June, from a month remembering war, to a remembrance of peace
작성자/Author
관리자
작성일/Date
2021-08-12 17:37
조회/Views
547
Every year, at some point at the beginning of June we inevitably meet with a banner in the streets heralding ‘Patriot’s month’. We are implored to remember those who defended the country during that most terrible of wars, and not to forget that the South and the North remain locked in terse confrontation.
Whilst my generation did not experience the war, when I encounter news from the conflict zones of the world I gain a glimpse of the Korean Peninsula’s battlefields from 70 years ago. This last May there were hundreds of casualties in the eruption of violence in the Palestine-Israel conflict, the Syrian civil war has been ongoing for over ten years now, and Myanmar is in crisis after the military coup d'état there. If we consider that over two and a half million people lost their lives in the Korean War, the sheer scale of wretchedness of what happened then becomes incomparable even with the terrible things happening in those countries now.
War must be remembered. Of course the physical scars of that most extreme expression of violence remain, but more than that, the impact that over seventy years of ‘unresolved war’ has had on the Korean Peninsula, must be remembered. Since the war, for such a long time now, inter-Korean relations have been dotted with repetitions of suspicion and hostility. During these years, to the South and to the North, the other was an enemy to be eradicated, and so politicians on both sides of the peninsula easily demonized the other and used that for their own political gain. The confrontation between the two Koreas was the readiest excuse in facilitating cultures of militarism to flourish, halting the advancement of democracy, and intimidating the population on both sides of the armistice line. Whilst it’s difficult to say whether the supposed ‘post-war generation’ directly experienced the war or not, everyone living on the Korean Peninsula today has to endure its aftermath.
Isn’t June now the time to transition from the remembrance of war, to a remembrance of peace? Isn’t seventy years enough? Thankfully, June also provides us with the memory of that first warm embrace between leaders of South and North at the June 15th Summit in 2000. No one who lived on the peninsula through that historic moment will be able to forget the emotions they felt on that day. Some cried with the thought of being able to finally meet family members left behind, some anticipated the breaking of violence’s vicious cycle, and some were filled with hope that they might live in a world governed by a bit more common sense. More than anything else, we all believed that the inter-Korean relationship would not go back to the relationship of the past.
Twenty-one years have passed since that June 15th Summit. Has peace found its way to the Korean Peninsula? The year of Korean reconciliation that was 2018, has also now become a memory belonging to the past, and inter-Korean relations have once again cooled after the breakdown of the Hanoi U.S. – DPRK summit in February 2019. Will the spring of ‘18 return to this peninsula again?
Last year, seventy years after the outbreak of the Korean War, seven South Korean religious denominations and 360 civil society organizations launched the ‘Korea Peace Appeal’ to prepare the foundations for peace and end the war on the Korean Peninsula. This campaign, which encompasses sixty international partner organizations, seeks to gather 100 million signatories and declarations of support for Korean Peninsula peace from around the world by 2023, the year marking seventy years since the Korean armistice was signed.
What is an end-of-war declaration? Some say an end-of-war declaration has no political force, that it is nothing more than just that, a mere declaration. That declaring the war has ended will do little to alter the reality on the Korean Peninsula. Some others claim that such a declaration is an important card in denuclearization talks with North Korea, and that it wouldn’t do to give such a prize unconditionally to those habitually bad-behaving North Koreans.
I don’t believe that with an end of war declaration the obstacles to Korean Peninsula peace will be swept away in an instant. I also don’t see it as some marvelous card that can get North Korea moving to our beck and call. Nevertheless, I believe that ‘ending the war’ can be an important turning point in moving from the remembrance of war, to being able to remember peace. Dialogue during a respite from war and dialogue post-war are two different things. During a cease-fire, negotiations are engaged in with the enemy. After a war is ended, negotiations become talks between enemies of the past. An ‘end of war declaration’ therefore changes the very nature of the ‘other’ on the Korean Peninsula.
Are inter-Korean relations improving? I believe that despite the current situation, inter-Korean relations are getting better. Over the past twenty years South and North have learnt how to speak to each other, whilst we have not resolved our conflicts the level of direct violence has decreased greatly, and through the (even minimal) cooperation regarding humanitarian and economic needs South and North have come to realize that they are partners whose future destinies are inescapably intertwined. As improvements, setbacks and stagnation repeat, inter-Korean relations develop step by step. At the moment these relations are in a period of stagnation. Getting out of this rut and moving us into another period of development is a task for both those who experienced the war and those who did not, a task for all of us here dealing with the war’s aftermath. I look forward to the day that June is remembered as the month of peace.
Yi Yehjung, KSM Director of Programs.
This piece was originally published in Korean in The Association for National Unification of Korea’s ‘Unification’(통일) magazine June edition.
