Wishing you a beautiful Mother’s Day!

Music by Maestoso Flautist.

With the recent death of Kim Jong-Il, the desperate people of North Korea have a shining opportunity to revolt against their oppressive government. Pictured: The poverty and devastation in N. Korea is visible in this nighttime satellite photo of the Korean peninsula.

But sadly, this is exactly what is occurring right now in North Korea. In direct defiance of the United States and the global community, the North Koreans have decided to launch a missile to honor the late Kim Jong-Il. Why such a man deserves to be honored is beyond my imagination, especially if North Korea calls itself a democratic republic. Kim Jong-Il has imprisoned hundreds of thousands, if not millions of his people in labor camps for criticizing his regime and even for their religious beliefs. He was a man who felt no empathy for his people whatsoever and who willingly sacrificed millions of his people to serve his own political ends.

And it seems, sadly, that Kim Jong-Un, Il’s successor, is similarly disinterested in the needs of the North Korean people. Part of the North Korean bargain with the global community regarding weapons testing involves a simple trade: if North Korea does not test weapons or fire missiles, the United States and other developed nations will step in and provide food for the North Korean people. However, since Kim Jong-Un is set to fire a potentially illegal missile in honor of his late father, the global community is unable to provide food for the North Korean people.

However, there is a glimmer of hope for North Korea. Kim Jong-Il’s death has, without a doubt, emboldened many of the North Korean people to at least consider the possibility of rebellion against their totalitarian government. Human beings have a hunger for liberty, and this hunger inevitably overcomes any forces that may be suppressing its manifestation into reality. Yes, the spirit of the North Korean people has been battered, bruised, and nearly shattered by the outrageous cruelty of their government. But a cursory glance at human history reveals that atrocities by government inspire a momentous fury and an insatiable appetite for justice and equality in every single abused citizen. Somehow or another, this hidden desire for justice will manifest itself, and the North Korean people will be free.

However, the freedom of the North Korean people is highly dependent upon the willingness of developed nations both to thwart China’s attempts to aid the totalitarian North Korean regime and to provide the people of North Korea with the means to overthrow their government and regain control over their lives. If Syria is any indication of this willingness, the North Koreans are in trouble. It is important to remember, though, that the South Koreans hold a great deal of influence with the United States. As witnesses to the crimes of the North Korean government, the South Korean people feel sympathetic towards the people of the north and, as beneficiaries of freedom themselves, likely feel an obligation to aid their northern compatriots in attaining their independence. This desire could put a great deal of pressure upon the US to act to aid its S. Korean ally if S. Korea decides to aid a North Korean rebellion.

Freedom for North Korea may come at a cost, but it is surely worth it. Future generations of North Koreans should not be subjected to the horrific cruelty of an oppressive government. They deserve to enjoy the beauty of freedom.

Workers in both South Korea and the United States have been vocal about their displeasure over KORUS, a free trade agreement between the two nations that will soon go into effect. The issue has become a major one in South Korea and as they two lead into an important election cycle the opposition Democratic United Party (DUP) has vowed to nullify the deal if their party is elected to the majority this year. The DUP thinks that the free trade agreement is balanced to help out American corporate interests and disrespects Korean sovereignty. American workers think the deal is to similar to the woefully unpopular NAFTA. The unpopular bill my cease to be if the DUP can win come election time. According to Kim Eun-jung of Yonhap News,

Han Myeong-sook, the DUP leader, claimed the free trade deal ratified under the Lee Myung-bak administration favors American interests and its controversial clauses need to be revised before it takes effect.

  ”As the FTA ratified by the Lee Myung-bak administration damages (South Korea’s) national interest, it should not take effect as it is now,” Han said during a senior party meeting.
As the government is expected to implement (the trade pact) within the month of February, controversial clauses need to be revised before it takes effect. Otherwise, (the DUP) will scrap (the deal) by changing power and the majority in parliament,” Han said.

The DUP is a Center-Left progressive party that is looking to woo Korean liberals before primary elections. The displeasure left by the passing of KORUS FTA by the Grand National Party. The party has become so popular in fact that they have just changed their name to the “Saenori” or “New World” Party to battle voter alienation before the election.

Korus FTA was originally negotiated between President George Bush and former south Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in 2007. President Obama spoke out against KORUS FTA while campaigning for the White House in 2008. The DUP wrote a letter to President Obama and Vice President Biden saying they wanted the agreement to be renegotiated, according to Yonhop News,

“We would support a trade deal between our countries that would genuinely help to raise the living standards of the people, promote economic growth and stability, create new employment opportunities, and improve the general welfare,” the letters wrote. “However, the existing provisions of the KORUS FTA are far from meeting such purposes partly because of the flaws” in specific clauses. Those include passages that cover the ISD, protections for small retailers, the status of products from the inter-Korean Kaesong industrial complex, financial safeguards and auto specific safeguards.

  ”Therefore, we strongly call for your administration to reconsider the KORUS FTA in order to truly strengthen the long-term relationship between our countries,” the letters read. “If our cordial and earnest request is overlooked by your administration, we will have to take all measures possible to freeze the implementation of the KORUS FTA.”

The Korean Peninsula is in a time of change as the North’s leader Kim Jong Il has passed and control of the dictatorship passes to his son. In the South, aided by the fastest broadband rates of any country, younger progressives and laborers have organized and demanded change. Writer Christine Ahn, looked into this in her piece, “A Korean Spring?” In her piece she looks at the Labor protests that have developed in South Korea over the past year. The DUP looks to gain momentum by appeasing protesters desires for change. According to the piece,

Another example of inspiring organizing that has sparked a national discussion on the growing inequality in South Korea came from Busan, a port city in the southeast. There, Kim Jin Suk, the country’s first woman welder, staged a one-woman protest against layoffs by Hanjin Heavy Industry and Construction. In January, Kim climbed up a 35-meter high crane after Hanjin announced plans that it would layoff 400 workers. For 309 days, the 51-year old Kim lived in the cab of the crane, surviving typhoons, monsoons, and heat waves.
After 100 days when Kim’s spirit began to flag, thousands of citizens from around the country hopped on hundreds of “Hope Buses” to show their support of Kim’s protest. Riot police used water cannons and tear gas to stop the first wave of 7,000 bus riders traveling on 185 buses.
On November 10, Kim finally climbed down after the company and the union worked out a temporary agreement to reinstate 94 workers within one year, compensation for dismissed workers, and the withdrawal of lawsuits. Kim’s protest reflected the growing anger among South Korea’s middle and working classes who have felt shafted by the Lee administration’s pro-business policies and the systematic dismantling of the country’s social safety net.

American workers have also articulated their displeasure over the deal. Last June the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers published a piece titled “Why KORUS FTA is Awful for America”, in it they talk about how loopholes in language could hurt the American worker by allowing for Chinese products to be covered. According to their article,

Most free trade agreements require exported manufactured products to include 51% of their materials from the country of origin.  However, the KORUS FTA requires only 35% native materials.  South Korea imports manufacturing materials from China.  That means a product that is technically made in South Korea could consist of 65% Chinese manufactured goods.  In essence, we would be eliminating tariffs for South Korean products (and thereby increasing our already enormous trade deficit) while South Korea subsidizes the supply chain of multi-national corporations in China.

China benefits, multi-nationals benefit and America goes deeper and deeper into debt.  Sound familiar?

It seems as if the South Korean DUP and the American progressive movement see eye to eye in terms of austerity and are both trying to push back in their own respective way. Free Trade Agreements entered into on behalf of the United States have yet to provide the results promised and KORUS FTA’s future should be viewed as no different.

In those years I was a teacher at a middle school in Chunchŏn, in Kangwŏn Province,  northeast of Seoul. It was a mountainous area with rivers and lakes created by the dams built after the war. The war was, of course, a recent memory and the scars of the conflict were still in evidence. Indeed, the DMZ was not far off and there was still intermittent fighting in those years, with raids across the border and on the coastlines. Just north of the town there were missile sites on a few scattered elevations but most of the mountaintops were unchanged from countless centuries and offered a strenuous but pleasant day trip outing for enthusiastic mountain climbers, which included some of the other teachers at our school.

But before I came to Korea this would not have included me. In my college years I had never looked for any more exercise than would have come my way in the course of a part-time job, so it was disconcerting when I realized that I had fallen into a company of Spartans. I was undoubtedly the least fit person among the teachers, to say nothing of the boys, who were all born tough. All the teachers had done their three years duty in the Korean Army and all the boys would face the same ordeal. The teachers had survived this rite of passage and the boys were determined to meet the same test. In those years the Korean government did not make public the number of young men who did not survive basic training.

A school colleague, Ahn Chang-jun, (or, I should say, Ahn- sŏnsaeng using the term of address that showed respect for teachers in Korea – one never addressed anyone with a given name), suggested one day that we meet the next Sunday morning and take a bus out to the countryside and climb a mountain. He promised fair weather and a wonderful view. With some anxiety I accepted, not knowing how arduous a trip it would be.

We rode a country bus northeast of the city, less than an hour from town (we could hardly have gone farther without running into military checkpoints) and got off on a narrow country road with nothing around us but the Soyang River on one side and a steep mountain on the other. My friend was clearly delighted to have arrived wherever we were and he beckoned me to follow him.

The trail was a rocky path taken by climbers like us and also by people with another purpose, for mid-way up the mountain there was a small structure that was home to a few monks. It was certainly not large enough to be a temple, and in time I would learn the distinction that was made in the names of these places; (the great Korean Buddhist temples all had the suffix –sa while these small but sometimes equally distinguished places had the suffix –am, which I came to think of as hermitage since they often housed only a few people living in quiet contemplation.)

But Ahn- sŏnsaeng hardly noticed the place and had probably seen many like it. We stopped for only the briefest moment to drink from the well and then pressed on up the path. I was having a very hard time keeping up. I confess that in those years I carried too much weight and made this worse by smoking. I was only twenty-one but had already accomplished much in the way of ruining my health and it was showing, as I gasped for breath and had to stop and sit on a rock. Ahn- sŏnsaeng noticed this and came back to join me, diplomatically suggesting we both could use a rest. This part of the path was shaded by trees, which blocked the view of the valley below but gave refreshing shade from the sun on a very warm spring day.

Perhaps to prolong our rest I asked about his life before he came to Chunchŏn. By odd happenstance he was actually newer at the school than I, having joined us a few weeks after my arrival. He had recently graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in Korean literature. Like most young men he had done his military service between his sophomore and junior years of college. He was also recently married and had a baby son. His English was far better than my Korean but he encouraged me, was eager to help me learn and clearly found my questions entertaining since they frequently made him consider aspects of his own language that he had always taken for granted. For example, I knew I was not supposed to speak with the same verb endings that I heard the boys use when shouting to each other on the playground, but it challenged him to explain why this was so. With his help I eventually came to have some understanding of the bewildering spectrum from formality to intimacy in daily speech and the hazards of verbal etiquette, (and despaired of mastering it.) Nouns, too, offered pitfalls, so that asking a child’s age was quite different from asking the same question of one’s apparent contemporary, and different again from asking the question of one’s elder.

As we spoke of this and that we saw an old woman go up the path, balancing a large, heavy bucket on her head. Like most country women she wore the long chima skirt that tied above the breast-line and the short chogori jacket. Despite what appeared to be a heavy load she climbed the path at a brisk – shall I say? - Spartan pace.

“What is she carrying?” I asked.

He thought for a moment, found the right word and said, “Refreshments.”

“Really? What kind of refreshments?

He smiled and said, “We will learn when we get to the top. I believe she will be waiting for us.”

I knew I was being ever so slightly teased and must rise to the challenge. But as we continued the climb I realized that my determination was not quite adequate to the task and we still had to pause now and then before we reached the summit.

Once we arrived I was physically exhausted but exhilarated by what I saw. It was the clearest spring day and I could see for many, many miles around. There was the Soyang River winding through the long valley below and all of Chunchŏn and the lakes north of the city, and stretching far away straight north were other mountain peaks leading one by one like stepping stones to the DMZ and North Korea.

After some time catching my breath and taking it all in I said, “Ahn-sŏnsaeng, this is wonderful!” I felt I couldn’t thank him enough for sharing this with me and patiently coaxing me up the long climb for this splendid reward.

He smiled and said, “You must be thirsty.” And he went over to the old woman who had, of course, reached the top before us and was sitting beside her bucket, which was covered with a wet towel. He spoke to her for a moment, then she reached deep inside and gave him something which I couldn’t quite see. He walked over and handed me – unbelievable! – a frosty can of Budweiser beer! I was stunned by this miracle.

“This isn’t possible – where did this come from?”

“From your country, I believe,” he answered with a big grin. “The American Army shares with us.”  Of course, I knew the Korean economy included a lively black market in goods that found their way out of the US Army’s supply system (they “shared” a great deal more than they wished), but the efficiency and reach of this system had just been demonstrated in a startling way.

After sitting on the ground and sipping our beers and enjoying the view, I bought the second round. Other climbers had now arrived and the old woman was doing a brisk trade. She soon ran out and, picking up her bucket, returned down the path. Ahn-sonsaeng told me that on a good weekend with excellent weather and many people making the climb, she might make three trips from the market in town and up the mountain. The example of her strength and stamina gave me much to think about.

We stayed a while longer, enjoying the bright sun, the magnificent view and the unintended but nonetheless generous bounty of the American Army. Later we slowly made our way down the mountain and took the little country bus back to town, where I insisted he be my guest for dinner, an inadequate return for such a memorable day.

There were many such outings in the following years, sometimes with Ahn- sŏnsaeng and sometimes with other teachers who wanted to show me their favorite places. I believe they saw me as a guest who had come to share their life with them for a time and they wanted me to see the things that gave them pleasure. None of us were rich in any material way but we gained a great wealth of shared experience and learned from each other, although I’ll always believe I got the better part of the trade. I was very young, had little experience of life and was very far from home. When I look back after all these years and recall how these very strong and tough men were so wonderfully kind to me, I know I could never thank them enough.