjeong but anywhere. In Korea, the division of the peninsula is utilized to oppress people. CH: What you’re saying about the opportunistic mobilization of the division of Korea reminds me of what Kang Jeong-koo of SPARK (Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea) has said about how the divided Korean peninsula, as a permanent crisis zone, presents a flexible opportunity to enact power transitions. It can delay or advance, playing into an imperial politics. Korea’s ongoing division, which in the first instance the people of Jeju protested against, tragically persists to this day and fuels the targeting and persecution of anti-base protestors. Can you update us on the Gangjeong situation, now that the naval base is a fait accompli? At the start of this year, the Save Jeju Now website featured solidarity statements from the international community, marking 5000 days of struggle against the base. In what forms does the resistance continue? SC: As of January 23, the Gangjeong struggle hit the 5,000-day mark. What has happened to Gangjeong is more than this number can capture, of course. The base was completed in 2016. About five years have passed since then. If you come to Gangjeong again, you can see how the landscape has changed. First of all, you will see the Jeju naval base instead of the beautiful Gureombi rock [a volcanic coastal rock formation and sacred site in Gangjeong]. You can see how the tangerine trees have been replaced by 3-4-story high buildings. You can see how the military road is being constructed, destroying the Gangjeong stream. Recently, in their efforts to halt the military road construction in order to preserve the stream, people filed a lawsuit against the South Korean navy and the Jeju Island government. Time will tell if this is successful. Militarization has come with development—overdevelopment. In Gangjeong today, you can see how the military comes hand in hand with capitalism, tempting the villagers with the message that “With this military base, you can have economic development.” Figure 2. In order to construct the Jeju navy base, which was completed in 2016, parts of the 1.2 km.-long Gureombi coastal rock formation were blasted for two months starting on March 7, 2012 and thereafter covered in cement. Photo taken by Cho Sung-bong, 2011. This is very sad. We can see that many villagers are not active anymore in the anti-base struggle. Many just look sad. Even though they are very sad in their deepest heart about the loss of Gureombi rock, many villagers seem to have lost their courage to rise up so the struggle is mainly carried on by the activists nowadays. The remarkable thing is that most of the activists have stayed in the village, and I am one of them. Of course, many activists have left but newcomers have also arrived because people feel that this struggle is very important not just for the village but for the peace of Northeast Asia. We activists agree that we must continue the struggle. The struggle still has a daily structure: at 7 a.m., one hundred bows; at 11 a.m., the street mass often led by Father Mun Jeong-hyeon and Father Kim Sung-hwan; at noon, the human chain. If you meet the peace activists here, you can see how their interests and talents are diverse and creative. Even though the activists may seem somewhat isolated from the village, the peace movement persists, and the movement is very diverse. There are many activists who are very interested in peace education; they have developed a peace education program and made efforts to be teachers themselves. Some are interested in and very committed to monitoring the construction of the military road. And some are committed to kayak protest, which is wonderful. Those are only a few examples. It is through such actions that we can continuously transmit what we observe to the world and organize actions, if necessary. In my deepest heart, I still believe in the villagers. They are sadder than us. Sometimes I think they will rise up again. I have faith in them. And we must ask the question: Even though they are no longer active, have the villagers truly given up the struggle? I am not so sure. Let me give you an example. There is a native villager, Kim Jong-hwan, who for the last ten years has been very committed to managing a protest community restaurant and providing daily meals to the activists. I really think the reason that we could continue this struggle is thanks to the meals he prepared for us. Last year, we learned that he was diagnosed with cancer. He had to have a major operation. I have come to believe that illness, though not intended, should be understood as a form of resistance. He is one of the villagers who greatly misses Gureombi as it once was. I also remember a male villager who is similar in age to me. He is a sort of macho guy. But I saw his tears the day before the blasting of Gureombi rock began. He said to me, “Do you get it? Gangjeong is Gureombi. And Gureombi is Gangjeong.” This clarified to me that Gureombi was the heart of the village. The military stabbed the heart of the village by destroying Gureombi to build the base. And if you are native to the village, how can you continue living? Enduring, just to continue to live in the village, requires tremendous courage. If someone only looks at us, the activists, they might be overlooking the villagers who have endured for a long time and sacrificed many things during their hard struggle against the base. CH: Is there tension between the activists and villagers today? SC: I would say, “Yes.” What I have found is that after the completion of the Jeju navy base, the villagers are not active anymore. And you can imagine the gap between the villagers and the activists. I can understand how it would be uncomfortable for the villagers to see activists continuously fighting because the activists are a living reminder that they lost their home town. What I want to emphasize is that militarization divides people—between pro and con villagers, but also between villagers and activists. This division is very systematic. One should understand that this is how militarization works. In order to fight against militarization, we must understand the nature of the system. Having this understanding means that we will seldom lose faith in the people who have been, are, and will one day be with us. But I should not be naïve either. The current Gangjeong village association is very concessionary to the South Korean navy. Last August, the association jointly signed a so-called civilian-military co-prosperity and development agreement with the navy. This means the village has now become a colony. Before that, two years ago, the village association took measures to disqualify activists as “residents” by retrogressively revising its village code so that activists can no longer express their opinions in village meetings. This process has been very systematic. President Moon Jae-in is also very responsible for further militarizing Gangjeong. He was the one behind this civilian-military agreement. In 2018, when a majority of the villagers, including the current village association members, initially voted against the international fleet review, President Moon sent his secretaries to Gangjeong to persuade the village association to accept the fleet review on the condition that President Moon apologize for the government’s violent drive to construct the Jeju navy base. Of course, this was a very deceptive proposal. Despite the criticism of anti-base villagers, the village association held a meeting to vote on this proposal. By the second vote, a majority of villagers agreed to accept the fleet review, which was carried out on the Jeju navy base and the sea around Gangjeong in October of that same year. During the fleet review, President Moon paid a visit to Jeju and, during his speech, stated that he would make the Jeju navy base a “stronghold for peace.” It is horrible how his choice of words echoed Ronald Reagan’s 1980s’ slogan, “Peace through power.” It is very clear that the Moon government is ready to further militarize Jeju, which means that Jeju could be increasingly incorporated into the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. It is also striking how the word, “peace,” has been contaminated in application to Jeju, which was called Peace Island following former South Korean president Noh Moo-hyun’s 2003 apology for the government’s responsibility for the April Third massacre. Recently, President Moon used the term, “civilian-military integration,” when he made a speech on the opening of South Korea’s “Space era.” I was horrified because this phrase sounds like the advent of fascism. I wonder whether this phenomenon is particular to here or whether this same problem exists everywhere in the world now. Given the enormous stakes, the activists’ task to connect with the villagers may not be easy but, yes, it is a task which should not be ignored. CH: You’ve described how the villagers have adjusted to the injustice of the base. I know this is a delicate subject, given the history of how the South Korean government, under Lee Myung-bak, promised the haenyo (sea-diving women) financial support, a retirement home, and education for their children in return for their support of the base. Insofar as the U.S.-driven geostrategic imposition of the base on Gangjeong has violently torn apart the fabric of social relations and daily life in the village while destroying the land and waters, I’m wondering where do the haenyo dive, now that their waters have been put to military use? SC: As you know, the sea-diving women in Gangjeong, many of whom are old and uneducated, were tempted by the navy in the beginning. Now, they clearly know that they have not benefitted from the Jeju navy base because now that it has been constructed, you can no longer catch sea urchins or big fish near Gangjeong. If you want to catch big fish, you have to go far out to sea. All the sea resources have been destroyed around the Jeju navy base. Some UNESCO-designated soft corals remain but many have disappeared. Now the sea-diving women realize what really has befallen them. CH: Could you speak more broadly about the remilitarization of Jeju and the dangers of the present? The naval base was constructed supposedly to ward off a North Korean missile threat but, as we know, it was really directed against China. The use of North Korea as a bogeyman to encircle China was a signature feature of Obama’s “pivot” policy to Asia and the Pacific. We now have a new U.S. president, Joseph Biden, who, as a firstmost priority, dispatched his secretary of state, much as Obama did, to Asia to fortify the possibility of a trilateral alliance between Korea, Japan, and the United States. SC: First of all, the Indo-Pacific is important for the United States. It occupies more than fifty percent of the earth. A year ago, former U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper stated that by 2045, the United States aimed to have about 500 U.S. military ships in the Pacific, about six of which would be light aircraft carriers. All of this boils down to the fact that the United States is really focusing on Indo-Pacific strategy, with an eye to global dominance. If you look at a map, Jeju is strategically located just in front of China. Here, I want to emphasize that it doesn’t matter whether a base is an official U.S. military base or not because the U.S. military can use alliance bases anytime it wants. So the peace movement should not make any mistakes on this point. We should say, “No base,” not “No U.S. base.” One must also understand that if there is a Jeju navy base, there must be an air force base. Around 2015, the central government in Seoul announced that it was planning to build a second airport in Seongsan in the eastern region of Jeju. There was no overt mention of the airport being an air force base, but by assessing the situation, people clearly realized what its purpose would be. In a recent public poll, people expressed their opposition to the second airport base project, but the Jeju governor, who is very much in favor of the second airport, twisted the poll’s results. He has been a driving force behind the second airport, but the central government hasn’t made its final decision yet so this issue is ongoing. One thing I want to point out is that Gangjeong activists are now everywhere in Jeju Island. They are not only fighting for Gangjeong; they are fighting the remilitarization of Jeju, including the “No Second Airport” struggle. Very recently, we became aware of another issue: plans to establish a National Satellite Integrated Operation Center in northeastern Jeju. There is no overt mention of the military in this case either. However, from my research, it is very clear that the center is related to military matters and would be incorporated into U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. We can see that the technique of militarists is not to mention the military when converting sites to military purposes. Instead, they deceptively claim they intend to build a civilian facility. CH: You, alongside many Gangjeong residents and committed activists from the mainland, were imprisoned for obstructing the “business” of base construction. When we first met almost a decade ago, you were in prison with a thick plastic partition separating us and a guard standing behind you. Can you address how corporate capital has driven the remilitarization of Jeju? SC: Insofar as the military base increases their profits, we can see corporate capital and the military cooperating together. The military knows that if it declares it wants to build a military base in your village, nobody would support that so it has to provide some carrots. That’s how Samsung, Daelim, Posco, and many big corporations in South Korea involved in the construction of the Jeju navy base proceeded, as I alluded to earlier. In the case of the Jeju navy base, it is very interesting to know that the base has another name, the Jeju “Beautiful Tourism Complex Port for Mixed Civilian-Military Use.” So you can see how they connect militarism to tourism to lull people into thinking that this is not just military base but a beautiful tourist port like Sydney and Pearl Harbor, which are the favorite examples raised by the South Korean government. CH: When I was in Gangjeong in 2011, I saw utopian tourist propaganda of the then-future base on giant boards lining the streets. These images were reflective of a distorted worldview, showing people skating and white visitors leisurely strolling while eating ice cream. It reminded me of Louis Owen’s concept of militourism and Teresia Teaiwa’s celebrated account of the bikini swimsuit as a displacement of the horror of the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll. SC: In the Navy’s advertisement board for the mixed civilian-military complex, all the women are wearing miniskirts. This is one way that capital is mobilized for militarization. In the case of the Gangjeong struggle, we can also see how the judiciary, as part of the system, cooperated with the military and capital by giving sentences that included the imposition of heavy fines on the protestors. Some of the protestors were even the targets of civil lawsuits pursued by the construction companies. CH: Can you say more about how criminalization and related to this, incarceration has served as a method, by the South Korean government as a subimperial power, of quashing anti-base resistance? SC: Through criminal punishment and civil punishment, corporate capital has sought to stifle the protestors. But accompanying this is also ideological oppression. When the protest was at its peak, the right-wing media began labeling the anti-base protestors “communists” and “outside powers.” In effect, the message has been “You are not native to the village. Why are you intervening? You are not qualified to resist.” We have to recognize this as the government’s ideological method for disqualifying us from taking part in this struggle. We should fight against this kind of ideology. So, our response is “What are you saying? This is a national policy and we are citizens. This base is paid for by our taxes. This is our job.” Moreover, many internationals came to Gangjeong, including you, to express solidarity. The presence of internationals was amazing because it showed us, villagers and activists alike, that this base is not simply a local struggle. Resistance to this base is an international struggle. Internationals came here because they also thought opposing the base is their job insofar as it relates to peace in Northeast Asia. For example, there was a UK activist named Angie Zelter who was arrested three times. I was the translator between the police and her. When the police asked her, “What’s your name?” and “Where did you come from?” Angie Zelter replied: “I came from Gureombi rock.” She did not disclose her nationality. Her gift to us, when she left, was a flag of the earth. The meaning was very clear. This is a very important story. I should also add that many internationals have been oppressed by the South Korean government because of their solidarity with the Gangjeong struggle. Beside Angie Zelter who was forced to leave as a result of an exit order, there was one French citizen, Benjamin Monnet, who was slapped with an injunction, twelve internationals who were arrested, and twenty-three internationals who were denied entry. Many internationals, even though ban has been lifted for most of them now, were traumatized by these horrible experiences. Whenever I think of them, I am really so sorry for them. This is further evidence that this struggle is international and that the South Korean government is afraid of internationals. In the global anti-base struggle, the government, whether South Korean or Japanese, has tried to define the qualifications of the fighters. We must resist that. One must also understand that if there is a Jeju navy base, there must be an air force base. Around 2015, the central government in Seoul announced that it was planning to build a second airport in Seongsan in the eastern region of Jeju. There was no overt mention of the airport being an air force base, but by assessing the situation, people clearly realized what its purpose would be. I also want to express my gratitude to all the internationals who came to the village and supported and encouraged us with their love and friendship. You are surely one of them. I wish to express special thanks, among all the activists, to Bruce Gagnon and the Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. He and the Global Network have really encouraged our struggle. They helped us to spread the news of struggle so that more and more internationals came to the village. CH: What the incarceration of so many villagers and activists clearly demonstrates is the political nature of policing relative to the anti-base struggle in Jeju. I have learned so much from this conversation about the importance of the temporality of anti-base activism. Our timeframe must necessarily span generations. Even as we honor those who were indiscriminately killed in Sasam, we also realize that what the people of Jeju called for in those early Cold War years—Korea’s independence and self-determination—is far from realized, and so the struggle continues. As we begin closing our conversation, I want to ask you, as an artist—as is your partner, the Jeju native Goh Gil-chun—about the extraordinary blooming of art and cultural expression that characterized the anti-base struggle in Jeju. Can you speak about this? SC: What I’ve found is that many people who come to Gangjeong become artists. Many young activists—and me, too—usually do not have any ties to any one civic group. If you compare us to other civic groups in Korea, ours is a relatively free and creative group. We mostly just came to Gangjeong as individuals. Our networks are thus very free, and we do not like strict rules. In such a setting, creativity flows. Everyone encourages one another to undertake art projects. And of course, most importantly, the nature of Gureombi rock and Gangjeong stream gives us a lot of inspiration. CH: What actions can the international community take in solidarity now? SC: Jeju is important for the peace of Northeast Asia, but I also want to remind people that Jeju is one of many islands that are militarized by the United States as part of its Indo-Pacific military strategy. If you are concerned about Jeju, you should consider the plight of other islands, too. One of the things we must do to galvanize international solidarity is to connect our struggles together. Curry, a member of the international team, is an American who has been living in Gangjeong for more than five years. She is now organizing, along with the St. Francis Peace Center, an event about resistance to the militarization of islands, which starts on April 10. We must also end the Korean War. The Korean War has never officially ended, and this irresolution has become a pretext for military build-up in the Pacific. Ending the Korean War is one of the core tasks to establish peace in the Pacific and the world. (Update: On March 7, 2020, on the eighth anniversary of the dynamiting of Gureombi rock, Dr. Song Kang-ho and his colleague Ryu Bok-hee entered the Jeju navy base and, seeing the small remnant of Gureombi, prayed for peace. In the first court decision, Song was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Ryu was similarly sentenced to two years’ imprisonment but with a year’s probation. As of March 1, 2021, the Jeju local higher court upheld the lower court’s decision, meaning that Song, who has been imprisoned for more than a year, will remain behind bars for another year. Their struggle demonstrates that April Third continues in Gangjeong. Even though the government committed crimes in its undemocratic imposition of the base, which serves U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, those responsible for building the base have never been punished while the people who protest against militarism are routinely excessively punished. Although seventy-four years have passed since April Third, the uprising’s essence, in the face of oppressive foreign and state power, persists in the people’s resistance to the militarization of Gangjeong and Jeju.) Figure 3. Dr. Song Kang-ho and Ryu Bok-hee entered the Jeju navy base to pray for peace, a non-violent direct action, on March 7, 2020. Photo by Peace Network Bio: Choi Sung-hee was born in the mainland of Korea but moved to Gangjeong village, Jeju, in 2010, to join the struggle opposing the building of the Jeju navy base. The base was completed in 2016 but she continues to oppose the base and claims the base should be shut down for the true demilitarization of Jeju, the Peace Island. She also joins other struggles such as “No to the Jeju Second Airport (which is suspected to be an air force base)” and “No to the National Satellite Integrated Operation Center” currently planned in Jeju. She has worked in the village international team which has published the English language newsletter titled Gangjeong Village Story, since 2011. She also works for the Gangjeong Peace Network, Association of Gangjeong Villagers Against the Jeju Navy Base, People Making Jeju a Demilitarized Peace Island, and Inter-Island Solidarity for Peace. She is also a Korean board member of Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. See savejejunow.org Christine Hong is an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an executive board member of the Korea Policy Institute.

By Simone Chun | April 1, 2021 | Originally published in Counterpunch The Pentagon recently asked Congress for an astronomical $27 billion budget increase to support a massive military buildup in Asia as part of its new Indo-Pacific plan, which calls for a substantially more aggressive military stance against China. With the US already ranking first in military spending worldwide and holding more than 290 military bases in the Asia-Pacific region alone, this aggressive buildup is being proposed at the most financially precarious moment in US history. According to the Congressional Budget Office report released this month, federal debt is projected to reach 102% of GDP by the end of 2021 before surpassing its historical high of 107% in 2031 and going on to nearly double to 202% by 2051. According to Doug Bandow, “Uncle Sam is headed toward insolvency.” How can the Biden administration sell such an expensive foreign policy proposal to the American public in these economically depressed times? By publicly stoking moral outrage and militarism in the US–as well as throughout the Asia-Pacific region–in the name of launching a crusade ostensibly in defense of human rights. This strategy was on full display when Secretary of State Blinken echoed bipartisan political rhetoric about the “Chinese threat” during his visit to Asia last week. In a stream of condescending self-righteousness, he unleashed a deluge of recrimination against China and North Korea while pontificating on American exceptionalism. Instead of taking a fresh direction on behalf of the new administration and sending a message that America’s top diplomat is intent on finding common ground in Asia, Blinken made clear that the Biden administration will hew close to the fundamentals that have guided the prevailing policy of containment reflected most recently in Bush’s Axis of Evil, Obama’s Pivot to Asia, and Trump’s confrontationalism. Blinken’s performance seemed tailored to the US domestic audience; a rallying call to win support for the upcoming battle: selling the Pentagon’s costly Asian military buildup plan–and the unprecedented profits it represents for the US military industrial complex–to Congress and American public. Unsurprisingly, US corporate media amplified Blinken’s message, exulting: “Blinken blasts aggressive China, North Korea’s systematic and widespread rights abuses.” At the same time, Blinken and his team have been hard at work in reinforcing an anti-China stance among their lynchpin Far Eastern military outposts–South Korea and Japan– by ensuring that the respective governments of these garrison states continue to unswervingly toe the US line with regard to Beijing. But even if the administration succeeds in selling its new crusade to Congress and American public, the unprecedented buildup being proposed would have its most devastating consequences at home, rather than in far-flung military theaters. Firstly, its demand for enormous spending on expensive weapon systems would exacerbate America’s financial insolvency. The administration’s proposal includes nearly $5 billion in the next year alone for new missile defense systems and nuclear-capable naval craft as part of an aggressive forward-deployed military strategy that profits weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. Secondly, it will engender a human rights crisis at home, much in the same vein as the Red Scare during the Cold War and the War on Terror did. Public support for the Indo-Pacific plan will depend on amplifying to the extent possible the threat from the East using time-tried methods of demonizing “threatening Others”, such as China, North Korea. As militarism, racism and xenophobia go hand in hand, this will inflame anti-Asian sentiment and scapegoating–a trend that is already well under way due to bipartisan political rhetoric about origins of Covid-19 and the rise of China. Anti-Asian sentiment has already risen to unprecedented levels in 2020, with crimes against Asians increasing by more than 150% in the past year. If the Biden administration truly cares about a moral order in Asia, it should take global leadership to address the formative role that US militarism has played in the current state of Asian affairs. The foremost opportunity to embark on an alternative to the path of war lies in the Korean Peninsula, where the US continues to exert overwhelming economic and military pressure in the wake of a brutal war that claimed some 5 million lives, over half of whom were non-combatant Korean civilians. The staggering civilian cost of the Korean war far exceeded the non-combatant death rate of both WWII and the Vietnam War, and amounted to more than 10% of the entire Korean civilian population. US refusal to sign a formal peace agreement with the North means that the 70-year old conflict has never officially ended, leaving scores of Koreans–including some 100,000 Korean-Americans–separated from their loved ones in the North. The Biden administration can begin down this alternative moral path by supporting bipartisan Congressional bills such as the Enhancing North Korean Humanitarian Assistance Act and the Divided Families Reunification Act, both of which would go a long way toward generating goodwill with North Korea without giving up any strategic advantage whatsoever on the part of Washington. Such symbolic but significantly humanitarian acts of goodwill would garner support from allies while earning the trust of “foes”, and would mitigate the risks of military confrontation, financial insolvency, and human rights crises at home and abroad. Dr. Simone Chun, a KPI Associate, has taught at Northeastern University in Boston, and served as an associate in research at Harvard University’s Korea Institute. She is an active member of the Korea Peace Network and a member of the steering committee of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. She served as an international women’s delegation of peace to Korea organized by Women Cross DMZ and Nobel Women’s Initiative.

By Hazel Smith | March 29, 2021 | Originally published with the Korea Economic Institute ‘It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.’ Article 54(2) of the 1977 Additional Protocol, Geneva Conventions The 2017 UN sanctions imposed a complete ban on natural gas exports to North Korea and severe restrictions on oil exports, especially on the export of refined petroleum products, including diesel and gasoline. The 500,000 barrels annual limit to refined petroleum product exports, even if combined with maximal theoretical output from North Korea’s decrepit oil refineries, is more or less equivalent to South Korean consumption of these products in just one day. Energy export bans were accompanied by an expansive interpretation of what could be interpreted as dual use goods. In addition, about 90 per cent of North Korea’s exports were banned, thus limiting capacity to import legally permitted goods. North Korea has no indigenous natural gas and oil resources. As everywhere in the world, these commodities provide non-substitutable, essential components of agricultural production. Broader sanctions prevent the export to North Korea of agricultural equipment and goods not explicitly banned by the 2017 sanctions. Entirely foreseeably, there were large falls in agricultural production in 2018. The impact of sanctions was thus to increase the threat of hunger to those least able to look after themselves, including the sick, the elderly, the children, the poorly connected and the poorest families, all of whom disproportionately rely on local food production. The negative impact of sanctions on the civilian economy is often rationalised by the ‘fungibility’ thesis. This is the idea that broad sanctions are necessary because a variety of imported goods could be diverted for military use i.e., they are ‘fungible’. This is a superficially plausible idea, especially at the highest level of generality into which it often devolves, which is that all imports make life easier for the government so all import restrictions on any commodity are justified. One problem with the argument is factual. Natural gas and refined petroleum products, the commodities on which the tightest restrictions fall are, it turns out, not very fungible at all. The main problem of the fungibility thesis is not its straightforwardly refutable argumentation, but that it justifies actions that have been deemed so ethically abhorrent by every state in the world, all of which have signed the Geneva Conventions, that if these practices were to occur in war time, they would be automatically considered crimes against humanity. Once the generalities are stripped away, the fungibility thesis is exposed as a rather threadbare cover for the advocacy of a deeply shameful policy, especially for the democratic states who advertise foreign policy as based on humanitarian and rights-based principles. A Faulty Premise In its technical or economic sense, fungibility means that a good or asset can be readily interchanged for another. Money, because of its role as a medium of exchange, is the item most often cited to explain fungibility . A dollar earned as tax revenue can just as easily be spent to improve healthcare as to support a weapons program. The refined petroleum (oil) products restricted by the 2017 UN sanctions, however, are not in fact fungible in the technical sense, as these commodities can only be used for specific purposes. It is of course true that oil imports could be used for civilian and military activities, but it is also true that they cannot readily be used for every military purpose. Natural gas and diesel are not directly interchangeable with, for example, rocket fuel. On the other hand, oil products do not possess ‘reverse’ fungibility. Domestic energy resources like coal cannot substitute for oil products in the production of fertiliser, pesticide and agricultural chemicals nor as fuel for agricultural and irrigation equipment and the transport of fertiliser, pesticides, equipment, seeds, crops, food and labour. The core rationale of the fungibility thesis is that oil sanctions are designed to handicap the military. Best estimates of sectoral energy consumption in 2010 indicate that of the 31 per cent of refined oil products that constituted the military share of demand, about a third went to the 2.5-ton trucks that can be seen everywhere in the country and which provide significant carrying capacity for the civilian as well as the military economy. The 2017 sanctions no doubt reduced the operational capacity of military trucks but in so doing they also handicapped agricultural and food production and distribution. The argument is also made that the 2017 sanctions provided the only option to ensure that oil resources were denied to the North Korean military, but this is not accurate. Prior to the 2017 sanctions, military related oil exports to the DPRK, including jet fuel, were already banned. A combination of previous UN sanctions, the 42 country Wassenaar Arrangement that included both the United States and the Russian Federation and 2002 Chinese bilateral export controls already prohibited military grade fuel exports to the DPRK. If the purpose is to block oil supplies to the military, there are many alternative options. Justifying the Unjustifiable North Korea’s agricultural sector recovered after the famine years that had killed around half a million people to the extent that by 2017 the nutritional status of North Korean children was better on average than that of children living in the poorer countries of Asia such as Laos or Nepal and some richer countries, like India. Since the catastrophic reduction in agricultural production in 2018, food production has not recovered. In 2019 and 2020, our best information suggests that the population was saved from humanitarian crisis by food and fuel aid from China and Russia. Because of COVID induced limits to access, we have little knowledge of the food security status of North Korean families in 2021, but stories, which cannot be verified, are emerging of the re-occurrence of the threat of starvation in some parts of the country. The United Nations resolutions reiterate that sanctions are not intended to harm civilians and that if there is any negative impact on the population, this is entirely the fault of the North Korean government because it refuses to denuclearise. It is absolutely correct that the North Korean government has primary responsibility for the welfare of its population. It is also correct that the government is in breach of international law. Neither of these propositions justify what in war time constitutes a crime against humanity. The 1977 Additional Protocol of the Geneva Convention specifically forbids actions that destroy agricultural production ‘whatever the motive’. In peace time, we have no analogous legislation, partly because the framers of the Conventions could not have envisaged the highly interdependent world of today in which the ability to starve populations comes about through the denial of essential imports, not only through bombing rice fields and dams. Dr. Hazel Smith a KPI Associate, Professorial Research Associate in Korean Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Professor Emerita in International Security at Cranfield University, UK, and member of the Global Futures Council on Korea of the World Economic Forum. The views expressed here are the author’s alone.

By Gregory Elich | March 26, 2021 | Originally published in Counterpunch In a Washington Post opinion piece, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spelled out their objectives in visiting Japan, South Korea, and India. “The United States is now making a big push to revitalize our ties with friends and partners,” they wrote. The nature of those relationships, as perceived by Washington, is the subordination of Asian nations as junior partners in an anti-China coalition. “Our alliances are what our military calls ‘force multipliers,’ Blinken and Austin explain. “Our combined power makes us stronger when we must push back against China’s aggression and threats.” [1] That approach found a receptive audience in meetings with Japanese officials, who recognize it as offering a path to remilitarization. Results in South Korea were more ambiguous. By a substantial margin, China is South Korea’s primary trading partner, and relations between the two nations are generally solid. South Korea has no rational reason to join Washington’s fanatical anti-China campaign, no matter how much pressure the United States applies. A difference of opinion between Washington’s envoys and South Korean officials can be inferred by comparing the joint U.S.-Japan statement with South Korea’s, as only the latter lacked China-bashing verbiage. Blinken and Austin appear to have been more successful in reminding South Korean officials that no independent action should be taken to improve inter-Korean relations and in making it understood that Washington calls the shots. The two sides agreed to establish a “working-level diplomatic dialogue” process to align policy regarding North Korea and other matters. [2]In their joint statement, Korean and American officials affirmed that their two nations “are closely coordinating on all issues related to the Korean Peninsula” and that “these issues should be addressed through a fully-coordinated strategy toward North Korea.” [3] Not that Blinken and Austin found their position on North Korea a hard sell. Although peace and improved inter-Korean relations matter deeply to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, he attaches more importance to the military alliance with the United States. In an article published at the end of 2019, Moon argued, “No matter how desperately peace is desired, Korea cannot afford to race ahead on its own. It has counterparts and must move within the international order.” Support from the “international community” is needed, Moon claims, while using the standard term signifying the several thousand people at the top rungs of power in the United States and excluding the nearly eight billion people in the rest of the world’s population. [4] Moon’s statement is consistent with other comments he has made, such as in his New Year’s address, where he stated, “If we can draw support from the international community in the process,” then the door to peace will “open wide.” [5] No role there for South Korea, other than as supplicant. Joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises were well underway during Bliken’s and Austin’s time in Seoul. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, war games were conducted via computer simulation. Concurrently, the U.S. deployed F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to participate in joint exercises with the Japanese military. [6] According to a South Korean military official, “The deployment is significant as an alert to North Korea as well as deterrence to China, given F-22s’ operational radius and performance.” [7] None of this went unnoticed in Pyongyang. Kim Yo Jong, Vice Department Director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, dismissed South Korean claims that the military exercises are defensive. While no details of the drilled scenarios have been publicly released, past war games customarily practiced the bombing and invasion of North Korea as well as sending commando teams into the north to assassinate government officials. There is no reason to suppose that the latest exercises pose a unique exception. Kim called the “launching of a war game against” her nation “a serious challenge” and pointed out that the “essence and nature of the drills” never changes, regardless of what form they take. [8] It was not the first time that Pyongyang has expressed frustration over the discrepancy between Moon’s rhetoric on inter-Korean relations and his actions. Similar complaints were raised last June. By hitching its wagon to the U.S. military, the Moon administration is seriously straining ties with the north. “War drill and hostility can never go with dialogue and cooperation,” Kim stated. If South Korean authorities “persist in hostile acts” that deny dialogue and “destroy the foundation of trust through ceaseless war games,” then Pyongyang may abrogate some of the inter-Korean agreements it had signed. [9] Some aspects of the Panmunjom Declaration, signed on April 27, 2018 by Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un, are already a dead letter. Certainly, the affirmation of “the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord” has never been put into practice, as the Moon administration is unwilling to act without U.S. permission. Nor have any “practical steps” been adopted to connect and modernize rail and road connections or steps been taken to “actively implement” inter-Korean economic agreements signed in 2004. [10] After all, Washington would not approve. “Pyongyang is pressing Seoul not to talk nonsense in the upcoming meeting with Blinken and Austin,” observed Kim Il-gi, a senior researcher at South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy. “And the message goes to the U.S., as well.” [11] A message, one cannot help noting, that inevitably fell on deaf ears. The United States, too, is hoping for a change in South Korea’s approach, albeit in a decidedly different direction than that sought by North Korea. A recent report by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security is typical of the recommendations being churned out by Washington think tanks. “The Republic of Korea and the United States should broaden their military alliance into a national security alliance in order to more effectively deal with the challenges and opportunities of this new era,” it states. Predictably, the Center lists China as the top challenge and argues that the U.S.-South Korea alliance “must be prepared to continue to deter and dissuade” China from “considering any further aggression.” South Korea ought to “prioritize security cooperation” with Southeast Asian nations “on behalf of the alliance,” the Center argues. Furthermore, “as NATO goes global in its approach in response to the challenges posed by China…NATO’s partnership with the Republic of Korea will increase in importance.” [12] The Scowcroft Center recognizes that reliance on Chinese trade presents a roadblock in persuading South Korea to join Washington’s anti-China campaign. What South Koreans may happen to want is not a question the Center ever troubles itself with, other than to bemoan that it is necessary to “avoid forcing the Republic of Korea to make explicit, public choices in disputes between the United States and China.” But less overtly, South Korea can be slowly moved into that position. The Center expects South Korea to join U.S. “efforts to reform international rules and institutions,” a euphemism for American plans to cut China off from much of its international trade. Several measures are recommended that South Korea “should” adopt to align its economy with U.S. regional goals. In addition, to chip away at Chinese-Korean trade, “The Republic of Korea should join the US efforts to diversify its supply chains” and avoid “over-reliance on a single country.” [13] The essential task for South Korea, the Center insists, is that “much more must be done to reduce dependence on Chinese supply chains and protect key industries from” what it laughably calls “predatory Chinese practices.” Washington expects nations it regards as subordinates, such as South Korea, to act as pawns in maintaining American hegemony against challengers such as China. Despite North Korea’s concerns, it appears that a resumption of full-scale military exercises on the Korean Peninsula may be on the horizon. Currently, the United States holds operational control (OPCON) over South Korean military forces in wartime. The Moon administration hopes to regain OPCON before the expiration of its term in office. Still, the key condition for doing so is completing full-scale live-action military drills to evaluate the concept. [14] According to a South Korean military source, Seoul wants to test Full Operational Capability (FOC) with a full-scale exercise in the second half of this year. [15] A successful assessment would leave only one official step, Full Mission Capability (FMC), to be completed before OPCON transfer could proceed. Transfer of OPCON is long overdue, but predicating progress toward that decision on a resumption of live-action drills can be counted on to place a further strain on inter-Korean relations, which no doubt Washington regards as a bonus. Indeed, roiling inter-Korean waters may be the only result produced by full-scale military exercises. Robert Abrams, U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) commander, maintains that it is not enough for Seoul to pass the three official assessment stages; it would have to meet an additional 26 requirements. [16] It is a formula perfectly calculated to compel South Korea to resume live military drills while imposing endless conditions that will continually postpone OPCON transfer so that it may never take place. Currently, relations between South Korea and Japan are at a low point over the unresolved issue of Imperial Japan’s “comfort women” system of sexual slavery, as well as Japanese trade restrictions on South Korea. The rift in relations is problematic for Washington, as it wishes to assign both nations the key role among junior partners in confronting China. As a U.S. State Department fact sheet explains, in “working to strengthen America’s relationships with our allies…[n]o relationship is more important than that between Japan and the Republic of Korea.” [17] Moon promised Blinken he would continue to reach out and try to resolve disputes with Japan. [18] However, previous conciliatory messages sent from South Korea to Japan since the Yoshihide Suga administration’s inauguration have gone unanswered. [19] The Biden administration is currently undertaking a review to determine details of its North Korea policy, and it has attempted to contact North Korean officials through various channels. The content of the messages is not publicly known, but the Biden administration has indicated in general an intention to add other demands along with that of denuclearization. Piling on demands is not a promising approach for initiating dialogue. North Korea chose not to respond to the Biden administration’s attempts at contact. In a statement issued during Blinken’s and Austin’s stay in Seoul, North Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Choe Son Hui explained that no communication or dialogue “of any kind can be possible unless the U.S. rolls back its hostile policy.” She took due note of the Biden administration’s harsh rhetoric and military activities aimed against North Korea. What North Korea is asking for is a change of tone, one that would be conducive for establishing dialogue “on an equal basis.” [20] A more diplomatic attitude would seem not to be a tall order, but it is constitutionally foreign to the Washington establishment’s nature. It can be anticipated that President Moon may urge Biden to soften the administration’s public comments to encourage a resumption of dialogue. Whether anyone in Washington will be listening is another matter. When U.S. policymakers talk about South Korea and the United States needing to closely coordinate North Korea policy, what they have in mind is a one-way process in which the U.S. decides, and South Korea follows. On China, Seoul can expect to be subjected to mounting pressure to reduce trade, thereby providing Washington with more leverage in attempting to bully it into joining the belligerent U.S.-led anti-China alliance. The one certainty is that respect for South Korean sovereignty is not in the cards. Notes. [1] Antony J. Blinken and Lloyd J. Austin III, “America’s Partnerships Are ‘Force Multipliers’ in the World,” Washington Post, March 14, 2021. [2] “S. Korea, U.S. to Launch New Working-level Policy Dialogue Aimed at Cementing Alliance,” Yonhap, March 18, 2021. [3] “Full Text of Joint Statement of 2021 S. Korea-U.S. foreign and Defense Ministerial Meeting,” Yonhap, March 18, 2021. [4] https://english1.president.go.kr/Media/Interviews/541 [5] https://english1.president.go.kr/BriefingSpeeches/Speeches/931 [6] Nick Wilson, “Hawaii-based F-22s Land at MCAS Iwakuni to Support DFE Concept,” Pacific Air Forces, March 16, 2021. [7] Sang-ho Yun, “U.S. Deploys F-21 [sic] Raptors in Japan,” Dong-A Ilbo, March 18, 2021. [8] “It Will be Hard to See Again Spring Days Three Years Ago,” KCNA, March 16, 2021. [9] “It Will be Hard to See Again Spring Days Three Years Ago,” KCNA, March 16, 2021. [10] Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula, April 27, 2018. [11] Won-gi Jung, “South Korea Defends Military Exercises After Kim Yo Jong Threatens Retaliation,” NK News, March 16, 2021. [12] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/the-future-of-the-us-rok-security-alliance/ [13] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/the-future-of-the-us-rok-security-alliance/ [14] Mitch Shin, “South Korea, US to Prepare to Conduct Joint Military Exercise,” The Diplomat, March 2, 2021. [15] Elizabeth Shim, “Reports: U.S., South Korea to Commence Scaled-down Military Exercises,” UPI, March 4, 2021. [16] Lee Chul-jae, Kim Sang-jin, Shim Kyu-seok, “Opcon Timing Dashes Moon’s Hope for Transfer,” JoongAng Ilbo, January 24, 2021. [17] https://www.state.gov/reaffirming-the-unbreakable-u-s-japan-alliance/ [18] Lee4 Chi-dong, “Moon Vows Efforts to Improve Japan Ties in Talks with Biden Aides,” Yonhap, March 18, 2021. [19] Sarah Kim, “U.S. Working as Middleman to Help Korea-Japan Relations,” JoongAng Ilbo, March 15, 2021. [20] “Statement of First Vice Foreign Minister of DPRK,” KCNA, March 18, 2021. Gregory Elich is a Korea Policy Institute associate and on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute. He is a member of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea, a columnist for Voice of the People, and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. He is also a member of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific. His website is https://gregoryelich.org Follow him on Twitter at @GregoryElich.

By Simone Chun | March 9, 2021 | Originally published in Counterpunch Although the Biden administration has yet to present its North Korea policy, the new president’s cabinet includes many career diplomats and business lobbyists advocating the Cold War policy toward Asia and personnel from hawkish think tanks financed by the military industrial complex, leading many Korea experts to predict that an aggressive militaristic policy with respect to the Korean Peninsula is on the horizon. In practical terms, this would translate into the projection of US military power over the Korean Peninsula through a de facto trilateral military alliance between the US, Japan and South Korea as part of the enlarged “Indo-Pacific plan.” It would also mean returning to the doomed pressure policies of Obama’s “strategic patience” approach toward North Korea, which emphasized containment via sanctions and deterrence while demanding substantial concessions from Pyongyang up front. Moreover, it would entail using ongoing tension on the Korean Peninsula to justify massive military spending in order to advance the interests of the military-industrial complex: As Sara Lazar notes, “One-third of Biden’s Pentagon transition team alone lists as their most recent employment think tanks, organizations or companies that are either funded by the weapons industry or are directly part of this industry.” Meanwhile, in his latest op-ed, John Bolton–former national security advisor and saboteur of past US-DPRK agreements–exhorted Biden to include a military option as part of US policy on North Korea. The renewal of a hawkish stance against the North will surely be met by a hardline response from Pyongyang, which has vowed to strengthen its nuclear deterrent capabilities as a guarantee against US “hostile policies” and military intervention. North Korea’s fears are not unwarranted. Having lost over 20 percent of its population to indiscriminate US carpet bombing during the Korean War, it has lived under the shadow of the US nuclear threat since 1958, when Washington first introduced nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula. This existential threat against the North continues through the present day: according to Bob Woodward, the Trump Administration earmarked some 80 nuclear weapons for deployment against North Korea should hostilities erupt. The clash of hardline policies on both sides may result in a dangerous standoff scenario, pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear conflict of unimaginable magnitude. To prevent such a catastrophe, a growing chorus of experts, including numerous former US officials, emphasize a pragmatic approach toward arms control that would aim to limit or reduce the North’s arsenal while working toward the eventual goal of complete denuclearization. Even Secretary of State Antony Blinken–a noted hawk–has in the past called for such an interim agreement, arguing in a 2018 New York Times editorial that Trump should use the Iran nuclear deal as a model for negotiating with Pyongyang. For their part, international peace organizations in South Korea and US are increasingly advocating a “peace-first policy” which would entail normalization of relations between the US and North Korea, the lifting of crippling economic sanctions against the North’s civilian population, and the institution of a treaty formally ending the Korean War. In formulating his administration’s North Korea policy, Biden should embrace an approach conducive to achieving arms control without abandoning the eventual goal of complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through diplomacy and bilateral concessions. In order to do so, he could take the following steps: First, Biden should suspend the costly and provocative annual US-South Korea combined military drills that are scheduled to start on March 8. While the proponents of the drills claim they are necessary in order to maintain readiness in the event of a North Korean attack, the overwhelming practical military capability fielded by the US undermines this claim. General Vincent Brooks— former USFK commander– noted that these drills are ”not just a show like the parades in Pyongyang”, they are in fact provocative shows of force with the potential to trigger open war on the Korean Peninsula. The continuation of these exercises is a contentious topic in South Korea: In his New Year press conference, President Moon suggested the possibility of scaling down the drills through a joint inter-Korean military committee, and just last week, a group of 35 South Korean lawmakers called for the postponement of the drills. Both of these options were flatly rejected by the US. Second, Biden should openly support those provisions of 2018 Singapore Declaration calling for the complete bilateral denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a formal end to the Korean War, and the return of the remains of US troops killed during the conflict. Thus far, while North Korea has yet to launch an ICBM or conduct a nuclear test since it announced a self-imposed moratorium at the onset of the 2018 peace process, the US, rather than taking even symbolic steps toward implementing the Singapore Declaration, imposed over 200 new sanctions on the North. On January 1, North Korea responded to the new US sanctions and the continuation of joint military drills on its border by terminating its moratorium on nuclear tests ICBM launches. According to a report this week by the International Atomic Energy Agency, North Korea may have begun reprocessing nuclear fuel in preparation for a nuclear weapon test. The clock is ticking for Biden to make the first diplomatic move. In summary, Biden should reject calls to renew a hawkish policy toward the North, and choose instead the path of diplomacy and peace. In practical terms, this would entail suspending the provocative annual US-South Korea military drills, supporting key provisions of the Singapore Declaration and embracing a peace-first policy on the Korean Peninsula. Continuing the vicious cycle of escalation can only end in a renewed military conflict on the Korean Peninsula, which would almost certainly trigger a full-scale war. More than 300,000 South Korean and U.S. military casualties, and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, would occur within the first 90 days of a Second Korean War. Should the conflict widen to a regional war, as it very likely would, the death toll would quickly climb to the millions. The new president has a moral duty to engage North Korea via diplomacy and dialog and avoid taking steps that only increase the likelihood of plunging the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia into the abyss of yet another bloody war. Dr. Simone Chun has taught at Northeastern University in Boston, and served as an associate in research at Harvard University’s Korea Institute. She is an active member of the Korea Peace Network, and a member of the steering committee of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea and a Korea Policy Institute Associate. She served as an international women’s delegation of peace to Korea organized by Women Cross DMZ and Nobel Women’s Initiative.

By K.J. Noh | February 17, 2021 Baek Gi Wan, 1933 - 2021 Slideshow of his life here. Baek Gi Wan, the quiet, thoughtful, progressive conscience of South Korea, and its most impassioned, idealistic voice for reunification, passed away on February 15, 2021 from pneumonia at the age of 89. His last words were a message of support for a grieving mother fasting for the passing of Labor Rights Legislation and words of encouragement for the fired labor organizer, Kim Jin Suk. All intended money for funerary flowers or wreaths was requested to be spent on aiding the poor, the marginalized, the struggling. In commemoration, sixteen regional memorial sites will be held across the nation as well as in the capital, Seoul. If the old saw, “the pen is mightier than the sword,” has any meaning, it might well apply to Baek: his words, thoughts, and speeches have altered the course of South Korean history. While other politicians took the limelight or the applause, Baek continued working selflessly and fluidly in and out of the shadows: both on center stage and from the sidelines, dedicating his whole life in struggle for worker’s rights, people’s rights against capital and empire, and for Korean reunification. He was a key pillar in the struggle against the U.S.-installed South Korean military dictatorships, which imprisoned and tortured him multiple times--almost to the point of death. He participated in the April 19, 1960 student protests that overthrew the genocidal dictatorship of Syngman Rhee, and the anti-Japan normalization protests in 1964, where he opposed the Park Chung Hee dictatorship’s collusion and “normalization” of relations with Japan which absolved Japan of all responsibility for crimes committed during colonization (this agreement, among other things, unilaterally threw South Korean slave laborers and so-called comfort women under the bus). His opposition to this agreement, pushed by a United States eager to consolidate South Korea as a capitalist neo-colony, resulted in his arrest and torture. In the seventies, he was arrested and tortured again for leading protests against the “Yushin Constitution,” the constitutional self-coup by the military dictatorship that gave the U.S.-propped dictator Park Chung Hee powers comparable to the Meiji Emperor. He was imprisoned and tortured again in 1979 for organizing a mass protest for democracy, and then imprisoned again in 1986 for protesting the sexual torture of a student activist. In 1987, he urged the two leading progressive politicians (Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung) to unify to defeat the military candidate running for president. (They did not, and a former general held the presidency for 5 more years). He also opposed South Korean participation in the Iraq war, and was an important elder and leader in the Candlelight Protests that brought down the regime of Park Geun Hye, the daughter of the dictator who had imprisoned him in 2017. Although he was the director of the Unification Research Institute in his later years, he never relinquished his role as a revolutionary in action: even as he became sick and frail, he implored his daughter not to put him into institutional care: “Please let me die fighting at labor sites.” In 1987, with his health having deteriorated due to the aftereffects of torture, Baek Gi Wan was on the streets during the June Uprising. An autodidact raised in abject poverty but with dignity--his mother told him “chew sand [to stave off hunger] if you have to, but never kneel because of your poverty”--he was also an accomplished artist, writer, and poet. He penned the words to the protest song that became the anthem of the people’s movement that took down the military dictatorship in 1989. The song itself grew out of the martyrdom of protestors at the U.S.-enabled-and-abetted massacre in the city of Gwangju in 1980. It later became a pan-Asian protest anthem. If a single poem can be considered to have helped bring down a dictatorship, Baek’s poem is a prime candidate: In November 24, 1979, a large wedding ceremony was held indoors at the YMCA in Seoul. A huge, well-heeled crowd had gathered, but the bride was absent, and the groom seemed distracted. The ceremony went ahead anyway. The groom’s name was called, and at that moment, loud chanting broke out, and a proclamation was read, demanding an immediate end to military dictatorship, fundamental democratic reforms and elections, and opposition to the farcical election of the president by an unrepresentative, subservient, sycophantic electoral college. Within minutes, the rally, announced as a wedding to throw off the authorities--the missing “bride’s” name was an anagram of “democratic government”--was dispersed by massive brute force, and the participants—including some of the most venerated activists in Korean History—were beaten, arrested, and spirited away to the Defense Security Command to be tortured. Baek Ki Wan [the organizer of the protest] was one of them. A year later, still in jail, Baek had just been interrogated and tortured within inches of his life, and was writhing alone in a freezing prison cell. Staring up at a 15-watt light bulb in his cell, at the utter end of his rope, Baek told himself, “I can’t just die like this.” Conjuring up his last powers, he composed up a chant, a prayer, a shamanic incantation to give himself strength and to pass on to others should he die. “Moetbinari,” “Prayer for the Mountain—A Song for a Shamanic Dancer of the South” was the result: Without leaving love, or name, a passionate vow to continue our whole lives, The fight was brave but the banner is torn, and though time flows, the winding rivers know, Comrades, until the new day comes, Do not falter! Even the river reeds stand up, Their voices shout out endlessly, Rise up, rise up, a blood-coagulated cry: I’ll go ahead, and you the living follow! After the massacre in Gwangju, at the nadir of the Korean resistance movement, these words, whispered from Baek’s hospital bed into the ears of visitors and transcribed into a poem, were adapted and put to music. They became the basis of the “wedding song” for two martyrs of the Gwangju democracy movement; a message of strength from the dead or dying to continue fighting. In South Korea, at every protest gathering, at every labor action, the March of the beloved is the anthem that is chanted with upraised fists at the beginning of each rally. It has become a pan-Asian protest song, accompanying mass movements in seven countries. (See here for the full history of the origins of the song). In 1990, during a peace march with violence incited by riot police. After the defeat of the military dictatorships, Baek continued his struggle fighting on the side of the oppressed against capitalism, while articulating and teaching a philosophy of communalism, sharing, and love called “Nonamaegi.” He also became the most sustained, uncompromising, and passionate voice for Korean reunification and for radical change: “Unless you fundamentally change the rotten society that capitalism has created, you cannot solve the problem. As workers, you have to understand that all labor struggles are a struggle to fundamentally change society.” 1992, the Revolutionary People's candidate for the 14th Presidential Election. His passion, clarity, integrity, strength, stamina, and depth of commitment were inspirational and legendary to generations. His words, hummed, shouted, incanted are the soundtrack of revolution in South Korea. His last message, foreshadowed in his poems, urged the continuation of the struggle against capital, injustice, and colonizing powers. No passing could undo his example or message: I’ll go ahead, and you the living following! With the neoliberal Biden administration primed to re-escalate tensions against North Korea to thwart reunification, his message to fight against colonization and capital becomes even more poignant and important. K.J. Noh is a scholar, journalist, and peace activist focused on the geopolitics of the Asia Pacific. He writes for Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Monthly Review Online, Black Agenda Report, and is the Asia-Pacific correspondent for KPFA Flashpoints. He is a member of peacepivot.org, a grassroots effort to de-escalate conflict in the Pacific.

Why I Pulled My Rebuttal from the International Review of Law and Economics By Jinah Kim | February 24, 2021 “Comfort Women: Column of Strength” memorial statue in San Francisco. Photo by Sung Sohn. I originally wrote this brief comment intending to have it published in the International Review of Law and Economics to rebut J. Mark Ramseyer’s article “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” strongly objecting to his misleading, inaccurate, and unethical analysis. However, after corresponding with the journal’s editorial board, I decided against publishing it there for three reasons: 1. instead of soliciting rebuttals, they should have done their job and conducted their own thorough review. This is not a situation where the editors are facilitating a difficult dialogue on a controversial topic, but one where they are displacing their failure to conduct due diligence onto other scholars. 2. I do not want to drive more traffic to their journal and increase their impact factor. 3. In addition to rebuttals, the editorial board invited comments in favor of Ramseyer’s article. I do not want to participate in a process that legitimates Ramseyer’s support of a horrific history through a pro-con discussion. I was first alerted to Ramseyer’s article on February 5, 2021 and sent my initial response on February 14. Like me, numerous scholars across disciplines have been working to scrutinize this article alongside Ramseyer’s recent body of scholarship, discovering a disturbing trend where among other issues of academic misconduct, he promotes misrepresentations and distortions to legitimate histories of violence against Korean comfort women and racialized minorities in Japan, including zainichi Koreans and burakumin. See the engaged scholarly response to Ramseyer’s work here. I deeply appreciate how this collective endeavor contributes to promoting the highest standards and safeguards for research and knowledge production. [This letter has been edited and revised. The original, which was submitted to but subsequently withdrawn by the author from the International Journal of Law and Economics, can be found here.] To the editors of the International Review of Law and Economics: I am writing to express extreme concern regarding the decision by the International Review of Law and Economics to publish J. Mark Ramseyer’s article, “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” in which he argues that Korean comfort women were prostitutes who collaborated with comfort station operators to create favorable “indenture contracts” that would entice them to want to go to the warfront and “work hard.”[1] This article is objectionable on every level, starting with the premise and including his faulty interpretation of primary sources. To be clear, there is no legal contract that protects perpetrators of sexual slavery and sex trafficking. No contracts have ever been found, moreover, in which the so-called comfort women agreed to indentured servitude. “Comfort women” is a euphemism for an estimated 200,000 sexually enslaved girls and women taken by the Japanese military from nations colonized and occupied by Japan during the World War II era. They suffered atrocious violence in an institutionalized and coordinated sex trafficking and forced sexual labor system that imprisoned and subjected them to frequent sexual violence and abuse. In 1991, Korean survivor Kim Hak-Sun halmoni publically testified to her experience as a comfort woman. This opened space for other women enslaved across Japanese-occupied territories including China, the Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, Malaysia, Burma, and Taiwan to testify. Survivors describe how they still suffer from physical and emotional pain and trauma. Their testimony prompted the 1993 Kono Statement, which acknowledged the Japanese Imperial Army’s role in the forcible recruitment of women and the administration of military comfort stations, ignited activism around Japanese military slavery, and prompted new research and scholarship that has supported global mobilization against gender-based violence. In a relatively short period of time, groups of concerned scholars have come together to critically scrutinize Ramseyer’s sources and assertions, definitively rebutting the article’s argument that the comfort women were willing prostitutes, not coerced sex slaves.[2] Particularly unethically, he distorts the life story of survivor Mun Okju to assert that comfort women profited from sexual slavery. Given the serious limitations of Ramseyer’s scholarship, it is unfathomable how this article could have passed the journal’s review process. To be clear, there is no legal contract that protects perpetrators of sexual slavery and sex trafficking. No contracts have ever been found, moreover, in which the so-called comfort women agreed to indentured servitude. As a scholar of the Korean comfort woman history and activism, I am additionally alarmed by how Ramseyer’s article contributes to a growing transpacific right-wing alliance centered on denying comfort women history. His building of his argument around consent perfectly aligns with the claim advanced by right-wing Japanese revisionists and legitimated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and members of the Liberal Democratic Party, who for decades have been fixating on the concept that comfort women were agents free from coercion.[3] Their argument is in service of refusing the comfort women demand for an official apology from the Japanese Diet. The attempts to delegitimize the claims of comfort women, despite the discovery of evidentiary corroboration of their testimony, have escalated in Japan over the past thirty years, including the removal of mention of comfort women from Japanese history books.[4] This denialist mobilization is transpacific in scope and must be contextualized against the rise in activism and scholarship around comfort women history in the United States, signaled by the building of comfort women memorials across the United States since 2010 and the passing of House Resolution 121 supporting redress for former comfort women in 2007. These measures have emboldened the Japanese right wing even further and given them renewed energy and a new platform for growing their movement.[5] Scholar Tomomi Yamaguchi notes the Japanese right-wing mobilization to remove a comfort women memorial that was built in 2010 in Palisades, NJ, as the start of the “so-called ‘history wars’” now explicitly expanded to include the United States.[6] In 2014 concerned scholars across the United States came together when the New York Consulate General for Japan’s Foreign Ministry, acting on behalf of Prime Minister Abe, demanded that McGraw-Hill revise its textbook, Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective, to correct its representation of comfort women.[7] Given how much has been written about coercion and consent with regard to comfort women history, it is hard to believe that Ramseyer is unaware of this debate. Like the U.S. alt-right, the most virulent of the comfort women deniers have relied on distorting the past and making up lies, with casting doubt on the testimony of comfort women being one of the most popular strategies.[8] The testimony of Korean survivor Mun Okju (also Mun Okchu) is often targeted for such abuse. According to her own account, Mun Okju was born in 1924 in Daegu.[9] In 1940 she was abducted and became a sexual slave for Japanese soldiers in Manchuria where she was regularly raped 20 to 30 times a day.[10] She was able to escape to Seoul, but Mun Okju was captured again and sent to Southeast Asia. Her story is well known to comfort women scholars, and her testimony has been translated into English in True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women: Testimonies Compiled by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan and the Research Association on the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.[11] Her experience has further been documented in a book dedicated to her life, first published in Japanese as Biruma sensen tateshidan no “ianfu” datta watashi[12] and then in Korean as Mun Okju halmeoni ildaegi.[13] Her narrative has been an important part of analysis around the comfort women history, featured in monographs by Joshua D. Pilzer, Anh Yonson, C. Sarah Soh, and George Hicks, as well as several articles.[14] Th[e] denialist mobilization is transpacific in scope and must be contextualized against the rise in activism and scholarship around comfort women history in the United States, signaled by the building of comfort women memorials across the United States since 2010 and the passing of House Resolution 121 supporting redress for former comfort women in 2007. Instead of relying on her own memoir or her testimony in True Stories, Ramseyer cites a pro-Japanese neo-nationalist website, where the moderator has picked out 12 quotations detailing only Mun Okju’s time in Burma and Vietnam near the end of her period in the comfort women system.[15] The website features numerous other articles denying comfort women history, the Rape of Nanking, and other atrocities perpetrated by Imperial Japan. These passages are decontextualized from the broader narrative web of Mun Okju’s life. They are specifically selected to make an argument that comfort women were happy, had freedom of mobility, and were well compensated. Mun Okju was a talented singer and sometimes received tips after she was made to entertain Japanese soldiers, which she saved. However, she was never able to retrieve her money, as her account was frozen by the Japanese government after the end of World War II.[16] Scholars such as Pilzer, Soh, and Hicks in their incorporation of her autobiography into their scholarship present her whole life story. They neither gloss over the fact that she may have earned tips nor deny that her experience has elements that demonstrate the complexity of the Japanese comfort system across the war front. Indeed, Mun Okju’s life points to how larger systems of state violence were negotiated and mediated in complex ways by the various subjects who were forced into the system. In his turn to Mun Okju’s experience, however, Ramseyer does not assess her story rigorously to create a wider and deeper understanding of the military comfort system, but to use her life and experience for his own gain. By contrast, feminist theorists, advocates for victims of gender-based violence, and human rights jurists argue that giving testimony and having their stories heard is a primary step in restoring dignity and can lead to healing for victims of gender-based violence.[17] Testimonies are the bedrock of victim-centered justice models. Oral histories are historical sources that foreground the importance of a reparative approach to history and address the gaps inherent in imperial archives. For example, consider how comfort women’s experiences were completely occluded from the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco or the 1965 ROK-Japanese Normalization Treaty, even though the U.S. military and Allied forces had explicit knowledge that the comfort women system existed.[18] Comfort women testimony and accounts from oral history have consistently come under attack from deniers who question the validity of memories as historical sources. Through such denials, the experiences of the victims are discredited and their dignity impugned. Like the U.S. alt-right, the most virulent of the comfort women deniers have relied on distorting the past and making up lies, with casting doubt on the testimony of comfort women being one of the most popular strategies. The accepted term used to describe the experiences of these women and girls is sexual slavery. The testimony of the comfort women, along with a broad and deep historical archive, including documents from the Japanese Self Defense Agency and U.S. military reports, substantiate that the victimization of these young women was organized by the Japanese Imperial Army. The first time the term was introduced to describe the comfort women history at the UN was in 1992 when Sin Heisoo spoke on behalf of the Korean Council and categorized the “comfort system” as sexual slavery.[19] In 1993, Theo Van Boven, Special Rapporteur of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities would amplify this term, using the expression “sexual slaves” concerning the comfort women system.[20]In 1996, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, challenged Japan’s objection to the term military sexual slavery, concluding that “the practice of ‘comfort women’ should be considered a clear case of sexual slavery and a slavery-like practice.”[21] In conjunction with the testimony of the victims of sexual slavery from the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and International Tribunal for Rwanda, the testimony of the comfort women from the 2000 Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery have been central to creating global accountability and forcing states to accept full legal and moral responsibility for sexual violence against women. Ramseyer offers absolutely no evidence that would over turn this overwhelming consensus that has built up over the past 30 years. That Ramseyer did not consult any scholarship in the field, such as the works of C. Sarah Soh, Pei Pei Qui, Yuki Tanaka, Bonnie Oh, Puja Kim, Laura Hyun Yi Kang, and Yoshimi Yoshiaki should have raised red flags about the problematic nature of this work. The International Review of Law and Economics should withdraw his article immediately. Yours truly, Jinah Kim Associate Professor in Communication Studies Faculty Affiliate in Asian Studies California State University, Northridge Jinah Kim is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and faculty affiliate in Asian Studies at the California State University, Northridge. Trained in literary and cultural studies, her scholarship focuses on the American Century in Asia, with a focus on the legacies of the Korean War and US military occupation in Asia and the Pacific Islands. She is the author of Postcolonial Grief: The Afterlives of the Pacific Wars in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2019). She is the recipient of the 2021 NEH Award to support her research, "Against Forgetting: Memory, Care, and Feminist Arts across the Transpacific.” She is a member of the Ending the Korean War Collective, an Executive Board Member of the Association for Asian American Studies, and a member of an Executive Committee for the Modern Language Association. [1] P.7, “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” International Review of Law and Economics, Volume 65, March 2021. [2] See Amy Stanley, Hannah Shepherd, Sakaya Chatani, David Ambaras, and Chelsea Szendi Schiedler, “Contracting for Sex In the Pacific War: The Case for Retraction on Ground of Academic Misconduct,” https://sites.google.com/view/concernedhistorians/home, accessed February 19, 2021. This situation is fast unfolding and there are other scholars also writing rebuttals and demanding that the journal pull the article. The resources to counter Ramseyer’s article are compiled by UCLA Political Scientist Michael Chwe on this website: https://chwe.net/irle/?fbclid=IwAR13dDdO3l04LKxI7YAONZH9ozzxdo0WlPQBESYogLAljBcR_-edv6G41Cs [3] In March 2007 Shinzo Abe stated when addressing the Japanese Diet that there is no evidence to prove that comfort women were coerced. In April 2015 at a lecture at Harvard Kennedy School, he denied that the Japanese military coordinated the sexual slavery system, stating that “comfort women were victims of human trafficking conducted by private recruiters.” For more on Shinzo Abe’s history of denial, see Tomomi Yamaguchi, “Japan’s Right Wing Women and the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue,” Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs, 6 (2020): 46. For a useful history of the arc of government denial, see Yoshiaki Yoshimi, “Government must admit ‘comfort women’ system was sexual slavery,” Asahi Shimbun: Asia and Japan Watch, September 20, 2013. [4] Yoshiko Nozaki, “Feminism, Nationalism, and the Japanese Textbook Controversy over ‘Comfort Women,’” in France Winddance Twine and Kathleen M. Blee, eds., Feminism & Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice (NY: New York University Press, 2001), 170-189. [5] Michael Honda and Kinue Tokudome, “The Japanese Apology on the “Comfort Women” Cannot be Considered Official: Interview with Congressman Michael Honda,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 5:5 (2007), https://apjjf.org/-Michael-Honda--Kinue-TOKUDOME/2438/article.pdf. [6] Yamaguchi, 47. [7] See Alexis Dudden, “Standing with Historians of Japan,” Perspectives on History, March 1, 2015, https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/march-2015/letter-to-the-editor-standing-with-historians-of-japan. According to the New York Times, the specific passage Abe objected to is: “The Japanese Army forcibly recruited, conscripted and dragooned as many as 200,000 women aged 14 to 20 to serve in military brothels.” Martin Fackler, “U.S. Textbook Skews History, Prime Minister of Japan Says,” New York Times, January 29, 2015. [8] For more on this debate, see Yoshiko Nozaki, “The ‘Comfort Women’ Controversy: History and Testimony” in The Asia-Pacific Journal 3:7 (2005), https://apjjf.org/-Yoshiko-Nozaki/2063/article.html. [9] Keith Howard, ed. and trans. Young Joo Lee, True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women: Testimonies Compiled by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan and the Research Association on the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (London: Cassell, 1995), 104. [10] Ibid, 106. [11] Ibid. [12] Mun Okuju with Morikawa Michiko, Biruma sensen tateshidan no “ianfu” datta watashi (Tokyo: Nashinokisha, 1996). [13] Mun Okju with Morikawa Michiko, Beoma jeonseon ilbongun “wianbu”: Mun Okju halmoni ildaegi (Seoul: Areumdaun saramdeul, 2005). [14] Joshua D. Pilzer, Hearts of Pine: Songs in the Lives of Three Korean Survivors of the Japanese “Comfort Women” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Anh Yonson, Whose Comfort? Body Sexuality, and Identity of Korean ‘Comfort Women’ and Japanese Soldiers during WWII (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2020); C. Sarah Soh. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Chicago: U Chicago, 2008); George Hicks. The Comfort Women: Sex Slaves of the Japanese Imperial Forces (St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1995). [15] Ramseyer’s quoting from Mun Okju’s narrative appears on page 6 of his article. The citation for his source is “KIH, Apr. 20, 2016, 2016b. Korea Institute of History. 2016 Former Korean Comfort Woman Mun Oku-chu,” which can be found on this website, http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.com/2014/10/former-korean-comfort-woman-mun-oku.html, accessed February 11, 2021. The organizing impulse for the blog is to collect articles that deny comfort women history and document pro-Japanese imperial sentiment by Koreans. Other blog titles from April 2016 include “Confronting Korea’s Censored Discourse on Comfort Women” by Professor Joseph Yi” and “Korean Wartime Sex Slaves is Fake News” by Professor Ikuhiko Hata.” Mun Okju’s autobiography has regularly been cited partially by those seeking to discredit comfort women’s claim of sexual slavery, with deniers pointing to the same passages on the KIH website. Another section of her autobiography which gets a great deal of attention is a section where she narrates her experience of being put on trial for killing a Japanese soldier. See this website as an example of the latter: http://harc.tokyo/en/?p=76, accessed February 13, 2021. [16] P.79, Sejung Sage Yim, Thomas Chung, and Min Pyong Gap. Japanese Military Sexual Slavery: The Transnational Redress Movement for the Victims. Munchen: De Gruyter, 2020. [17] Elizabeth Son, Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018) 14. [18] See Yoshiaki’s analysis of materials from the Japanese Defense Agency which constitutes the core of Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, trans. S. O’Brien (NY: Columbia University Press, 2000). Also see United States Office of War Information, Psychological Warfare Team Attached to US Army Forces India Burma Theatre, “Japanese Prisoner of War Interrogation Report No. 49,” APO 689. This report was produced by the Office of War Information of the U.S. Army forces in CBI (China-Burma-India) Theatre and based on an interview conducted by a US soldier with 20 comfort women and two Japanese comfort station operators. The report confirms that the Japanese military operated the comfort system, including the discovery that “the conditions under which they transacted business were regulated by the Army.” [19]Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Traffic in Asian Women (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020), 8. [20] Christine Levy, trans. Anne Epstein, “The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal, Tokyo 2000: a feminist response to revisionism?” in Clio: Women, Gender, History Journal 39 (2014): 130. [21] Quoted in Kang, 13. Original quotation comes from Radhika Coomaraswamy, Report on the Mission to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea and Japan on the Issue of Military Sexual Slavery in Wartime. Report submitted to the 52nd session of the UN Commission on Human Rights (E/CN.4/1996/53/Add.1) (New York: UN Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Economic and Social Council, 1996), 4.

By Alexis Dudden | February 25, 2021 | Originally published in The Asia-Pacific Journal For those who read Professor Ramseyer’s article at face value, unseen are assertions that advocate a current Japanese political ideology. This worldview is racially essentialist, revanchist, and history-denying, resonant with similar movements around the world such as Trumpism, LePenism, Modi-ism, and so on.[1] In Japan, among other things the impulse seeks to challenge universalisms that have grounded Japan’s post-World War II legal, economic, and social order.[2] Were it to succeed, for example, its adherents’ proposal for revising Japan’s standing constitution would replace the current preamble, “We, the Japanese people,” for an entirely different one: “Japan is a nation with a long history and unique culture.”[3] In the case of Ramseyer’s article, the ruse becomes apparent first with his deployment of the term “contract,” a legal, economic, and social agreement that in this article’s usage presupposes equal bodies freely negotiating. Even if there were physical evidence of these “contracts,” it would be alarming to ascribe it to occurrences of sexual exploitation and extreme violence at any time or any place. It is nothing less than shameful, however, to deploy this term to a history that the United Nations and Amnesty International have determined a “crime against humanity.”[4] Moreover, its meaning is moot during the era of Imperial Japan (1868-1945) because there were no “citizens” freely acting as such. All individuals—Japanese nationals and colonials alike—were “subjects” of the emperor, whose “conditions necessary for being a Japanese subject (were) determined by law,” which the Japanese emperor “sanction(ed) and order(ed).”[5] Economic, gender, and racial factors informed these “conditions” and generated clear hierarchies of personhood. Simply put, all men were not created equal—let alone women in general, let alone women and minors from Japan’s colonially occupied territories. Us Versus Them “Contracting for Sex” has clear flaws with evidence and referencing.[6] This begs the question of the value of responding to the essay at all. Put differently, why bother when there is no “there” there? Leaving aside the matter that certain political interests in Japan are already using Ramseyer’s article to advance their views, it is critical during this global moment of disinformation and misinformation to highlight specific strategies and to hold responsible those parties that elevate fake news as fact.[7] In this instance, the issue boils down to race-baiting. In Ramseyer’s article, this takes form through its myopic focus on Koreans, which reveals the piece not as an academic effort, but instead as a regurgitated belief presented with the veneer of scholarly credibility. This may surprise those new to the study of Imperial Japan’s state sponsored system of military sexual slavery (as the US State Department like Amnesty and the UN labels this crime).[8] After all, Koreans comprised the largest number of its tens if not most likely hundreds of thousands of victims, making it appear natural to focus on this category of people alone. Yet Ramseyer’s article has nothing to do with the victims and their victimhood. If it did, he would have wanted also to analyze conditions for other groups of people such as Taiwanese or Okinawans, who, like Koreans, became ensnared in this system before Japanese troops launched their full-scale invasion of China (Ramseyer seems determined to make a sharp division along this chronological fault line although survivors do not).[9] Instead, behind a veil of seemingly rational economic theory to prove a point unprovable because the evidence is absent, the article recycles base, racially charged dog whistles for those listening: “(the women) could shirk or take the money and run;” “Korea had a problem distinct from any in Japan. It had a large corps of labor recruiters, and those recruiters had a history of deceptive tactics;” “(the women) earned considerably more than they would earn in other employment.”[10] Ironically, the article’s absence of analysis of the first known legal record of victims of this historical crime—and, most important, the conditions of their victimization­—reveals the strategy involved here, and, moreover, confirms that “contract” has no place in this discussion.[11] In his 2006 English-language publication, Etsuro Totsuka, one of Japan’s pre-eminent international law scholars, analyzed the 1932 well-documented instance of trafficking 15 Japanese women by Japanese men through Nagasaki to one of the first known so-called “comfort stations” established in Shanghai by the Imperial Navy (not the Army). In 1936, a Nagasaki court found guilty the Japanese men who had deceived the women about the terms of their employment, rendering empty Ramseyer’s contention “any notion that (the women) had been tricked by duplicitous recruiters (is implausible).”[12] In Professor Totsuka’s peer-reviewed and published words: The author has had the good fortune to locate the earliest District Court and Appeal Court judgements of the Japanese criminal court against ten private entrepreneurs, who deceived and trafficked 15 Japanese women from Nagasaki to a Japanese Naval “comfort station” in Shanghai, China. It was already known as early as 1997 that in 1937 the then Supreme Court had endorsed the judgments of the District Court and the Appeal Court. The lower Courts’ judgement, however, had not been found. As it was assumed by the researchers, including myself, that the judgments must have been destroyed by the atomic bomb dropped in August 1945 by the United States onto Nagasaki City, nobody attempted to find them. They, however, had survived. …The Court found that all defendants under a series of conspiracies deceived and trafficked 15 Japanese women in Nagasaki to a Japanese Naval “comfort station” in Shanghai, China and that they were guilty of committing crimes defined by Article 226 (1) and (2) of the Penal Code.[13] Totsuka argues that this fresh evidence should encourage additional investigation by researchers “to discover the reasons why the law was not effectively enforced in Japanese colonies, particularly in Korea” where “the pattern of recruitment (was) strikingly similar to the many Korean cases of the abduction of women.”[14] One of the primary reasons for studying any state-sponsored atrocity in the past is to learn how it happened in order to try to prevent ongoing occurrences of similar violence and not to abuse history by weaponizing it for present purposes. Academic freedom is a core tenet of constitutional democracies, yet academic lies are not. The words we use to write law and history appear intelligible to specialist and non-specialist alike. Looked at differently, were Professor Ramseyer’s article to have been published in Nature it would be demonstrated for the irreproducible experiment it is. The challenge remains to expand education about this crime against humanity so that undetected denialist racialist claims never again pass for scholarly inquiry. Alexis Dudden is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. Her most recent book, Troubled Apologies, interrogates the interplay between political apology and apologetic history among Japan, Korea, and the United States. She is currently working on a project examining Japan’s territorial disputes. [1] Tawara Yoshifumi, “What is the Aim of Nippon Kaigi, the Ultra-Right Organization that Supports Japan’s Abe Administration?” in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 15, Issue 21, Number 1, 1 November 2017 https://apjjf.org/2017/21/Tawara.html [2] Keigo Komamura, “Constitution and Narrative in the Age of Crisis in Japanese Politics,” 26 Wash. L. Rev. 75 (2017). https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol26/iss1/5/?utm_source=digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol26/iss1/5&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages [3] Harvard University Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Constitutional Research Project: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/crrp See the English translation of the 2012 “Draft for the Amendment of the Constitution of Japan” archived together with numerous commentaries in English and Japanese on the open access site. [4] Radhika Coomaraswamy (1996) and Gay J. McDougall (1998), UN Commission on Human Rights. (UN Doc. E/CN.4/1996/53/Add.1); (UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13). [5] Chapter II, “Rights and Duties of Subjects,” Article XVIII and Chapter I, “The Emperor,” Article VI of the Meiji Constitution, which is available in English online through Columbia University’s “Asia For Educators” open access portal, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/japan/meiji_constitution.pdf In this instance, the source is Ito Hirobumi’s, Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (originally translated and published by Ito Miyoji in 1889); this appears also in Arthur Tiedmann, Modern Japan: A Brief History New York: D. Van Nortrand Reinhold Co., 1962). [6] Amy Stanley, Hannah Shepherd, Sayaka Chatani, David Ambaras, and Chelsea Szendi Schieder, “’Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War’: The Case for Retraction on Grounds of Academic Misconduct,” Letter to the Editors of IRLE, February 16, 2021; also, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Letter to the Editors of IRLE, February 11, 2021. [7] An effort supported and launched by Ramseyer himself with his January 12, 2021 opinion essay published on the unapologetically neo-nationalist website, “Japan Forward;” see, J. Mark Ramseyer, "Recovering the Truth About the Comfort Women,” japan-forward.com. Subsequently, related Japanese-language media picked up the story to promote its effort, turning the moment into the political issue it has now become around the world. [8] Eric Randall, “Hilary Clinton and Japan are in a Tiff Over ‘Sex Slaves’ and ‘Comfort Women,’” The Atlantic, July 12, 2012 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/hillary-clinton-and-japan-are-tiff-over-sex-slaves-and-comfort-women/325986/ [9] Survivor testimonials in the documentary, “Breaking the History of Silence,” Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery, Tokyo, Japan, 2000; available free on the open-access website of the Tokyo Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace: https://wam-peace.org/en/ [10] I reject Ramseyer’s use of the term “prostitute” for this history and have used “women” although “minor children” may be correct, too; Ramseyer, “Contracting Sex,” 2; 6. See, Koboyashi Yoshinori’s best-selling, Sensōron (On War) (Tokyo: Gentosha, 1998), 280: “Because it was a war zone and dangerous, the money was great. There were lots of them who earned more than 10 times what a college graduate did in those days and 100 times more than a soldier. In 2-3 years they built houses back in their hometowns.” [11] See among other excellent publications, Nishino Rumiko and Onozawa Akane, eds., Nihonjin ‘Ianfu’: Aikokushin to Jinshinbaibai to (Japanese ‘Comfort Women’: Patriotism and Human Trafficking) (Tokyo: Gendai Shokan, 2015). [12] Ramseyer, 4 [13] Etsuro Totsuka, “Could Systematic Sexual Violence against Women during War Time Have Been Prevented? —Lessons from the Japanese Case of ‘Comfort Women,’ 506-507 [14] Totsuka, Ibid., 512; 508.

By Sung Sohn | February 23, 2021 Group photo from the multimedia traveling exhibition "Truth & Justice: Remembering 'Comfort Women,"” San Francisco, 2018 Photo credit: Education for Social Justice Foundation I. Implications The Seoul Central District Court’s historic ruling on January 8, 2021 clearly declares that state immunity does not cover crimes against humanity. The ruling reaffirms that the Japanese military’s commission of crimes against humanity by sexually enslaving hundreds of thousands of “comfort women” victims is one of the most inhumane schemes in modern human history. The landmark ruling reminds the world that crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations and that all individuals have equal access to justice. This essay discusses the following: first, the significant implications of this ruling; second, arguments against this ruling; and third, the importance of remembering and honoring the history and legacy of victims of Japanese military sexual slavery. Perspectives of justice-seeking individuals and organizations in the United States on this ruling close this essay. The major implications of this ruling are three-fold. First, as the ruling clearly indicates, state immunity is inapplicable to crimes against humanity. Justice Kim Jeong-Gon stated that “even if it was a country’s sovereign act, state immunity cannot be applied as it was committed against our citizens on the Korean peninsula that was illegally occupied by Japan.”[1] He added that Japanese military sexual slavery was “a crime against humanity that was systematically, deliberately, and extensively committed by Japan in breach of international norms.”[2] This first proposition is also evidenced by other rulings on war crimes. One such ruling can be found in the case Germany v. Italy: Greece intervening. On June 10, 1944, hundreds of civilians in Distomo, Greece, women and children among them, were slaughtered by the Nazis. The plaintiffs, victims of the Distomo Massacre, waged a decades-long legal battle demanding that the German government pay reparations to the victims. Unable to make progress, as their last resort, they took their case to the Italian judiciary. Finally, in 2014, the Italian Constitutional Court ruled that sovereign or state immunity for war crimes like the Distomo Massacre violated the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Italian constitution. The Italian Constitutional Court’s 2014 ruling explicitly rejected the International Court of Justice’s 2012 ruling that Italy violated the state immunity of Germany. The second major implication of the January 8 ruling involved a reaffirmation that the Japanese military’s system of mass sexual slavery constituted a crime against humanity. This finding follows from existing international precedent. In June 1998, Gay McDougall, U.N. Special Rapporteur, released her report on the Issue of Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery, and Slavery-like Practices During Armed Conflicts, defining “comfort women” systems as crimes against humanity.[3] A month later, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court added sexual slavery as a crime against humanity.[4] The Imperial Japanese government used various methods—including kidnapping, deceptive recruitment, pressure on families, and human trafficking—to establish and operate the military sexual slavery system. By implementing a state-sanctioned military sexual slavery system, Japan violated international laws, including the following[5]: 1) Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907); 2) International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921); and 3) Slavery Convention (1926); 4) International Labor Organization Convention Concerning Forced Labor or Compulsory Labor (1930). The third and final major implication of the Seoul Central District Court’s ruling is that, as was also found by the 2014 Italian Constitutional Court’s ruling, crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations. Furthermore, it’s significant to note that this court ruling carried out the plaintiffs’ right of equal access to justice. The Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels, released at the U.N.’s sixty-seventh General Assembly session in 2012, emphasizes “the right of equal access to justice for all, including members of vulnerable groups, … to taking all necessary steps to provide fair, transparent, effective, non-discriminatory and accountable services that promote access to justice for all, including legal aid.”[6] This declaration pays particularly close attention to women, recommitting to “establishing appropriate legal and legislative frameworks to prevent and address all forms of discrimination and violence against women and to secure their empowerment and full access to justice.”[7] Ok-Seon Yi, one of the surviving “comfort women” victims who filed the lawsuit, commented on the ruling as follows: “Japan may wait for all victims to die. Japan must apologize before all victims die.” I hope that she and other surviving victims find some solace in knowing that crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations. The pursuit of justice never ends. II. Misunderstandings and misinformation The January 8 ruling constitutes a step in the right direction for a collective restorative justice movement. However, despite the ruling’s significant progress, there are some misunderstandings and misinformation that need to be addressed. Some people may erroneously believe that this ruling is about twelve “comfort women” plaintiffs merely pursuing compensation for their suffering. Not so. In demanding reparations, the victims call for a both formal and symbolic acknowledgment of the Japanese military’s war crimes. In comparison, the monetary amount of the reparations has little significance. Every victory begins with a small step. I view Korea’s recent court ruling as not only a welcome and long-overdue state recognition of the rights and claims of these women (and sadly the many who have passed away) but also as a rebuke to seventy years of U.S. meddling in Korean affairs, including the erasure of Japanese atrocities for the sake of strengthening the U.S., South Korea, and Japan cooperation. --Ramsay Liem According to the Oxford English Dictionary, compensation is defined as something, typically money, awarded to someone as a recompense for loss, injury, or suffering. By this definition, reparations constitute compensation for war crimes—compensation paid for by the perpetrator, which in so doing acknowledges their guilt. The plaintiff “comfort women” victims demand this crucial acknowledgement. Likewise, they demand a formal apology ratified by the Japanese government legislature as opposed to one-off apologies made by Japanese officials. In response, Japan has argued that South Korean individuals do not have the right to claim reparations due to the 1965 agreement between South Korea and Japan. But in 1999, the International Labour Organization formally demanded that the Japanese government provide compensation to forced labor victims and work to provide restitution. Moreover, since the 2000s, international law has strongly trended towards the view that individual claims do not expire as the result of negotiations between countries.[8] In 2018, Seita Yamamoto, an attorney specializing in postwar compensation, recognized this international standard: “The ruling by the Supreme Court of Japan [and the Japanese government] that the South Korea-Japan treaty means that the individual right to make claims exists but claims in court are unacceptable goes against international norms.”[9] Japan has also repeatedly brought up the 2015 “comfort women” agreement, stating that the agreement was “final and irreversible.” Under this argument, the rights of “comfort women” victims to pursue justice today are nonexistent. However, the 2015 deal, made without the consent of victims who denounce it, was essentially nullified in 2019. III. The importance of remembering and honoring the history and legacy of victims of Japanese military sexual slavery Since this case was brought in 2013 by twelve Korean victims, euphemistically known as “comfort women,” seven have passed away. Nonetheless, this ruling provides the consolation that survivors, living and deceased, sought for decades: for the unending trauma and sexual violence they endured to finally be recognized. Their admirable resilience and the Seoul Central District Court’s landmark ruling remind us that the world has no tolerance for crimes against humanity. A nation cannot hide behind state immunity to escape the consequences of its war crimes. The successful struggle of “comfort women” victims sets yet another empowering precedent for victims of other crimes against humanity and undelivered justice to claim their rights. [The Seoul Central District Court] ruling declares that human rights take precedence over state immunity and inter-country agreements, especially when victims are not invited to the discussion table. By remembering and honoring the legacy and history of “comfort women,” we gain a crucial lesson about the causes and consequences of military sexual slavery, which constitutes a grave violation of human rights and a crime against humanity. This chilling case serves as a valuable teaching resource for the prevention and elimination of sexual violence. It must be heeded as a warning against all forms of sexual violence, state-sponsored or otherwise. The inhumane story of “comfort women” is a deeply relevant history rooted in imperialism, discrimination, and historical denial—fundamental problems that echo across history to today. This ruling declares that human rights take precedence over state immunity and inter-country agreements, especially when victims are not invited to the discussion table. IV. The International Community’s Perspectives on South Korea January 8, 2021[MOU1] Court’s Ruling The victims of the Japanese military’s system of sexual slavery stood up and led a courageous fight for justice. Justice-seeking and peace-advocating individuals promoting human rights will continue the restorative justice movement begun and led by the surviving victims for peace, justice, and empowerment. Starting in Korea, the movement has since spread to other countries in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Below are remarks from supporters of the restorative justice movement for victims of Japanese military sexual slavery, commenting on the ruling: Ramsay Liem Professor Emeritus of Psychology Center for Human Rights and International Justice Boston College I view Korea’s recent court ruling as not only a welcome and long-overdue state recognition of the rights and claims of these women (and sadly the many who have passed away) but also as a rebuke to seventy years of U.S. meddling in Korean affairs, including the erasure of Japanese atrocities for the sake of strengthening the U.S., South Korea, and Japan cooperation. The ‘Normalization Treaty’ of 1965 between South Korea and Japan is the historical foundation for Japanese intransigence, and an agreement primarily in service of Japanese and U.S. interests. The Seoul Central District Court’s ruling is foremost a historic acknowledgement of the years of courageous struggle by these women and their supporters and a welcome expression of Korean sovereignty. Uldis Kruze Professor of History University of San Francisco The issue of the military sex slaves carries universal resonance. The Korean court demonstrated courage and affirmation of historical reality in its judgment. Some analysis focuses on the implications of this ruling for current diplomacy and power politics between South Korea, Japan, and the new Biden administration. Some also say that Koreans are never satisfied with what the Japanese side has brought but always want more. This misses the mark. The issue is justice and historical accuracy and respect for the genuine sufferings of the Korean people. In September 1990, the late Japanese political figure Shin Kanemaru and the late Social democratic leader Makoto Tanabe affirmed the need for a broad acceptance of Japanese responsibility for its colonial oppression of Korea and its post-1945 unequal treatment of divided Korea. They spoke of apologies and compensation. These Japanese political leaders found the will and courage to say what needed to be said. Prime Minister Suga should follow in their footsteps. Rose Camastro-Pritchett, MFA Artist, Writer, Educator Rosecamastropritchett.com Since 2013 I have done extensive research on the “comfort women” and I have created a body of artwork which continues to be exhibited internationally. My intent is to illustrate how the Japanese government systematically and violently rounded up over 200,000 women to be used as sex slaves for the Japanese military during WWll and to recognize the suffering of the women who were abused. Crimes have consequences. The Japanese government must acknowledge what they did and reparations must be paid. It was a war crime and as such there is no statute of limitations. A lack of acknowledgement, apology and reparation ignores the crime and gives sanction to other governments to continue to commit crimes against women. It must be stopped. Christine Hong Associate Professor, Literature Director, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Co-director, Center for Racial Justice Co-editor of the journal, Critical Ethnic Studies University of California, Santa Cruz The realization of justice for the survivors of Japan’s Pacific War system of military sexual slavery is just as essential to the decolonizing process for Korea as it is to the deimperializing process for Japan. It has been a long three decades since Kim Hak-Soon first came forward to identify herself publicly as a former “comfort woman,” as a prelude to the launching of a landmark class-action lawsuit against Japan. Hers was the courageous voice that not only galvanized other survivors to identify themselves as such but also launched myriad lawsuits against Japan for the crime of military sexual slavery. Yet in the decades to follow, one class-action lawsuit after another stalled or failed in the notoriously slow Japanese legal system. All the while, the survivors of military sexual slavery and the activist networks that supported them ceaselessly organized for long-overdue justice, exploring every legal avenue possible, including by staging innovative legal proceedings like the 2000 Women's International War Crimes Tribunal held in Tokyo and pursuing novel interpretations of U.S. alien tort law. Yet formal justice for the survivors has remained elusive in Japanese and U.S. legal systems. In the wake, however, of Park Geun-hye’s brokering of a devil’s bargain with the Abe Shinzo government in late 2015—a fundamental betrayal of the survivors—the South Korean courts have served up two noteworthy judgments with regard to Korean “comfort women” for the U.S. military and the Japanese Imperial Army: namely, the early 2017 Seoul Central District Court ruling that described the forcible detention of Cold War-era camp town prostitutes as a massive human rights violation and the early 2021 decision by the same court that described the Pacific War-era “ianfu (慰安婦)” system as a crime against humanity and ordered Japan to pay victims or their families (in the case of deceased “comfort women”) reparations. The message that the Seoul Central District Court has sent with these cases is clear: the human rights of Korean women subjected to imperial systems of violent sexual subjection and exploitation cannot be bargained away between nations. As the survivors have tirelessly made clear, the time for justice is now. Statement on Decision by South Korean court on reparations for “comfort women” US Women’s Caucus at the UN January 17, 2021 We applaud the January 8, 2021 decision by the South Korean Seoul Central District Court that awards long-overdue acknowledgement and reparations to Korean “comfort women.” This historic decision holds Japan accountable for its wartime system of sexual slavery that impressed some 200,000 women and girls, mainly Korean, into involuntary servitude across Asia. The sexual torture of these innocent people was deliberately planned and carried out by Japanese military authorities and lasted for years. The suffering of the “comfort women” reflects the vulnerability of women and girls in patriarchal societies, especially during wartime. UN Security Council Resolution 1820 on women, peace, and security called rape in armed conflict a war crime and stressed the importance of excluding crimes of sexual violence from amnesty provisions at war's end. The Council called on states to end impunity for those responsible for crimes of sexual violence in order to build a sustainable peace. The South Korea court ruling complies with and advances the Security Council's mandate. We admire and offer our gratitude to the courageous women who told their stories of sexual slavery and to the feminist allies who helped them obtain this measure of justice. We hope that Japan, a good friend of the US, will redress the regrettable mistakes of the past, affirm the value of abiding by UN resolutions, and comply with the court’s order. For more information: The Rev. Susan H. Lee, Ph.D. (uswomenscaucus@gmail.com) Sung Sohn is the co-founder and executive director of the Education for Social Justice Foundation. She is a former bilingual resource and classroom teacher who founded the Korean/English Two-Way Immersion Program at the San Francisco Unified School District in 1994. Sung is the author of Korean Two-Way Immersion Curriculum Guide, Grades K-1 (1994), “Comfort Women” History and Issues: Teacher Resource Guide (2018), and “Comfort Women” History and Issues: Student Resource Guide (2018). “Comfort Women” History and Issues: Teacher Resource Guide (3rd ed.), is her latest publication. [1] McCurry, Justin. “Seoul court orders Japan to pay damages over wartime sexual slavery,” The Guardian, Jan.8, 2021. [2]. Ibid. [3] McDougall, Gay J. “Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-Like Practices During Armed Conflict: Final Report,” U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13, Jun. 22, 1998, p. 41. [4] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, International Criminal Court [5] Yoshiaki, Yoshimi. Comfort Women, Columbia University Press, 2000, pp. 155–160. [6] The United Nations. 2012, Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels. [7] Ibid. [8] “[Fact check] S. Korean individuals have the right to claim compensation from Japan,” The Hankyoreh, Aug. 7, 2019. [9] “Japanese foreign minister acknowledges rights of individual victims of forced labor to make claims,” The Hankyoreh, Nov. 17, 2018. [MOU1]Possibly just capitalize the first word in keeping with the other subtitles.