The Casement
Outlook
In South Korea, since March 6th 2006,
South Korean military riot police have begun an outright and sustained attack
upon the autonomous village of Daechuri. For four years, Daechuri and the
nearby community of Doduri have resisted the seizure of their homes and fields
for the expansion of a US army base. Inside the local elementary school,
elderly residents, local farmers, peace activists and students were holding out
against frequent attacks by Korea's crack military police force. Far more
intensive international activism and pressure is required if the South Korean
Government's brutal activities are to be halted.
The
farmers used tractors as roadblocks. People acted as human shields by chaining
themselves to the Daechuri village school gates. These events are an example of
the outstanding courage of farmers battling for their property and lives. For
some time they were able to resist the repeated waves of attacks by hundreds of
military riot police. The local residents and peace activists faced beatings
and arrest. Inside the school, activists desperately attempted to upload news
updates to the outside world and issued pleas for immediate aid. Thanks to the
indifference of the international media, their pleas were ignored, and the
South Korean Government was able to intensify the attack with renewed
savagery. On March 15th, elderly farmers were evicted from their homes to
enforce the Government eviction notice known as “eminent domain”. Several
farmers were struck and suffered grievous injuries.
On
April 7th, 6000 police and mercenaries launched a massive assault, which lasted
from 9 am in the morning until 5 pm in the afternoon. The village was invaded
from four separate directions, targeting various zones inside the huge
agriculture area, in a tactic to divide and break down protesting groups. The
riot police escorted bulldozers, cement trucks and backhoes.
The
main objective was the destruction of the irrigation system, whose gates had
been opened the day previously for an annual irrigation ceremony. While the
mercenaries, wearing civilian clothes, attacked the protestors, fertile soil
from the rice fields was cleared out using the mechanical equipment and used to
fill the irrigation canals. Cement was then poured in to seal up the canals.
These tactics continued throughout the day, despite fierce resistance from the
elderly farmers and supporters who were present. Despite the dispersal of the
protestors as they attempted to halt an assault proceeding from different
directions, two backhoes were halted. The plain-clothes operatives, hired so
that the government would not be implicated in their acts of vandalism and
criminal violence, attacked first, while the police observed and defended the
equipment. Later in the afternoon, the police enthusiastically joined in the
attack. One union member was hospitalized with a broken back, another suffered
head injuries and lost consciousness, and one villager had his leg broken by the
riot police.[3]
Following
this incident, on May 4th, 2006, 4000 police and army units attacked
Daechuri village outright. The soldiers and police outnumbered the protestors.
The local people were driven inside the elementary school by the assault. The attackers
engaged in systematic destruction of local property as they proceeded. 150
people went upstairs, but were easily cleared by the police; special units
removed the priests and politicians who had occupied the roof. Meanwhile
soldiers were occupied in installing barbed wire barriers around the rice
fields. Then the elementary school, the very symbol of resistance of Daechuri
village, was demolished.
The
situation at present is that the village is now surrounded by troops and barbed
wire, with the inhabitants sealed off from the outside world. The Korean
Ministry of Defense is engaged in pouring more troops into Daechuri itself;
residents however remain in their homes, but have been given their eminent
domain notices (eviction orders) by the South Korean state.
The
origin of the situation in Daechuri lies in the “Global Posture Review”
outlined by President Bush on November 11th 2003, calling for
restructuring of US bases across the world.
The
planned US military facility in Okinawa for instance is simply a part of this
process.
In
respect of the Korean Peninsula, the South Korean government and the US agreed
to centralize the US military infrastructure inside South Korea, with over 101
bases scattered nationwide, including the 2nd division which is deployed close
to the Korean Armistice Line and DMZ (Demilitarized Military Zone), therefore
enhancing the military capability of the US Military Forces inside Korea. In
September 2004, South Korea and the US agreed to merge and eliminate some US
military facilities, including the large Yongsan Seoul garrison, relocating
them to Pyeongtaek under the so-called Land Partnership Plan (LPP). The order
of eminent domain is a form of compulsory purchase order, under which the South
Korean State grants itself the right to seize agricultural land for military
purposes. The Pyeongtaek US military facilities (including the Daechuri base)
are to be extended by 1153 hectares, including the replacement site for the
Yongsan (Seoul) base. The city of Pyeongtaek has 360,000 residents, and is
located one and a half miles from Seoul. 3734 acres have already been
appropriated in the city for US facilities; the US will require another 2851
acres. Pyeongtaek faces China across the Yellow Sea. This city is a
geographical stronghold, simultaneously facing both North Korea and China, and
potentially able to dominate both by concentrating the Army, Navy and Air
force: the Air force base K55, the Army base Camp Humphreys (Daechuri) and the
Pyeongtaek Port currently used by South Korean forces.
The Camp Humphreys facility was
originally a Japanese base, established in 1941. It is located next to the city
of Anjung-ri and about 5 miles from the city of Pyeongtaek. The local
inhabitants were evicted their land by Japanese troops and then utilized as
forced labor to construct the base.
Evidence of the long-term US policy of
sustaining intense military activity inside Korea itself is visible 50 miles
from South Korea’s capital city, Seoul. At Maehyang-Ri, US forces were long
engaged in using this coastal area for continued aircraft bombing practice; it
was the largest US bombing range in Asia. It was created, as at Daechuri,
through direct land seizure. It is located next to agricultural land and a bay
from which many derive their livelihoods by fishing; these frequent tests were
carried out on populated villages. It was observed that Depleted Uranium (DU)
ammunition was frequently used in these bombing and strafing runs by aircraft,
with napalm also employed. Villagers have been killed and wounded by fire in
the past, while thousands of bombs litter the countryside. The exercises have
now at last been terminated, through intense struggle by the local inhabitants,
but the US military is demanding that South Korea provide yet another firing
range.
South
Korean farmers have long been known as the most ‘militant’ of protestors
against the World Trade Organisation-mandated ‘liberalization’ of the world
food market. To accelerate this process, which involves vast profits for the US
state-subsidized agricultural industry, the US demanded, and gained, access to
Korea’s agricultural markets, a process accomplished with considerable state
violence directed against those whom the international media describes as
troublemakers. This will of necessity involve the destruction of South Korea’s
indigenous agricultural base and its replacement by US agribusiness and
affiliates. South Korean producers are, however, fighting back, with plans to
diversify South Korean agriculture into the organic sector, and in particular,
they have moved to establish a food bank to supply North Korea itself, to aid
with relief of the ongoing famine, which is estimated to have killed up to 1-2
million people. [12]
This
recent development has the potential to be an important first step in enabling
the Korean peninsula to become a totally independent and self-sufficient
food-producing region in its own right, and is a move to counter the
importation of cheaper rice into South Korea from outside producers.
The
battle for Daechuri and Dodori therefore, then takes on a wider significance.
It is not merely a battle over the seizure of farmers’ land for a military base.
It is a symbolic battle for the food supply of Korea itself, of the right of
the nation’s farmers to be self-sufficient in the provision of food. This is
contrary to the objectives of US global policy; therefore at Daechuri / Doduri,
it is being established that the South Korean state has the right, under the
eminent domain order, to seize Korean ancestral land for its imperial master.
South Korea will have no right to control its own economy or its own food
supply, it can not ask the US to leave South Korean territory, and the
Daechuri/Doduri facilities can be expanded whenever the US wishes, which will
be the case at the proposed Okinawa facility, as the United States moves for
overall control over the oil and gas resources of the South China Sea.
The recent land
clearances in Daechuri, therefore, are an extension of the battle over land
sovereignty in Asia that has intensified since World War II.
The
primary objective of the sustained violence against the farmers of Daechuri and
Doduri is to facilitate US geopolitical objectives in the Korean peninsula. The
secondary objective is to
break the will of the farmers of Korea. Central to both is the reinforcement of
the partition of Korea, mandated after WWII by the United Nations, and cemented
by the near-global conflict of the Korean War (1947-49). To achieve this, the
reinforcement of South Korea's position as a client state of the US is vital.
This is sustained by the use of the standard device, the alleged threat of an
imminent North Korean invasion, a claim that is scarcely credible to those
acquainted with the actual state of North Korea’s economy and armed forces.
Similar claims were made about the Soviet Union at the time of its collapse:
that it would attack the United States, as a reflex action resulting from fear
of the imminent downfall of its economy; this was known as the “wounded bear”
theory.
North
Korea’s armed forces look impressive on paper, but are incapable of fighting a
modern army. South Korea has one of the most modern and well-equipped armies in
the world; and an attack by North Korea upon the South would invite instant and
devastating US retaliation.
The
political activism of Korean farmers has long been a thorn in the side of the
global agricultural industry and as such is consistently denounced by the
media. After the Korean War, South Korean agriculture was sacrificed to enable
industrialization to take place, with land nationalization less thorough and
complete than it appeared on the surface.
These
measures are logical and necessary objectives from the viewpoint of the US
given the strategic location of the Korean peninsula.
The conflict at
Daechuri and Doduri now heralds a new phase in the war for control of Asia. The
US has now abandoned its previous policy of stabilizing its client Asian states
in an unconcealed campaign for control of territory and resources. This heralds
a return to the manifest imperialism of the 19th century, which the
architects of the Programme for the New American Century (PNAC), the inspiration
for the so-called Global Posture Review, openly celebrate.
As a result of
this process, the Commonwealth states of Australia and New Zealand have stepped
into the vacuum created by the decline in the power and influence of the East
Asian nations after the economic collapse of 1997-8. The recent Australian move
into East Timor is the latest stage in an expansion of Western imperial power
and influence into the entire Asia-Pacific region. The oil and gas of the Timor
Sea, the property of the people of East Timor are currently being secured by
Australia, acting as regional contractor for the United States. The new Okinawa
military base in Japan is being pushed through to assist the United States in
its move towards the extensive oil and gas resources of the South China Sea and
in the longer term towards China itself. The huge expansion of the Camp
Humphrey facility is motivated in part by the same objectives.
Therefore, at
Daechuri and Doduri, the United States, acting through its client regime, is
acting to reinforce the partition of Korea by military force. In resisting this
assault, the heroic inhabitants of Daechuri and Doduri battle for the soul of
Korea, and in themselves symbolise the farmers of Asia, against whom some of
the worst savagery in history has been directed. Their bitter struggle is a
microcosm of the global struggle for land, for food, and for the survival of
the ancient nations of the world.
Content
copyright of The Tara Foundation, 2006
http://www.foodfirst.org/media/display.phpid406 http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1222 http://www.hooverdigest.org/984/henriksen.html http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/east/06/08/korea.us.01/index.html http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2002/2945korea_embargo.html http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/sanction.html http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6004