For International Women’s Day, a Powerful Message for Peace
March 8, 2022
Posted in: Newsletters
Dear Friend,
To mark International Women’s Day, we want to highlight some of our recent efforts for lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Last week, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and growing tensions in the Northeast Asia region, we organized a letter from 100 women leaders from more than 20 countries to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and North Korea’s First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Choe Son-hui, urging them to help set the stage for a diplomatic solution to avoid possible war.
Without progress in negotiations between the US and North Korea for three years now, we called on the two highest-ranking women diplomats, Choe and Sherman, to help restart talks. The letter — which is signed by Nobel Peace laureates, parliamentarians, feminist activists and scholars, humanitarian workers, and others, including Gloria Steinem, South Korean Ambassador for Gender Equality Youngsook Cho, and Canadian Senator Marilou McPhedran — called on the U.S. to give up its “maximum pressure” campaign in order to achieve progress. Read the full letter here.
In other news, we’re happy to report new supporters of H.R.3446, the Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act. In recent months, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA33), Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL1), and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD8) have all signed on as co-sponsors.
Supporting women’s peace efforts are all the more crucial in light of recent attacks by well-financed interests seeking to prolong the Korean War. Investigative reporter Eli Clifton just published a damning expose in The Nation revealing just who is behind these efforts and what their financial motivations are.
In short, Annie M.H. Chan is the wealthy chairwoman of One Korea Network and the Korea Conservative Political Action Conference, which funded the costly advertising blitz attacking pro-peace efforts last year. Chan peddles conspiracy theories and fearmongering about North Korean and Chinese influence in South Korea and the US, and has financial ties to firms that export nuclear technology from the US and South Korea. “Fearmongering about Chinese aggression and influence, promoting the use and export of nuclear power technology, and maintaining a militarized US-South Korea alliance all serve Chan’s ideological and business interests,” writes Clifton. Read the full article here.
Although these well-funded attacks try to paint those calling for peace in Korea as fringe, we know that our desires for peace are shared by a broad, diverse and multi-generational movement, from members of divided Korean families to those who fought in the Korean War. We are a powerful grassroots movement and, together, we collectively call for Korea peace now!
Thank you for supporting us.
In peace,
Christine Ahn
P.S. Here are some recent media clips:
RECENT MEDIA
