Christine Ahn’s Speech “Scars of War”
December 12, 2022
Posted in: News
The following speech was delivered at the 18th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates Gangwon in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on December 12, 2022.
In the U.S., the Korean War is known as the “forgotten war,” despite the fact that more than 3 million people were killed in just three years. As a Korean American, I find it especially painful that the U.S. divided the Korean Peninsula without consulting a single Korean, and installed into power Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese after Korea was brutally colonized by Japan for 35 years. During the Korean War, the U.S. waged an indiscriminate bombing campaign, destroying 80 percent of North Korean cities. One year into the war, U.S. Major General Emmett O’Donnell testified before the Senate, “There are no more targets in Korea.”
While most of us are led to believe that the nuclear crisis began with North Korea, it actually began during the War when President Truman threatened to use atomic weapons. Then the US introduced them to South Korea in 1958 until George Bush, Sr. removed them. The U.S. also backed authoritarian rule in South Korea for decades, and in 1980, the US supported Chun Doo-Hwan, a military strongman who shot his way to power after massacring pro-democracy protests in Gwangju.
When you look at past inter-Korean agreements that attempted to build peace, the US has been a major roadblock. In 2018, when the two Koreas tried to link the railroad at Dorasan Station, the U.S. stopped it, saying it violated UN Security Council sanctions. When the former South Korean President Moon appealed to President Biden for an end-of-war declaration, he was shunned. As a Korean American, I feel my country’s responsibility to end the Korean War.
Right now, tensions are the worst since the era of fire and fury in 2017 when Trump threatened to totally destroy North Korea. According to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, if another war broke out in Korea, more than 300,000 people would be killed in the first few days of fighting, and if nuclear weapons are used, more than 20 million would die.
This is not normal.
It is not normal for 80 million people to live in a perennial state of war. It is not normal for doctors to have to perform surgery with dull scalpels and re-use browned gauze due to sanctions. It’s not normal for people to not be able to travel freely or return to their hometowns. It’s not normal that nearly 30,000 foreign troops have occupied another country for 73 years. It is not normal for families, husbands and wives, parents and their children, siblings, aunts and uncles, to be unable to hug their loved ones for decades. It is not normal that our governments invest in constant preparation for war.
In 2006, I witnessed one of the most heartbreaking struggles that forever changed my understanding of this war. I traveled to Pyongtaek, 50 miles south of Seoul, where farmers were resisting the expansion of the U.S. Camp Humphreys military base. They used nonviolent tactics to save their rice fields which they cultivated for generations. Grandmothers tied themselves to the roofs of their homes to prevent them from being bulldozed. After holding candlelight vigils for 800 days, they lost and now their former home has become the world’s largest military base spanning 3,500 acres, which is about the size of 4 New York central parks.
Sadly, the unresolved Korean War and U.S.-China great power competition are used to justify more militarization, whether it’s the naval base on Jeju Island or the THAAD missile defense system in Seongju. As a result, communities are shattered, livelihoods upended, and ecosystems are destroyed. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Four years ago here in Pyeongchang during the Winter Olympics, the two Koreas marched together carrying the One Korea flag, ushering in a new era of peace. Leaders from North Korea, South Korea, and the U.S. engaged in diplomacy that resulted in the halting of all nuclear and long-range missile testing and war drills, North and South Korean soldiers de-mining portions of the DMZ, family reunions, and the creation of a liaison office in Kaesong.
Yet what has plagued progress is the unresolved Korean War. That’s why we are calling on the U.S., North Korea, and South Korea to formally end the 73-year-old Korean War with a peace agreement. We must do so for the separated families, for the struggling North Korean people, for those killed and mutilated by landmines, and all Korean people, here and in the diaspora, whose hearts are still divided. Let’s redirect resources away from militarization towards investments that give us genuine security, such as healthcare, education, housing, and clean air and water.
I would like to end with the words of Kim Ji-Tae, the Pyongtaek village leader who was imprisoned for resisting the US base expansion. When asked by the South Korean Defense Ministry for the price of his land, he replied, “The price will be unimaginably high. The price must include every grain of rice grown and harvested here. It must include all of our efforts to grow them, as well as our whole life here, including our sighs, tears, and laughter. The price must include the stars, which have witnessed our grief and joy, and the wind, which has dried our tears. If all of these could be added, I would tell you the price.”
Watch her full speech here.