Information about Korea, especially about people's movement, is lacking in the American media and often distorted, with false interpretations of events in Korea presented to the American public.
Korea Report is published in part to fill this vacuum. This premier issue's focus is on Korean-American relations. Your comments are always welcome.
Korea Report is published monthly by Korea Information and Resource Center (KIRC), an independent, non-profit educational organization in Washington, D.C. with affiliated networks nationwide.
KIRC was founded on August 15, 1986 with the purpose of promoting understanding and support for the Korean people's movement. KIRC maintains a substantial collection of resources on Korea in Korean and in English.
Korea : The Land in Oblivion
Editor of Korea Report
Korea has been forgotten by most Americans. Their knowledge of Korea, if any, derives from the experience of the Korean War-images of the Cold War and the M* A* s• H* series on television. Or they may have come across at Sears or other department st ore clothing, or electronic products made in Korea. Or some of them may even own a Hyundai car.
But the actual reality-of Korean people's lives has been overlooked. It has been often forgotten that Korea is a divided country for over 40 years and that the division was imposed and perpetuated by the U.S. How Koreans suffer from the division and how sincerely they are yearning for reunification hasn't been of any concern to U.S. policy -makers or the general public.
The heavy military build-up in Korea with 40,000 U.S. troops and approximately 1,000 U.S. nuclear weapons endangers not only the lives of the 60 million Korean people but also the very security of the Far East. Unfortunately, the current U.S. policy is to preserve, if not to strengthen, the status quo rather than to reduce the tension or ultimately work for reunification.
True security for north and south Korea and also for the East Asia is most likely to come through the peaceful reunification of the country, a goal shared by nearly all Koreans. The peaceful reunification would require a reduction of military tensions which now face the world with a horror of a possible second Korean War which might trigger a World War 111. The 40,000 U.S. troops in south Korea, the only foreign forces on the Peninsula, are a primary obstacle. It is unlikely that reunification can be achieved if foreign soldiers, allied to one side, remain in Korea. Also, ending the cold war in Korea would bring hope to the world. The U.S. policy, however, favors a permanently divided Korea.
In addition to this, many Koreans are discovering from historical records and current day situations that Korea is overly-dependent on the U.S. though the Reagan Administration and the Chun regime celebrate mutual friendship and a strong bond. The growing anti-U.S. sentiment in Korea reflects the thinking of Koreans which view the true role of the U.S. in Korea as a preserver of the status quo and a supporter of the military and the ruling elite-an·d not the purported supporter of democracy and social justice.
This trend will have serious implications for future Korean American relations. Therefore a reappraisal of past and present Korean American relations and the evaluation of alternative policies are in great need. And voices of the Korean people need to be heard in the process Korea and its people should not be buried in oblivion any longer.
KOREA REPORT, a monthly newsletter published by Korea Information and Resource Center, is a part of the effort to address this need. KOREA REPORT attempts to bring to the American public's attention the reality of Korean-American relations from the viewpoint of the Korean people and to seek viable solutions satisfactory to both Koreans and Americans.
A STUDENT TORTURED TO DEATH AMID WIDE GOVERNMENT REPRESSION
The above is a portion of a poem written by the linguistics sti;dents of the Seoul National University, dedicated to Park Jong-Chui, who was tortured to death by the south Korean goverment. On January 14, another young life had been violated and taken away by the south Korean government. Seoul National University student Park Jong-Chui was killed as he was being interrogated and tortured by the police who were demanding to know whereabouts of a student activist presumably known by
Park. Chun sought to characterize the incident as an isolated case, but in reality police torture has been routine and systematic.
The goverment claimed that there were no political prisoners in Korea when it first started negotiating with the opposition New Korea Democratic
Party over constitutional revisions in 1986. Two weeks later the Chun administration asserted that there were 997 political prisoners and that those not charged under the National Security Law who were near completion of their sentences and those who had repented of their "wrongdoings" might be granted amnesty in the near future.
As one political prisoner, Kim Geun-Tae testified, the National Police Headquarter's Anti-communist Bureau itself stated that this was the usual treatment of anyone indicted under the National Security Law without regard to what people in the West refer to as "due process of law." Again, as is the case with politically motivated arrests, the number of incidents of torture is getting so large, so quickly that it is nearly impossible to fully document.
Another form of torture frequently employed by the Chun regime is "sexual torture." In the case of much publicized Bu-Chon incident in '86, a 22 year old female labor organizer was forcibly raped during interrogation by a police man. Although there were tremendous support for her and demands made for a full investigation, the case was never seriously investigated. Subsequently the woman was jailed for her political activities. This was only one of the cases which leaked to the press and the general public; numerous undisclosed cases exist.
Torture, however, is only one form of institutionalized violence regularly practiced by the Chun regime. Any demonstration, particularly on the grassroots level, i5 dealt with severely by the riot police whose chain of command derives from the military (and the military dictatorship).
On October 28, 1986, over 1,500 students were arrested in the aftermath of a 4-day occupation of the Kun-Kook University in Seoul. The occupation began on Oct. 28, when a group of 2,000 students from 26 universities formed the National Patriotic Students Alliance to oppose government repression and foreign intervention. The peaceful rally became violent when they were attacked by 3,500 riot police shooting tear gas.
They retreated into 5 separate buildings in order to protect themselves from the police attack. The police then surrounded the students, cut off the water and electricity and dropped leaflets from the air encouraging them to surrender.
After a 4-day occupation, without food, water or sleep, the government ended the occupation with excessive force, using tear gas bombs dropped from helicopters and raiding the buildings with about 8,000 riot police armed with electric clubs, steel pipes, etc.
A total of 1,476 students were arrested and were led from the buiidings, tied together at their waists with heads bowed. Over 50 students were injured in the attack and many of them were severely burned or braindamaged. The government still denies without any credible evidence the unconfirmed claim of killing 20-30 students in this incident.
After the Kun-Kook occupation, numerous support demonstraions followed and a student burned himself to death protesting the Chun regime. The self immolations by students and workers are ever increasing in the midst of the struggle to fight the dictatorship.
Between January and September '86, -the Chun regime spent over 6.6 million dollars on tear gas bombs- 49% increase from the 1985. Also according to the Department of Interior, the average number of prisoners was 53,970 while 406 prisoners died in their cell in the last decade.
In light of the human rights violaton record of the Chun regime, the government's insistence that Park Jong-Chul's case is an isolated incident is ridiculous. In first confirming Park's death on January 17th, the police claimed that park had died of "shock." However, following disclosures by the newspapers, police chief Kang MinChang later claimed that he was misinformed and had discovered that the cause of Park's death was an accidental suffocation during the interrogation process.
The official account tended to downplay the extend of bruises and blemishes on the body, rejecting earlier reports of extraneous water in the lungs. It attributed the swelling of Park's abdomen to a temporary phenomenon due to respiratory efforts in the interrogation room and later by a physician. Other reports indicate that Park had been tortured with electric shocks, though the prosecutors looking into other possible causes of death have denied it.
Human rights organizations report that over the past 2 months they have learned of about 60 people who have disappeared without a trace and who were later discovered to be in detention. The failure of authorities to follow prescribed legal guidelines alarms the human rights groups. They are still deeply troubled by the disappearance and subsequent deaths of student activists Woo Jong-Won and Kim Sung-Soo and labor activist Shin Ho-Soo in '86. In all three Incidents, the bodies of the victims were discovered a week or more after their death and in each case the police claimed that they had committed suicide. A human rights source said, "If this case had not been publicized, then maybe Mr. Park would have been a suicide victim as well." D
Crisis in Korea
Korea is divided North and South by some 155 miles of Demilitarized Zone. There are about 1.5 million soldiers, including 40,000 U.S. troops, facing each other across the DMZ There exist over 600 IJ.S.-deployed nuclear weapons in south Korea. There are as much as 30 megatons of nuclear weapons in south Korea enough to reduce the entire Korean peninsula to radioactive ashes.
The Korean peninsula protrudes out of the Asian mainland into the Japan Sea. It is bordered by China to the northwest, Soviet Union to the northeast, and Japan to the southeast. Due to its rich natural resources and strategically important geopolitical position, Korea has been under constant invasion by foreign powers for many centuries. Yet, Korea is one of the most ethnically homogeneous nations in the world, and Koreans have maintained a unified kingdom for more than 1,200 years.
CURRENT CRISIS
This ancient nation is caught in a worldwide crisis today. It is divided North and South by some 155 miles of DMZ. There are about 1.5 million soldiers, including 40,000 US troops, facing each other across the DMZ line, making Korea the most heavily militarized region in the world. Every spring the largest military exercise in the world-code named "Operation held in south Korea Team Spirit"-is involving over 200,000 soldiers including US troops from Okinawa, Guam, Hawaii, and US mainland, as well as Japanese Self Defense Forces. In such militarily tense situation, there exist over 600 US deployed nuclear weapons in south Korea. In fact, Korea is one of the most likely place where the worldwide nuclear holocaust could start.
WHY IS KOREA DIVIDED?
Korea was divided at the end of World War II, when Japan, which had invaded and forcefully occupied