Solidarity—from Gwangju to Falluja
By
Scott Scheffer
Los Angeles
Published Jun 9, 2005 8:05 PM
About 100 people from
the Korean community in Los Angeles and the progressive movement listened to two
veteran activists from South Korea who wound up a speaking tour of the U.S. and
Canada with a final stop here on June 3 in Koreatown.
The meeting was
co-chaired by Kim Hyong Chon of One Korea-L.A. Forum and Maggie Vascassenno of
the International Action Center.
The tour commemorated the 25th
anniversary of the heroic people’s uprising at Gwangju, South Korea. In
May 1980, the people of Gwangju actually took control of the large port city and
fought to hold it for 10 days.
Like the Paris Commune 109 years earlier,
the uprising was drowned in blood, but continues to inspire the progressive and
anti-imperialist movement around the world.
The Chun Doo Hwan regime was
secretly given the green light to use the military by U.S. Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance of the Carter administration.
The meeting satisfied the
crowd’s hunger for information about Gwangju, and was truly inspirational
in many ways. For instance, Kim Hyo-seok, a veteran of the uprising who was
imprisoned for his activities, was visibly moved when he reported, early in his
talk, that the two had participated in a commemoration of Malcolm X during the
tour.
He spoke solemnly of the horrors of the repression and of his
personal losses during the Gwangju uprising, but was at the same time hopeful
and positive because of the anti-imperialist movement that Gwangju spawned in
South Korea.
Lee Shin defended the right of the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea—North Korea—to defend itself from U.S. aggression,
describing the ongoing military provocations by the United States since the
close of the Vietnam War as a grave threat to all Koreans.
He recounted a
recent poll that asked South Koreans who they would support in the event of a
nuclear confrontation between the DPRK and the U.S. Some 48 percent said they
would side with North Korea and only 36 percent with the U.S.
Both men
spoke of the struggle of the Iraqi people, and Kim referred to Falluja as the
“Iraqi people’s Gwangju.” Lee reminded the crowd of a widely
circulated photo of an anti-war demonstration in Seoul on March 19 in which
there were candles held by demonstrators as far as the eye could see. He vowed
that when Bush returns to South Korea there will be even more
protests.
The great feeling of solidarity in the hall was expressed by
John Parker who sang a song about the Gwangju Uprising and a poem in Korean by
Harim Kim of One Korea.
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