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Mar. 29  2024
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Where is Maehyang-ri and what is happening there?

Maehyang-ri is a village in Hwasong-kun (county) of Kyongki-do (province), located 80 kilometers southwest of Seoul. 3,200 villagers (used to) make their living by rice farming and harvesting crab, oyster, octopus, and other fisheries from the sea, which have been an important source of income for generations.

Source  :  http://maehyang.jinbo.net

Maehyang-ri is a village in Hwasong-kun (county) of Kyongki-do (province), located 80 kilometers southwest of Seoul. 3,200 villagers (used to) make their living by rice farming and harvesting crab, oyster, octopus, and other fisheries from the sea, which have been an important source of income for generations.

But, their home -- their land and their sea -- has been taken over since 1951-2 as the "home" for the U.S. Air Force's Kooni Range. Since then, and until now, over 24 square kilometers of sea and land, ever since the time of the Korean War when it had been appropriated, has been the "bombing and firing practice" range for the U.S. Air Force and allied forces.

The Kooni Range is composed of a bombing range for bomber planes on the Nong-do island (which can be reached on foot during low tide) off the coast and a strafing range on the edge of the village. U.S. Air Force fighter jets and bombers, such as F-16, A-10, and OV-10, not only from the U.S. Air Force based in Korea, but also in Okinawa, Thailand, Guam, and the Philippines swoop on Maehyang-ri to drop their bombs and spray their bullets on the targets in the range in bombing practice and gunnery drills. The bombing and firing take place throughout the daylight hours and even until late at night for 250 days a year, stopping only for weekends and holidays.

Maehyang-ri: a free testing site for private military-industrial complex

Recently, people of Maehyang-ri learned that the overall management of the bombing and firing range has been contracted out to a military-industry complex, Lockheed Martin. The company, one of the largest weapons and military equipment maker in the world, which has Korea as one of its top ten "customers", is suspected of using the bombing and firing range as its "testing" site for many of its deadly products. The Maehyang-ri villagers, in one of the tense clashes with police in their attempts to stop the bombing and strafing at the range, has pulled down the company's announcement board at the site.

Villagers are required to pay rent for the use of the land in the outlaying areas of the range for agricultural cultivation. This contrasts starkly with the fact that the U.S. Armed Forces, which "uses" the range, and the Lockheed Martin, which also "uses" the range for its own purposes, do not pay anything for the use of the land or any of utilities supplied to them.
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