By Christine Ahn
NEW YORK, Apr 28 2015 (IPS)

A century ago, the suffragist Jane Addams boarded a ship with other American women peace activists to participate in a Congress of Women in The Hague.

Christine Ahn

Over 1,300 women from 12 countries, “cutting across national enmities,” met to call for an end to World War I. That Congress became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which is now gathering in The Hague under the theme Women Stop War.

Just as Addams met women across national lines to try and stop WWI 100 years ago, from May 19 to 25, a delegation of 30 women from 15 countries around the world will meet and walk with Korean women, north and south, to call for an end to the Korean War.

As WWII came to a close, Korea, which had been colonised by Japan for 35 years, faced a new tragedy. After Japan’s surrender in 1945, the United States proposed (and the Soviets accepted) temporarily dividing Korea along the 38th parallel in an effort to prevent Soviet troops, who were fighting the Japanese in the north, from occupying the whole country.

Japanese troops north of the line would surrender to the Soviets; those to the south would surrender to U.S. authorities. It was meant to be a temporary division, but Washington and Moscow failed to establish a single Korean government, thereby creating two separate states in 1948: the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north.We are walking on May 24, International Women’s Day for Disarmament and Peace, because we believe that there must be an end to the Korean War that has plagued the Korean peninsula with intense militarisation.

This division precipitated the Korean War (1950-53), often referred to in the United States as “the forgotten war”, when each side sought to reunite the country by force. Despite enormous destruction and loss of life, neither side prevailed.

In July 1953, fighting was halted when North Korea (representing the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers) and the United States (representing the United Nations Command) signed the Korean War Armistice Agreement at Panmunjom, near the 38^th parallel.

This temporary cease-fire stipulated the need for a political settlement among all parties to the war (Article 4 Paragraph 60). It established the Demilitarized Zone, two-and-a-half miles wide and still heavily mined, as the new border between the two sides. It urged the governments to convene a political conference within three months, in order to reach a formal peace settlement.

Over 62 years later, no peace treaty has been agreed, with the continuing fear that fighting could resume at any time. In fact, in 2012, during another military crisis with North Korea, former U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged that Washington was, “within an inch of war almost every day.”

In 1994, as President Clinton weighed a pre-emptive military first strike against North Korea’s nuclear reactors, the U.S. Department of Defence estimated that an outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula would result in 1.5 million casualties within the first 24 hours and 6 million casualties within the first week.

This assessment predates North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons, which would be unimaginable in terms of destruction and devastation. We have no choice but to engage; the cost of not engaging is just too high.

The only way to prevent the outbreak of a catastrophic confrontation, as a 2011 paper from the U.S. Army War College counsels, is to “reach agreement on ending the armistice from the Korean War”—in essence, a peace agreement—and “giv[e] a formal security guarantee to North Korea tied to nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

Recent history has shown that when standing leaders are at a dangerous impasse, the role of civil society can indeed make a difference in averting war and lessening tensions. In 1994 as President Clinton contemplated military action, without the initial blessing of the White House, former President Jimmy Carter flew to Pyongyang armed with a CNN camera crew to negotiate the terms of the Agreed Framework with former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.

And in 2008, the New York Philharmonic performed in Pyongyang, which significantly contributed towards warming relations between the United States and DPRK.

Christiane Amanpour, who traveled with CNN to cover the philharmonic, wrote that U.S. Secretary of Defence William Perry, a former negotiator with North Korea, explained to her that this was a magic moment, with different peoples speaking the same language of music.

Armanpour said Perry believed that the event could positively influence the governments reaching a nuclear agreement, “but that mutual distrust and fear can only be overcome by people-to-people diplomacy.”

That is what we are hoping to achieve with the 2015 International Women’s Walk for Peace and Reunification of Korea, citizen-to-citizen diplomacy led by women. We are also walking on the 15^th anniversary of the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for the full and equal participation of women in conflict prevention and resolution, and in peacebuilding.

Women from Cambodia, Guatemala, Liberia and Northern Ireland all provided crucial voices for peace as they mobilised across national, ethnic and religious divides and used family and community networks to mitigate violence and heal divisions among their communities.

Similarly, our delegation will walk for peace in Korea and to cross the De-Militarized Zone separating millions of families, reminding the world on the tragic 70^th anniversary of Korea’s division by foreign powers that the Korean people are from an ancient culture united by the same food, language, culture, customs, and history.

We are walking on May 24, International Women’s Day for Disarmament and Peace, because we believe that there must be an end to the Korean War that has plagued the Korean peninsula with intense militarisation. Instead of spending billions on preparing for war, governments could instead redirect these critically needed funds for schools, childcare, health, caring for the elderly.

The first step is reconciliation through engagement and dialogue. That is why we are walking. To break the impasse among the warring nations—North Korea, South Korea, and the United States—to come to the peacemaking table to finally end the Korean War.

As Addams boarded the ship to The Hague, she and other women peace activists were mocked for seeking alternative ways than war to resolve international disputes.

Addams dismissed criticism that they were naïve and wild-eyed idealists: “We do not think we can settle the war. We do not think that by raising our hands we can make the armies cease slaughter. We do think it is valuable to state a new point of view. We do think it is fitting that women should meet and take counsel to see what may be done.”

It is only fitting that our women’s peace walk in Korea takes place on this centennial anniversary year of the first international act of defiance of war women ever undertook. I am honoured to be among another generation of women gathering at The Hague to carry on the tradition of women peacemakers engaged in citizen diplomacy to end war.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

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By Christine Ahn and Suzy Kim
HONOLULU, Dec 2 2014 (IPS)

On Nov. 18, a committee of the United Nations General Assembly voted 111 to 19, with 55 abstentions, in favour of drafting a non-binding resolution referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Christine Ahn

While there is overwhelming evidence that economic and political conditions in North Korea must improve, missing from debates in U.N. corridors is the fact that the unresolved Korean War (1950-1953) underlies North Korea’s human rights crisis."While there is overwhelming evidence that economic and political conditions in North Korea must improve, missing from debates in U.N. corridors is the fact that the unresolved Korean War (1950-1953) underlies North Korea's human rights crisis"

After claiming up to four million lives with at least one member of every family in North Korea killed by the war, the Korean War was halted by an armistice agreement signed by North Korea, China and the United States representing the United Nations Command.

Suzy Kim

As James Laney, U.S. Ambassador to South Korea during the 1990s explains, “one of the things that have bedevilled all talks until now is the unresolved status of the Korean War” and he prescribes the “establishment of a peace treaty to replace the truce.”

What does the past have to do with the present state of human rights in North Korea?

The continued state of war affects the human rights of North Korean people today in at least two ways. Domestically, the North Korean government prioritises military defence and national security over human security and political freedoms. Internationally, North Koreans suffer due to political isolation and economic sanctions.

The fact that the Korean War ended with a temporary ceasefire rather than a permanent peace treaty gives the North Korean government justification – whether we like it or not – to invest heavily in the country’s militarisation.

According to the South Korean government’s Institute of Defense Analyses, North Korea invests approximately 8.7 billion dollars – or one-third of its GDP – on defence.

Pyongyang even acknowledged last year how the un-ended war has forced it “to divert large human and material resources to bolstering up the armed forces though they should have been directed to the economic development and improvement of people’s living standards.”

Since military intervention is not an option, the Barack Obama administration has used sanctions to pressure North Korea to denuclearise. Instead, North Korea has since conducted three nuclear tests, calling sanctions “an act of war”.

That is because sanctions have had deleterious effects on the day-to-day lives of ordinary North Korean people. “In almost any case when there are sanctions against an entire people, the people suffer the most and the leaders suffer least,” said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on his last visit to North Korea.

International sanctions have made it extremely difficult for North Koreans to access basic necessities, such as food, seeds, medicine and technology. Felix Abt, a Swiss entrepreneur who has conducted business in North Korea for over a decade says that it is “the most heavily sanctioned nation in the world, and no other people have had to deal with the massive quarantines that Western and Asian powers have enclosed around its economy.” 

Whether in Pyongyang, Seoul or Washington, the threat of war or terrorism has been used to justify government repression and overreach, such as warrantless surveillance, imprisonment and torture (“enhanced interrogation techniques”) in the name of preserving national security.

In South Korea, one of the liberal opposition parties, the Unified Progressive Party, is currently on trial in the Constitutional Court on charges made by the Park Geun-hye government that its members conspired with North Korea to overthrow the South Korean government.

Amnesty International says that this case “has seriously damaged the human rights improvement of South Korean society which has struggled and fought for freedom of thoughts and conscience and freedom of expression.”

In the coming days, the U.N. General Assembly will vote on whether the U.N. Security Council should refer North Korea to the ICC, although it is likely to be vetoed by China and Russia. The United Nations vote, while lofty in principle, actually serves to further isolate Pyongyang, which will likely retreat even further behind its iron curtain.

“We’ve said from day one that if North Korea wants to rejoin the community of nations, it knows how to do it,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said, referring to the precondition of denuclearisation for talks.

Instead of relying on the failed Washington policy of “strategic patience” it is time for a bold move that will truly bring North Korea into the community of nations, leaving no excuse to delay addressing human rights – sign a peace treaty to end the state of war. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

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