A New Peace Movement in Northeast Asia: South Korea’s Peacemomo

by Dae-Han Song

July 27th marked the 70th year anniversary of the 1953 ceasefire to the Korean War. In the three years leading up to the anniversary, South Korean peace movements organized the international campaign Korean Peace Appeal to end the Korean War with a peace treaty. Yet, the anniversary has come and gone and peace is nowhere on the horizon. In fact, rather than working towards defusing tensions in the Korean Peninsula, the Biden Administration is using North Korea as a cover for building a NATO-level trilateral alliance with South Korea and Japan against China.

Upon taking office, when South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol sidestepped claims for historical accountability of Japanese colonialism, he cleared the way for the US’s regional “cornerstone” (Japan) and “linchpin” (South Korea) to connect with each other. In the process, they overcame the US’s roughshod San Francisco system, which had sacrificed justice against Japanese colonialism at the altar of anti-communism. On Aug. 18, to immunize the trilateral alliance from changes in administration, at Camp David, Biden, Yoon, and Kishida announced the “Spirit of Camp David” which would institutionalize annual trilateral summits, meetings, and consultations. 

On Aug. 28th, to explore the state of South Korea’s peace movement and the tasks ahead for it, I met with Francis Dae-hoon Lee, a long-time peace activist and veteran of Korea’s democratization movement and a Professor of Peace Studies at Sungkonghoe University and Director of Peacemomo, a research institute for peace and education. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Can you introduce the work of Peacemomo? 

One big characteristic of Peacemomo is that we don’t want to just mingle with the traditional activists. We believe that we have to reach out to new people, the public, especially young people. Peacemomo trains teachers and youngsters, and even people who don’t agree about peace with North Korea or are against democracy. Our training doesn't involve lecturing or teaching or dictating or directing. We believe in people's ability to think and discuss with other fellow human beings even if we can’t arrive at a conclusion or reach a consensus. We believe dialoging and exchange with other human beings elevates each person to a new level. 

On April 26, Yoon and Biden announced the Washington Declaration with the Yoon Administration boasting “nuclear deterrence” by having U.S. nuclear armed submarines make port calls in South Korea. What is the significance of this declaration?

Extended deterrence was first proposed by the Park Geun-hye administration. Extended deterrence includes the potential use of nuclear weapons from the US nuclear umbrella. But, this extended deterrence has a significant difference from [that of] Park Geun-hye’s time. It has become preemptive in nature. North Korea has become a pretext for the US to prepare, exercise, and train its forces for a preemptive strategy in Northeast Asia.

…a preemptive strategy beyond North Korea?

To put it simply, everything the US wants and does these days is about China. I'm not in a position to analyze Chinese military force and U.S. military force in detail. But, my reading of Chinese documents is that China is consistent in not willing to use military force to change the international order. People ask, “what about Taiwan?” For China, Taiwan is not an international issue, it’s a domestic one. From a Chinese perspective, there is a long consistency in their foreign policy. Xinjiang is [a] domestic [issue]; Tibet is  [a] domestic [issue]; Hong Kong is [a] domestic [issue]; and Taiwan is [a] domestic [issue]. Outside these realms, China has always been consistent: “we will increase economic influence via economic relationships, but we will not use military force to change the global stage.” 

The US praises South Korea as the “linchpin” of its regional security and Japan as its “cornerstone.” Is this empty rhetoric or is there something to this?

I think they [the US] chose the best words to represent their own interest. As a national economy, Japan is much stronger than South Korea. In terms of nuclear warfare, Japan has more resources to support US global strategy. It has a sophisticated rocket industry. It has the technologies and capital to sustain the production of long range weapons. Japan has much more strategic value.

South Korea has mostly short range land based military resources. So from a US perspective, South Korea is useful in the way that Ukraine’s forces are useful. They can fight to the end on the ground, they can consume their own people and resources. 

Now if you observe Trump and Biden, they decided on weakening China instead of coexisting with it. But the global economy is so fragile that the US cannot ruin the economic ties with China altogether. It can re-direct supplies for its benefit, but major production and trade are still with China: since “decoupling,” trade between both countries increased more than before while China’s trade with other countries decreased. 

The US is very deeply divided. Bipartisan politics is not winning people over. Thus, economic stability is enormously important. So, that's a brake… 

…a brake to prevent things from escalating further?

Yes. Western countries say that Ukraine should restore its territory or win the war, but they never want it [the war] to escalate into other territories. They want to keep it localized, even though all the supplies are global. What if a similar plan is now in place for North East Asia? Then, the best option is not American forces fighting Chinese forces. In addition, Japanese forces are not apt for actual fighting. They are trained as supply and global operation networks, and defense forces. So who has the actual fighting force?

Korean forces? 

Yes!

…so that's what it means to be the linchpin. 

Yes!

There have been various peace efforts, in particular around the 70th year of the armistice agreement in the Korean Peace Appeal campaign. What are social and peace movements in South Korea doing and what do you think they need to do?

Well, the Korea Peace Appeal wanted to bring the world’s attention [to the fact] that we Koreans want peace and that we can make peace if you support us by scrapping the armistice agreement and replacing it with a peace agreement. It was a very simple argument because it was a middle common ground between the right and left within the peace movement. They didn’t intend to simplify it. But, to me, and to outsiders it looked simplified. There are many questions. How do you guarantee that the peace treaty will reconcile the hostility between Japan and North Korea, US and North Korea, and US and China? They didn't intend to focus on a few things, but to find a middle ground and to approach the larger public, it inevitably became simple. And it inevitably became too Korea focused.

This seems to differ from Peacemomo’s empowering people with knowledge. 

Yeah, exactly. So we thought ordinary people who are not activists should have a chance to change their perspectives, to change their mindset, to change the understanding of the history of war and the international influences over warfare. I think that's much more people's empowerment than a few NGOs deciding what they think is the common ground and disregarding how simple the message is. It's time to recognize the limitations of a Korea focused approach to peace building.