Ongoing Military Occupation and War Exercises

In this piece, Sung-hee Choi, an activist with Save Jeju Now, expresses concerns over the South Korean government’s plan to build a second airport in Seongsan village, east of Jeju Island, that can be used as a potential air force base. Through several news media video clips, she traces the South Korean government’s drive to construct an air force base on Jeju Island in the past. She suggests that not only the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport but also the Ministry of National Defense are tightly linked to the plans of opening the second airport on the island.

In this piece for Foreign Policy in Focus, Youkyoung Ko describes the arms race and militarization in the Pacific, arguing for the urgent need to end the Korean War. With the escalation of U.S.–China hostilities and the rehearsal of war through the RIMPAC war exercises, Ko casts critical light on bloated imperial defense budgets, the hawkish alignment between the right-wing South Korean president Yoon Suk-Yeol and U.S. president Joe Biden, and the impacts of militarism on the Korean peninsula.

Christine Hong, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a board member of the Korea Policy Institute, gave a public lecture on the history of U.S. intervention on Jeju Island and the growing militarization of Korea and Japan. She discussed the role of the United States in pushing forward the militarization of the Asia-Pacific region by shedding light on the construction of a naval base in Gangjeong village on Jeju Island.

Paul Liem interviewed Juyeon Rhee after she was blocked from entering South Korea. In her remarks, she addressed the role of the Korean diaspora in the broader Korean peace movement and the necessity of solidarity for a lasting and meaningful peace.

This footage shows that the 2022 war games at RIMPAC rehearse war against North Korea.

As U.S.–South Korea’s joint military drills and exercises were underway (between August 8 and September 1, 2022), this article points to the direct connection between the Korean War and the current military hostilities on the peninsula. Military exercises were canceled in 2018, when U.S. relations with North Korea thawed with Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un in Hanoi. In return, North Korea had stopped missile tests and began to demilitarize. With Biden’s antagonistic policy toward China and the militarization of the Asia-Pacific region, the United States and South Korea resumed live-action military drills, Ulchi Freedom Shield, rehearsing war and regime change in North Korea and escalating U.S. militarism in the region. In response, North Korea launched two missiles as warnings and a call to deter U.S. power. This article also features a photograph from the August 13, 2022, demonstration in South Korea, as tens of thousands gathered to protest the ongoing war and to call for “U.S. out of Korea!”

According to a brief KBS report, the South Korean government has prohibited protesters from blocking entry to the THAAD base in Seongju, in order to guarantee access to the U.S. Forces Korea. In contrast to the extraterritoriality granted to U.S. forces, South Korean antibase activists have been met with political repression.

In July 2016, to support the fight against the THAAD system in Seongju and to participate in the annual Jeju Peace March, two U.S.-based peace activists—Juyeon Rhee and Hyun Lee—were denied entry into South Korea as “persons deemed to commit any act detrimental to the interest of the Republic of Korea” (Articles 11 and 12 of the Korea Immigration Control Act). Their travel ban to South Korea was an act of political repression by the Park Geun-hye government. After petitions and public outcry, in 2018 and 2020, the entry ban was finally lifted for Hyun Lee and Juyeon Rhee, respectively.

In May 2022, the U.S. and South Korean governments issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to the Republic of Korea–U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty. The two presidents recommitted to combined military exercises and the deployment of the U.S. military, in the face of an alleged evolving threat posed by North Korea and its nuclear program. Wielding the rhetoric of denuclearization even as the United States asserted its willingness to use nuclear “capabilities” on the Korean peninsula, presidents Yoon Suk-Yeol and Joseph Biden sought to justify the militarized alliance between their two countries “as the linchpin for peace and prosperity” in the region.

This Instagram post from August 2022 offers news, context, and analyses about the resumed U.S.–South Korea joint war games.

This film, directed by Park Bae-il, focuses on the elderly residents of Soseong-ri, a rural village in Seongju province of South Korea, where the U.S. military built a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) base. Amid an escalating arms race, this defense system is allegedly deployed to defend against North Korean missiles. Installed without consent from Seongju residents, THAAD has been the subject of ongoing protests that demand its removal and call for the United States to halt its military interference in Korea. There has also been opposition from China to the THAAD deployment. This film demonstrates the work of anti-THAAD activists who have, for many years, demanded the end to U.S. militarism and war.