SOUTH KOREA
Hundreds of thousands protest U.S. occupation
By Deirdre Griswold
The biggest protests to date against the U.S. military
occupation of South Korea took place Dec. 14.
In the capital, Seoul, an estimated 100,000 people gathered
in front of City Hall. They tore apart four large U.S. flags,
then raised a huge Korean flag over the crowd while chanting,
"We don't want war in Korea!"
All told, organizers said 300,000 people took part in the
day of protest in 57 Korean cities, plus Korean communities in
the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Sweden, Russia,
Great Britain, Australia, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand.
The Rev. Han Sang Ryol led the huge crowd in Seoul in
chanting, "Let us take back Korean self-determination!" Han had
just returned from Washington, where he led a delegation that
attempted to hand President George W. Bush petitions signed by
1.3 million people. The White House refused to receive the
delegation, so people picketed outside, surrounded by a heavy
police presence.
The petitions demand a change in the Status of Forces
Agreement between the United States and South Korea, a trial in
a Korean court of U.S. soldiers who drove a 50-ton tank over
two Korean schoolgirls in June, and an apology from Bush over
the soldiers' exoneration by the U.S. military.
The two young girls, Shim Mi-sun and Shin Hyo-soon, were
crushed by the speeding tank while walking to a birthday
party.
A U.S. military court wouldn't even find the soldiers guilty
of reckless manslaughter. When angry protests erupted all over
South Korea in November after the acquittals, Bush made a
half-hearted apology, but the Korean people saw it as too
little, too late.
The anger in Korea since this incident has been volcanic.
Anti-U.S. demonstrations have erupted all over the country,
including at U.S. bases where, for the first time in years,
Molotov cocktails were thrown. Restaurants started posting
signs reading "Americans not welcome."
Politicians have been forced to endorse the mass demand for
changes in the SOFA agreement, which has allowed Pentagon
courts to have jurisdiction even when U.S. soldiers commit
assault and murder against Korean civilians.
More and more, the demonstrations are calling for the
removal of U.S. troops from Korea. There have been at least
37,000 stationed there ever since the Korean War, and the
United States has opposed signing a peace treaty with North
Korea that would end a permanent state of war now over 50 years
old. The Bush administration's intensified hostility against
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north--Bush
has called it a "terrorist state"--came right after the north
and south held historic talks on normalizing relations and
reuniting families that have been divided ever since the
war.
The Korean people passionately want reunification, and
increasingly understand that it is the U.S. occupation that
prevents it. Now, for the first time, the demonstrators are
outnumbering the troops.
Two students in the city of Daegu, 200 miles southeast of
Seoul, broke into a U.S. military base on Dec. 14 and climbed
onto a 100-ft. water tank. Television footage showed the
students, draped in South Korean flags, shouting, "Retry them
in our court," before being arrested by South Korean
police.
Participants in the Seoul protest included survivors of the
Nogun-ri massacre--three days of infamy during the Korean War
when U.S. soldiers machine-gunned to death hundreds of civilian
refugees who had tried to take shelter in a railroad underpass.
Details of that horrendous event were unearthed by Associated
Press reporters two years ago and publicized last year in a BBC
documentary.
Korean groups have unearthed the sites of many similar
massacres during the war. Survivors have come forward and told
their stories. An international tribunal in New York in June
2001, organized by the Korea Truth Commission and the
International Action Center, heard from some of them. The
tribunal then indicted the U.S. government for war crimes.
As the Bush administration continues its demonization of
North Korea, using that as an excuse for its continued
occupation of the south, the movement to get the troops out
vows to intensify its efforts.
Reprinted from the Dec. 26, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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