Korean Demilitased zone -World March for Peace and Nonviolence visiting Korean Demilitarised zone in 2009
(Base Team visiting Korean Demilitarised zone in 2009, http://www.theworldmarch.org/)
In February, at winter Olympic game in South Korea(1), most people were surprised to heard of a possible Reunification between South Korea and North Korea (2).
A few weeks ago many Peace and Nonviolence activists around the world were interested by the new development from USA, Russia and China with a possible agreement for peace and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
A few weeks ago many Peace and Nonviolence activists around the world were interested by the new development from USA, Russia and China with a possible agreement for peace and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Korean Peninsula has been divided for the last 55 years and thousands of families are devided since. To understand the context of the Peninsula let's go back a few decade ago.
Korea gained independence from Japan in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, than the country was divided into two Korea after the war in the 50's. This war resulted in 2,5 millions dead and injured and it is estimated that 10 million families were divided between North and South Korea. With no means for families to be reunited.
The Korean Demilitarised zone is a strip of land that divides the Korean Peninsula roughly in half, since 55 years and it is the most heavily militarised border in the world. The World March for Peace and Nonviolence Base Team participated with local peace activists in 2009 and visited the Demilitarised zone.
Korea gained independence from Japan in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, than the country was divided into two Korea after the war in the 50's. This war resulted in 2,5 millions dead and injured and it is estimated that 10 million families were divided between North and South Korea. With no means for families to be reunited.
The Korean Demilitarised zone is a strip of land that divides the Korean Peninsula roughly in half, since 55 years and it is the most heavily militarised border in the world. The World March for Peace and Nonviolence Base Team participated with local peace activists in 2009 and visited the Demilitarised zone.
World March for peace and Nonviolence
I had the chance to explain the Korean context during the World March for Peace and nonviolence in 2009 in classroom with students from Quebec.
In fact, hundreds of thousands of people participated to World March for peace and nonviolence that travels the world asking for the end of wars, the dismantling of nuclear weapons and for an end to all forms of violence (physical, economic, racial, religious, cultural, sexual and psychological).
Thousands of students across the world participated by organizing walk, peace symbol and various cultural activities. Students were denouncing all forms of violence. The World March for peace and nonviolence begin in New Zealand on October 2, 2009, the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth, declared the “International Day of Non-Violence” by the United Nations and was will conclude in the Andes Mountains (Punta de Vacas, Aconcagua, Argentina) on January 2, 2010.
The March last 90 days, three long months and the Base team pass through all climates and seasons, from the hot summer of the tropics and the deserts, to the winter of Siberia.
Base team at the Korean Demilitarised zone
Tony Robinson was part of the World March Base Team that visit the Korean Demilitarised zone in 2009. Later in 2013 Robinson wrote a book presenting his personal note from various events and his quest for meaning in life. His book explain his experience with the Universalist Humanism. According to Robinson Universalist Humanism has to be lived. He lived it fully since 1989 and during the World March. He visited the Korean Peninsula demilitarised zone and participated with local activist in a round table discussion for Peace and Reunification in Seoul.
In fact, since 1985, Robinson has been active in various project in the Humanist Movement founded by Argentine writer and thinker Silo. He was World without Wars and without Violence spoke person from 2009 to 2011. Today Robinson is an active member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000. Abolition 2000 & World without Wars and without violence are part of ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons). ICAN is a coalition of non-governmental organizations in one hundred countries promoting adherence to and implementation of the United Nations nuclear weapon ban treaty. (A global agreement was adopted in New York in July 2017). ICAN received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
Unfortunately medias across Canada and US didn't spread widely ICAN campaign even if they won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
Finally in addition to his various commitment Robinson is one of the co-directors of Pressenza, International Press Agency and a trustee of Footseps for Africa, a UK-based charity which builds schools and medical facilities in Kenya. He works as an IT consultant for telecommunication companies.
To give the readers a “taste” of the Korean Peninsula historical context I presented a chapter of Robinson book: “Coffee with Silo, and the Quest for Meaning in Life”.
(Base Team visiting South Korea, meeting with activist for Reunification, http://www.theworldmarch.org/)
The Korean Demilitarised Zone*
16th October 2009
So, we spent the night in a Buddhist retreat
centre, very basic yet very warn and very comfortable. Breakfast was another
strange affair from the point of view of unknown food, but no one complained of
hunger later in the day.
Today though was a serious day and gave us a
lot of things to think about. The first being that South Korea and North Korea
are still officially at war and between the two sides there are 1,000,000
soldiers. The Koreans are from a civilisation that goes back 5000 years and the
last 1% of that time has been spend as a divided people. It's like building a
wire fence across the United Kingdom between Liverpool and Hull and saying to
the people on one side, “So, you will have nothing to do with the people on the
other side. You can't contact your family in any way. If you live on the
other side, I<m sorry, but you have to stay here.”
In the day of mobile phones and internet, the
people in the North and South are even unable to exchange letters with each
other. It’s a totally inhuman situation. And also it’s something that I think
very few people in the West are really conscious of. It's like the days of
the Berlin Wall and in these times also the experiences of the Palestinians in
the occupied territories.
The people of Korea have asked the World March
to adopt their issue as one of the issues of the March and we are happy to do
it and inform people where we can.
There is a complicated political situation around
the issue and I’m sure we don’t understand even a small amount. There is a UN
force here which according to local peace activists is nothing more than a
puppet US force. There was also a UN Security Council resolution to dissolve
the force which was passed back in the 70s but still has not been implemented.
Anyway, today was extraordinary, because we
visited the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) and we understand that we are the first
foreigners to visit the Zone in 56 years of its existence. Now this sounds
amazing if it’s true and it is true that it was hardly a tourist attraction
when we got there. Maybe we are the
first to visit this part of the DMZ, at the mouth of the river Han, an
important ecological point as well as historical for the people of Korea. When
we got there, were just a few soldiers who followed us, and an old Lady growing
rice and millet. There are barded wire fences everywhere, yet great calm. At least
asleep during the day and like owls they come out at night. Anyway, we heard
from people whose families are on the other side of the border. We heard from
Sung Yong Park, our host, who explained how the place he was born in tin the
DMZ now and that when he was growing up he lived with loud speakers in the
village broadcasting propaganda messages to the people in the North and hearing
propaganda messages to the people in the South.
We had lunch in the DMZ – a roll of sushi and a
banana. Rafa said a few words and we went to the next point which is an
observatory point where you get a good view of the North. This is like a
tourist point where members of the public can come and “see the other side”.
There we had a minute<s silence thinking of those who are split from their
families, and the many hundreds of people who died trying to cross the river to
the other side.
Later we went for a meeting with local activists
where we discussed the issues more and we were asked as guests to talk about
how think the Koreans can advance towards reunification. What could we say! But
it made me think, what could Gandhi do in this situation. Surely, one day he
would have left his Korean Ashram and started a March. He would have explained
the need to reduce military spending and to act with love towards one’s enemies.
He would have spread a message of peace around Korea. Then one day he would
have approached the wire fence, and taken a pair of metal cutters from his
small bag and made one cut in the fence. The fence would have come down within
six months. For Gandhi, he wouldn’t care at all that one side had a fence and
weapons and the other side had renounced all of that. For him it would have been
his truth and history shows that his truth was not a bad one.
The need for each one of us to develop a little
Gandhi within ourselves is the message of the World March. However, each one of
us may express in it the words used in our organisations, in our religions, in
our philosophies and our beliefs, but the message of treating others the way we
want to be treated is at the root of this March. When one sees the suffering of
the Korean people, one realises this more than ever.
(1) & (2) Source wikipedia:
(1) Despite the initial plan of a unified Korea in the 1943 Cairo Declaration, escalating Cold War antagonism between the Soviet Union and the United States eventually led to the establishment of separate governments, each with its own ideology, leading to the division of Korea into two political entities in 1948: North Korea and South Korea. In the South, Syngman Rhee, an opponent of communism, who had been backed and appointed by the United States as head of the provisional government, won the first presidential elections of the newly declared Republic of Korea in May. In the North, however, a former anti-Japanese guerrilla and communist activist, Kim Il-sung was appointed premier of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in September.
(2) North Korea officially describes itself as a self-reliant socialist state, various media outlets have called it Stalinist,[particularly noting the elaborate cult of personality around Kim Il-sung and his family. The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), led by a member of the ruling family,holds power in the state and leads the Democratic
The international environment changed with the election of U.S. president George W. Bush in 2001. His administration rejected South Korea's Sunshine Policy and the Agreed Framework. The U.S. government treated North Korea as a rogue state, while North Korea redoubled its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons to avoid the fate of Iraq. On 9 October 2006, North Korea announced it had conducted its first nuclear weapons test.
U.S. President Barack Obama adopted a policy of "strategic patience", resisting making deals with North Korea for the sake of defusing tension.Tensions with South Korea and the United States increased in 2010 with the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan and North Korea's shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.
On 17 December 2011, the supreme leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il died from a heart attack. His youngest son Kim Jong-un was announced as his successor.In the face of international condemnation, North Korea continued to develop its nuclear arsenal, possibly including a hydrogen bomb and a missile capable of reaching the United States.
In 2018, a détente developed, based on North Korea's participation in the Winter Olympics in South Korea. On 8 March 2018, South Korean officials announced that U.S. President Donald Trump might meet with Kim Jong-un before May to hold high level talks about denuclearization.
On 12 June 2018, the first meeting between North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-Un, and a US President, Donald Trump, occurred in Singapore, in the context of the 2018 North Korea-United States summit. The summit, while largely symbolic, was widely hailed internationally as a strong first step towards peace and denuclearization on the peninsula.
North Korea is widely accused of having perhaps the worst human rights record in the world. North Koreans have been referred to as "some of the world's most brutalized people" by Human Rights Watch, because of the severe restrictions placed on their political and economic freedoms. The North Korean population is strictly managed by the state and all aspects of daily life are subordinated to party and state planning. Employment is managed by the party on the basis of political reliability, and travel is tightly controlled by the Ministry of People's Security.
Amnesty International reports of severe restrictions on the freedom of association, expression and movement, arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment resulting in death, and executions.
Comments
Post a Comment