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US 'Invasion' of Korea
by Catherine Lutz
As world attention is drawn to North Korea's missile launches and
nuclear program, many South Koreans are attuned to a threat much closer to
home. They have watched a group of rice farmers in the small village of
Daechuri near the city of Pyongtaek attempt to defend themselves against
invasion by the US military. The farmers' struggle against expansion of a
nearby US military base has become a rallying point for Koreans who see
their country being further militarized and their security and chances for
reunification put at risk.
In May, South Korean police and soldiers descended on a schoolhouse
where rice farmers and their sup****ters were resisting eviction. The
police
bloodied heads, destroyed the school, and backhoed rice fields and
irrigation systems to prevent spring planting. They were sent by the
Korean
Ministry of Defense, at the behest of the US government, to claim a large
swath of land to expand Camp Humphrey . Already covering 2 square miles,
the
base is slated to swallow an additional 2,851 acres.
Part of a grand plan of global military base restructuring announced
by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2003, the Pyongtaek base is
meant
to take in soldiers and equipment from closing military installations near
the de militarized zone and in Seoul. However, the bases' relocation to
Pyongtaek is part of a plan to use the bases to strike at will anywhere in
Asia and to contain China. It is this ``expeditionary" or aggressive role
of
the bases that is behind concurrent US negotiations with South Korea,
seeking ``strategic flexibility" to use the forces based there throughout
Asia. Such an agreement would change the original defensive purpose of the
base. So it concerns people across the region, who see remilitarization,
arms races, and intensified danger where the United States simply claims
realignment. Recent US and allied military exercises off Guam, itself
targeted for a massive US military buildup, were of unprecedented size,
and
North Korea's missile launch might be seen as a response to that
provocation.
While the arguments for this restructuring suggest the United States
and Korea are mutual and equal allies, Korea in fact remains a semi
sovereign state under US control in many respects. Most strikingly, Korean
troops come under the command of an American officer in wartime. US
military
plans in Asia, then, necessarily implicate the Koreans and draw them into
conflict with their neighbors. Imagining China as the new national enemy
is
a process well underway in Wa****ngton, and the Koreans know all too well
that their surgical twinning to US strategic plans will make them China's
enemy as well.
All of this is playing out within the context of a difficult
relation****p between the more than 30,000 US soldiers based around Korea
and
the local citizens who see them as a source of prostitution, crime, and
pollution. Koreans can point to two young girls crushed by US tanks in
2002,
multiple rapes and rape-murders of Korean women, and a recent leaked
re****t
showing stratospheric levels of soil and water contamination at closing US
bases.
In Daechuri, the farmers have been holding a candlelight vigil every
night for the last two years in a Quonset hut on the school grounds, under
the thunderous thut-thut-thut of US helicopters passing in and out of Camp
Humphrey . Sup****ters have come in from around the country by the
thousands,
members of groups from across a wide range of Korea's civil society, still
vibrant with an enthusiasm for the democracy they achieved only in 1987
after years of brutal dictator****p (armed and sup****ted by the United
States). While a majority of Koreans want to see the US military leave,
powerful business interests, conservative Christians, and an older
generation convinced of the value of the US presence continue to sup****t
Wa****ngton's military plans and Korean annual payments of at least $625
million toward their execution.
The justification for the US military buildup across Asia is the
advance of political and economic freedom. The residents of Daechuri might
be forgiven for being suspicious of such claims. Some of the village's
oldest residents with whom I spoke last fall remember the Japanese
evicting
their parents for a military base during Korea's pre war annexation. The
US
Army took over and expanded the base in World War II, and now, for some,
their third eviction in the name of a misconstrued vision of military
rather
than human security is imminent.
Halting the eviction of Daechuri's farmers would be a good first
step
toward demilitarizing the peninsula and the region. Their homes are being
destroyed in the name of America 's citizens, and we have more power than
anyone to reverse the escalating rhetoric and reality of arms in Asia by
calling on the US government to halt its regarrisoning of Korea, Guam, and
Asia-Pacific region.
Catherine Lutz, a professor of anthropology at Brown University and
its Watson Institute for International Studies, is the author of
``Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century."
©2006 Boston Globe
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