At 4 am on September 24, an intoxicated U.S. soldier based at Camp Casey in South Korea broke into the dorm of a high school student, threatened her with a weapon and repeatedly sexually assaulted her. Due to the extraterritoriality of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the South Korean and U.S. governments, Seoul must issue an arrest warrant to the U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK) to transfer the soldier to face Korea’s criminal system.
Washington, which has focused for years on North Korea’s small but developing nuclear arsenal, has barely been paying attention to the larger developments in Asia. Nor will Asia’s looming transformation be a hot topic in our own presidential election next year. We’ll be arguing about jobs, health care, and whether the president is a socialist or his Republican challenger a nutcase. Aside from some ritual China-bashing, Asia will merit little mention.
Agent Orange, the notoriously toxic defoliant first used by U.S. troops during the Vietnam War, has long been known to cause liver cancer, birth defects, leukemia, and other illnesses in people exposed to it. Although the U.S. military hasn’t actively used the chemical since the 1970s, a number of forgotten victims are still suffering the nightmare of its contamination.
“The land and sea isn’t something you bought,” explained Kang Ae-Shim. “Why are you selling something that was there long before you were born?” Kang Ae Shim is a haenyo, one of the legendary Korean women sea divers from Jeju Island who can hold their breath for up to two minutes while foraging the ocean floor for seafood. But today Kang and others are fighting to save their island from the pending construction of a South Korean naval base in Gangjeong village, which threatens to tear apart the age-old sisterhood of the haenyoand destroy the pristine ecology of Jeju’s shores. The government and construction contractors are attempting to stamp out the outcry by arresting, beating, fining, and threatening villagers and activists.
Events in Libya and Syria have again brought to the forefront the question of armed humanitarian intervention or the “responsibility to protect.” Is it ever legitimate to supersede the principle of national sovereignty with a military intervention aimed at protecting citizens from their government? And if the answer is yes, what circumstances would justify this course of action and how should it be carried out?
On July 27, 2011 scholars from the Institute for Policy Studies, South Korea, and the Washington Peace Center will hold a special discussion on the status of the Korean War Armistice and why a peace treaty to end the Korean War matters today in the context of the current military issues facing East Asia and the overall need for peacebuilding in this region.
In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin walks into the office of underperforming salesmen and shakes them to their core. He’s the guy from the head office, and his motivational speech has a whiff of sulfur to it. The top prize for sales that month, he announces, will be a new Cadillac. The second prize: a set of steak knives. As for the third prize, he informs them with a certain twinkling malice, “You’re fired.” One of the salesmen in the audience, Ed Harris, leans back in his chair — he’s not buying it. Baldwin takes off his watch, puts it on Harris’s desk, and says that it costs more than the Hyundai that Harris drove to work. “I made $970,000 last year,” Baldwin practically spits at him. “That’s who I am. And you’re nothing.”
Congress could vote any day now to strike a new blow against already-battered U.S. workers and the unemployed. Committees in the House and Senate recently marked up the Colombia, Panama, and South Korea Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The Obama administration is urging passage of all three relics of the Bush administration before the summer recess. The full-court press on the FTAs represents a reversal for a president elected on a trade reform platform.
In May, three former U.S. soldiers admitted to dumping hundreds of barrels of chemical substances, including Agent Orange, at Camp Carroll in South Korea in 1978. This explosive news was a harsh reminder to South Koreans of the high costs and lethal trail left behind by the ongoing U.S. military presence.
The emotions felt by those leaving Japan were varied and often complex. Many expressed joy and hope at the prospect of a new life in North Korea – even though the vast majority came originally from the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, and were going to a place they had never seen before. Some took a more somber view – traveling without high expectations, but at least in the belief that a future in North Korea would be more secure than their life in Japan, where they had been deprived of citizenship and had no assured residence rights, very limited access to welfare and (in most cases) few educational or employment opportunities.