WMC News & Features

From Korea, Steinem calls for women to be central to peace talks

Wmc Features Gloria Steinem Reads Messages Of Korean Reunification By Jean Chung
Gloria Steinem reads messages of love, hope, peace, and reunification put up by thousands of Koreans, including many divided Korean families. (Photo by Jean Chung)

Four years ago, on the 70th anniversary of Korea’s division by Cold War powers, Gloria Steinem and I were among 30 women who crossed the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from North to South Korea. We marched with thousands of Korean women on both sides of the border, calling for an end to the Korean War, the reunion of millions of families separated by land mines and barbed wire, and women’s inclusion in the peace process — because we know that when women are involved, peace agreements are more achievable and durable. 

We’ve now returned to the DMZ to call on the leaders of the United States and North Korea to return to talks and negotiate a final settlement to the nearly 70-year-old Korean War. We’re participating in the Let’s DMZ peace forum to commemorate the anniversary of the 2018 Pyongyang Joint Declaration signed by the South and North Korean leaders. 

Back when we crossed the DMZ, we could have never imagined that the two Korean leaders would meet and declare that “there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula” and pledge to transform the Korean Peninsula “into a land of peace free from nuclear weapons and nuclear threats.”  

Yet as the two Koreas have sought to end the Korean War, they are still beholden to progress made between Washington and Pyongyang. Although President Trump and Chairman Kim have met three times, the two sides have yet to agree on how to end the war and work toward denuclearization. That’s because the Trump administration has been narrowly focused on forcing North Korea to unilaterally denuclearize as a precondition for talks. As Gloria and I wrote in The Washington Post, “This approach is backward. To convince somebody to put down a gun, you first have to convince them they will not be harmed.”

With John Bolton now out of the picture, the prospects for reaching an agreement seem brighter. But to ensure that an agreement is reached requires one key action: inviting women’s peace movements to the negotiating table. A study of 40 peace processes over the last three decades, from Liberia to Northern Ireland, showed that in all but one case, when women’s groups were able to effectively influence a peace process, an agreement was almost always reached.

There are now eight U.N. Security Council resolutions advancing an agenda on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), including the groundbreaking UNSCR 1325 mandating women’s inclusion in peace processes. There are also WPS National Action Plans in 82 countries, including the United States as signed by President Trump in 2017. It’s time to take those agreements off paper and into action.

Women must be included in the peace process not just because it is grounded in international law, or because they are disproportionately impacted by war. Since the Korean War, women have been on the front lines calling for an end to war and militarism. They have been the peace process.   

Wmc Features Christine Ahn And Gloria Steinem Cross The Dmz By Jean Chung
Christine Ahn and Gloria Steinem cross over the Korean rail line connecting South Korea and North Korea at Imjingak, South Korea, DMZ. (Photo by Jean Chung)

In 1951, as U.S. bombs rained down on North Korea, an international delegation of 21 women from 17 countries traveled throughout the northern part of the Korean Peninsula to document the carnage and destruction. They visited bombed-out schools, hospitals, and churches, saw mass grave sites, and heard testimony from survivors about the unspeakable atrocities they endured. “More homes have been destroyed than military objectives, more grain than ammunition, more women, children and aged than soldiers,” they concluded in their report. “This war is war on life itself.”

Four million people were killed from 1950 to 1953. The war impacted mostly Korean civilians, but also foreign soldiers from 19 countries that participated in the war, as well as their families who received them injured, traumatized, and in caskets — or not at all.   

Korean women were the first to cross the DMZ in the name of peace. In 1989, university student Lim Su-kyung traveled to Pyongyang to attend the World Youth Festival and returned to South Korea by crossing at Panmunjom with Father Moon, a Catholic priest. They were arrested immediately upon crossing. This was followed by a series of meetings during the 1990s between South and North Korean and Japanese women in Tokyo, Seoul, and Pyongyang. The first sanctioned crossing of the DMZ was initiated by South Korean women by bus; they then held a meeting at Panmunjom with North Korean counterparts.

For seven decades women have been calling for an end to the Korean War because the war didn’t end with a peace agreement but with a temporary armistice. As a result, Korea became heavily militarized, with over 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and the establishment of “camptowns” around U.S. bases. With Koreans left destitute after the war, women were forced to support their families in any way they could. Their bodies were used to service sexually predatory foreign troops and act as a barrier from the rest of the Korean population.

After so many decades of shame and alienation, these women came forward to call out the systematic violence against them. Like the “comfort women” before them who exposed the forced sexual violence committed against them by the Japanese military during World War II, these courageous women are shining a light on the gendered impact of war and militarization on Korean women’s lives.

Wmc Features Gloria Steinem And Christine Ahn With Comfort Woman Statue By Jean Chung
Christine Ahn and Gloria Steinem with Korean “comfort” woman statue at Imjingak, South Korea, at the DMZ. (Photo by Jean Chung)

Park Young-Je was among the “camptown” women who sued the South Korean government for committing state violence against them. In 2017, at a court hearing in Seoul, Park testified, “Back in the day, the government used my body to earn dollars and called me a patriot for earning money. But out in public I was a woman whom people pointed fingers at.” The courts ruled in the women’s favor but awarded them only a small sum. But as Park said, “I was so happy because our grief was finally recognized.”

Women on the Korean Peninsula and around the world have been calling for an end to the Korean War. For the peace process to succeed and to be truly comprehensive, it calls for women’s peace movements to have a seat at the table. If we forget our history, we’re doomed to repeat it. With women leading the way, we can build a future toward peace — and hope. 

 *Christine Ahn is the founder and executive director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing for peace in Korea. She is an alumni of the Women’s Media Center Progressive Women’s Voices Fellowship Program.



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