Category: Press

In light of growing concerns about the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, and the vulnerability of the civilian population in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK/North Korea) while under crippling sanctions and forced isolation, the members of the global campaign Korea Peace Now! Women Mobilizing to End the War urge governments around the world to take every step available to increase humanitarian and medical assistance to the DPRK. That includes increasing contributions to the UN, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and other humanitarian organizations providing aid in the DPRK, working with the UN Security Council and the US government to ensure unhindered delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid, and offering direct assistance to North Korea. The campaign also urges the UN Security Council and governments imposing sanctions on the DPRK to lift or reform those undermining the capacity of the government to respond to the humanitarian crises as found in the October 2019 Korea Peace Now-commissioned independent report “The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea.”

With an impending pandemic, now is the time for all countries to work together for the health and safety of everyone.

###

For immediate release
January 31, 2020

The Korea Peace Now! campaign strongly condemns the Trump administration’s decision to loosen restrictions on the US military’s ability to use landmines.

Given that the DMZ has one of the highest concentrations of landmines in the world, that the United States has stated its commitment to build a “lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula,” and that the two leaders of Korea pledged to transform the Korean Peninsula “into a land of peace free from nuclear weapons and nuclear threats,” the decision to expand the use of landmines is antithetical to the goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, as well as a threat to the peace and security of Koreans, Americans, and people all over the world.

“The United States, South Korea, and North Korea should be signing the Mine Ban Treaty to once and for all end the use of these horrific weapons of war,” said Jody Williams, the chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative. “Mr. Trump should not be rolling back U.S. landmine policy when we have been making steady progress in creating a landmine-free world.”

Williams shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which she helped create. In 2018, she met with soldiers in South Korea who described to her how the process of de-mining portions of the DMZ with North Korean soldiers led to a greater understanding of their shared humanity. “Artificial borders and weapons keep us apart when we need to come together,” said Williams.

The women leaders of Korea Peace Now! point out that while the Obama administration restricted the use of landmines and put a moratorium on production, it excluded the Korean Peninsula, allowing the US military to continue to use landmines there.

“Landmines have killed and maimed hundreds of people in South Korea since the Korean War, and hundreds of landmines remain,” said Youngmi Cho, executive director of the Korean Women’s Movement for Peace. “They are not making us any safer, and they will not make the world any safer. This is a dangerous step backward for peace.”

###

2020 marks the 70th year of the Korean War. It’s time to end the war and make it year one of peace.

Join the Korea Peace Now! Grassroots Network, Peace Treaty Now and the Korea Peace Network in Washington DC to raise a unified voice for an end to the Korean War and peace on the Korean Peninsula.

What: 70 Years Too Long: National Action to End the Korean War

Where: Washington, DC

When: March 15-17, 2020

Schedule of events:

SUNDAY, MARCH 15

“End All Endless Wars, Korea Peace Now!” March and Rally at the White House
Time: 1-2:30 pm
Location: Lafayette Square, Pennsylvania Ave. NW & 16th St. NW, Washington, DC

Joint National Convening of the Korea Peace Now! Grassroots Network and Peace Treaty Now
Time: 3-5 pm (followed by dinner and dwipuri)
Location: Human Rights Campaign, 1640 Rhode Island Ave. NW, Washington, DC
Registration required.

MONDAY, MARCH 16

Annual Korea Peace Network Conference
Time: 8:30 am-1:30 pm
Location: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 301 A St. SE, Washington, DC
Registration required.

“70 Years of War and Division: The Path to Peace with North Korea”
Public forum with keynote by Dr. Bruce Cumings
Location: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 301 A St. SE, Washington, DC

• 1:30-2pm: Keynote address by Dr. Bruce Cumings
• 2-3:15pm: “70 Years of the Korean War”: intergenerational Korean American women dialogue. Speakers: Joy Lee Powell Gebhard; Aiyoung Choi, Women Cross DMZ; Grace Choi, Re-generational Movement; Minju Bae, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development; Yeonhee Kim, Korea Peace Now! Hawaii
• 3:30-4:30pm: “The Path to Peace”: panel on the challenges and opportunities for a peaceful resolution to the conflict between the US and North Korea. Speakers: Jessica Lee, Senior Research Fellow in the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute; Joy Yoon, Co-Founder and International Director of the Ignis Community; Erik Sperling, Executive Director of Just Foreign Policy; Catherine Killough, Advocacy and Leadership Coordinator of Women Cross DMZ

TUESDAY, MARCH 17

Korea Peace Advocacy
Time: 9 am-5 pm
Location: Capitol Hill, Washington, DC
Registration required.

For more info: contact US National Organizer Hyun Lee.

December 16, 2019

Dear President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un:

We are representatives of Korea Peace Now!, a women-led global campaign to end the Korean War. Our coalition includes Nobel Peace laureates, activists, professors, human rights lawyers, a retired Army colonel, and a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

We are writing to respectfully urge you to find a peaceful settlement while the window of diplomatic opportunity is still open.

Christmas has been an occasion to call for peace on earth and goodwill to all people. During World War I, there were spontaneous truces in which soldiers would cast aside their guns, crawl out of the trenches, and embrace their enemies. We appeal to you to demonstrate the same magnanimous spirit.

A return to escalation would not only reignite the danger of nuclear war, but also seriously set back the political momentum for peace painstakingly built over the past two years. Ever since the Singapore Declaration called for “new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity,” we have seen growing and unprecedented support for normalization.  A recent poll conducted by YouGov and Data for Progress shows that 67 percent of Americans now support negotiating a peace agreement with the DPRK, and support is even higher among registered Republican voters, at 76 percent.

As a global movement dedicated to ending the Korean War, we have consistently advocated that a durable resolution of the conflict requires a peace agreement, sanctions relief, women’s participation in the peace process, and the right of all to live without fear of nuclear war. Any delay prolongs the suffering of those who wish to live in peace.

Next June, the Korean War will have languished for 70 years. We must all push back against the forces, habits, and structures that perpetuate it.

As peace activists, we are doing our utmost to educate the public, organize peace-loving people everywhere, and encourage all sides to find a resolution. Thanks to the bold steps you have taken to meet and engage with each other, the historic resolution we helped introduce in the US Congress this year to formally end the Korean War with a peace agreement now has over 40 co-sponsors, and the list is growing.

There can be no progress or resolution, however, without meaningful talks. Too often, one step forward in diplomacy is followed by two steps back in opposition. This Christmas, we urge you to finish what you started and do what no other US and DPRK leaders have succeeded in doing: end the Korean War.

You have the power to heal millions of hearts broken by three generations of war. We are counting on you to implement the vision of peace that Koreans, Americans, and all citizens of the world wish for.

May peace prevail on the Korean Peninsula and around the world.

Sincerely,

Korean Women’s Movement for Peace (Korea Women’s Association United, Women Making Peace, National YWCA of Korea, and Korea Women’s Alliance)

Nobel Women’s Initiative

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)

Women Cross DMZ

Members of the United Nations Security Council

December 11, 2019

Dear Ambassadors,

We are writing to you as members of the international women-led campaign Korea Peace Now! Women Mobilizing to End the War.  

As you gather today to discuss the security crisis on the Korean Peninsula, we urge you to take a holistic approach considering the human costs of sanctions-based responses. The North Korean civilian population is caught in the crossfire of a geopolitical dispute they have little to no control over, perpetuated by the lack of resolution to the Korean War and made more acute by the imposition of sanctions so comprehensive they threaten their very existence. As it is part of the fundamental principles of the United Nations to settle disputes peacefully and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, we urge you to call for an end to the Korean War and to review the conformity of nonproliferation sanctions to international human rights and humanitarian law.

Recently, our campaign commissioned a panel of independent experts to produce a report, “The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea,” which highlighted the negative consequences of sanctions on the lives of the North Korean people. According to the report, the sanctions regime against North Korea has since 2016 grown from a “smart sanctions” model essentially targeting the military and the elite to an almost total embargo on North Korea-related trade, investments, and financial transactions. Drawing evidence from UN and nongovernmental organizations on the ground as well as other relevant datasets, the report found that sanctions are having humanitarian, developmental and gendered impacts and that existing sanctions exemption mechanisms are insufficient to prevent adverse consequences. It raised concerns that the sanctions in their current form may overstep what is permissible under international humanitarian and human rights law, highlighting the rights to life, food, health, an adequate standard of living, and development, as well as women’s rights.

While the Security Council has repeatedly stated that its sanctions are not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences, in their current form, sanctions are interfering with the ability of both international aid organizations and of the North Korean government to address the urgent and long-standing humanitarian needs of the population. According to the UN Panel of Experts, a wide range of humanitarian-sensitive items are banned from entering the country, including agricultural material and medical equipment, and generally any items containing metal, such as scalpels or nails.

Sanctions are also impeding the economic development of the DPRK, reversing the country’s growing trade and engagement with the world. This undermines progress that North Korea made in overcoming the economic crisis and famine of the 1990s, particularly market activity led by grassroots women, a key engine of social change. Sanctions undermine women’s economic security and their livelihoods, perhaps most clearly with UNSC resolution 2375’s ban on textile exports, an industry in which 82 percent of workers are female. Increasing gender inequality is counterproductive to the stated aims of those advocating sanctions. Furthering a gender divide and marginalising women from any form of economic power and, hence, influence (even if limited) serves only to institutionalise the disparities that empirical research in various conflicts has shown is inimical to peace building.

As the crushing North Korean winter sets in and as expatriate North Korean workers are forced to give up their jobs by the end of the year and return to the DPRK, we urge you to urgently address the unfolding human tragedy by (1) opening the space for dialogue on the adverse consequences of sanctions and the question of their conformity to international human rights and humanitarian law, (2) establishing a process to assess the human impact of sanctions and take expedient action to mitigate and ultimately eliminate undue harm; and (3) calling on the relevant parties to the unresolved Korean War to formally end it by replacing the 1953 Armistice with a peace agreement.

We look forward to your response and constructive engagement.

Sincerely,

Korean Women’s Movement for Peace
Nobel Women’s Initiative
Women Cross DMZ
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)