Welcome to BASE21

by Yoomi Jeoung

On Sept. 16, the New York Times ran an article titled, "Korean Mob Briefly Detains U.S. Soldier after Subway Fight."

The so-called mob was a group of Korean student activists who belong to Han Chong Ryun, an "illegal" vanguard south Korean university organization. They were distributing flyers about the killings of two 13-year-old girls, Shin Hyo-Soon and Shim Mi-Sun, by a U.S. military armored vehicle on June 13.

Instead of simply rejecting the flyer, the U.S. soldiers cursed at the youths.

The leader of south Korea's reunification movement, Suh Kyung-Won, witnessed the confrontation. He was punched by one of the soldiers when he tried to intervene. Suh had been jailed nearly 10 years for visiting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea without a visa.

The outraged youths took the soldier to a memorial rally where they ordered him to apologize in front of the thousands of people who assembled for the memorial rally for these two girls.

The people's actions demonstrate that anti-U.S. and anti-Pentagon issues have become a part of the south Korean peoples' public discourse.

We Koreans weren't allowed to express and share our pain and suffering at the hands of U.S. military, due to various reasons. Chief among them were the National Security Law of south Korea and extra-judicial state violence that was directed and supported by the U.S. against our people.

However, the ugly cover-up by the U.S. military of the killings of the two girls contributed to the largest anti-U.S. demonstrations in south Korea.

Since the incident, major mass demonstrations were organized; action centers were formed in the towns and cities at the local and national level. Students organized mass demonstrations, something that didn't happen for several decades in south Korea.

Teachers took students to the demonstration site as part of a school field trip.

Thanks to the Internet, housewives, donning black ribbons, organized and participated in the demonstrations.

Recently, Moon-Wha News Agency conducted a survey. It found that nine out of 10 Koreans expressed anti-U.S. sentiment, compared to seven years ago, when four out of 10 Koreans were against the U.S.

In the past, being anti-U.S. labeled you as a pro-communist and permanently condemned you to isolation from the rest of society.

The Korean people are making connections between Bush's unending aggression against world peace and their past half-century of suffering.

People are starting to see through the reasons for U.S. military occupation along with its racism and that the U.S. is the stumbling block to our reunification. People are realizing that we must act together!

The south Korean movement has endorsed the Oct. 26 marches in San Francisco and Washington and is organizing a solidarity demonstration on the same day. This fall, it is possible that the parents of Shim Hyo-Soon and Shin Mi-Sun will visit the U.S. and will need your support in their struggle for justice.