Our Community and Intergenerational Healing series continues | KPNGN June 2024 Newsletter
Last month, Korea Peace Now! launched an online public educational series to critically understand the impacts of intergenerational trauma stemming from the Korean War and other U.S. forever wars.
Through dialogue, political education, and storytelling, this series aims to empower our community to take action for peace, build bridges across generations, and forge a path toward realizing our collective security and liberation. Our speakers will highlight how intergenerational healing informs their work and efforts to end the ongoing Korean War. We will also discuss how the fate of the Korean War is inextricably intertwined with all movements seeking to end U.S. wars and militarism globally.
📣 JOIN US: Reflections on Unbind Your Heart: Korean Han / Grief Transmutation Ceremony, One Year Later, this Wednesday, June 12, at 5pm PT/8pm PT. Register here!
For our second gathering of the Intergenerational Learning and Healing Series, we will hear from Jungwon Kim and Yoon Ra, who will share their reflections from last year’s Unbind Your Heart: Korean Han / Grief Transmutation Ceremony where participants transmuted collective, generational grief and rage, 한 / Han, into a wellspring of righteous anger and strength to call for an end to the Korean War.
Both speakers will discuss the process of blending grassroots community organizing with ritual, performance, and song in order to transform and counter state violence and warmaking. They will also share about their work more broadly and why we must prioritize community, ritual, and spiritual resistance in organizing and narrative-building practices. After their presentations, participants will have the opportunity to share their own stories in smaller breakout rooms facilitated by each speaker.
Don’t forget to check out the recording of our first gathering, Intergenerational Trauma and the Korean War: Healing Across Generations, where we heard from award-winning author Joseph Han and psychologist and shaman Helena Choi Soholm. Both speakers shared their approaches to healing intergenerational trauma and grappling with their families’ histories, the legacies of U.S. imperialism, and the ongoing war in Korea. Watch here!
✌️JOIN: Join us at our KPNGN National Meeting this Thursday, June 13, at 5pm PT/8pm ET! We’ll continue with Part III of our New Member Orientation! This is the third and final session of our three-part series. In Part III, the Membership Committee will host a Q&A session and open discussion to empower newcomers and longtime activists alike to speak up for peace on the Korean Peninsula. Bring your questions about the Korean War, our movement for peace for Korea, advocacy, or anything else that might be on your mind. This session is for you all! Register here.
To learn more about the history of Korea Peace Now! and Women Cross DMZ’s work, the Membership Committee recommends watching this short video on Korea Peace Now!
🗣️ LEARN: The KPNGN Education Committee suggests reading the following article:
- The New Cold War Is Sending Tremors through Northeast Asia – This dossier from the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research discusses the U.S.-led “New Cold War” against China and its destabilizing consequences for Northeast Asia, in particular the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, and Japan.
📺 WATCH: “River of Peace” with Hannah Lee
As part of WILPF’s recent U.S. 35th Triennial Congress, KPNGN member Hannah Lee gave a presentation on Women Cross DMZ and KPNGN’s origins, campus organizing, and collections of personal reflections as well as Koreans’ solidarity with Palestine and shared history as we prepare for an East Asia conflict. Special thanks to KPNGN member Tina Shelton, one of the organizers of the WILPF Congress, for arranging this opportunity. Watch here!
WELCOME! Please join us in welcoming Women Cross DMZ’s new communications consultant, Solby Lim!
Solby is a Korean diasporic researcher and storyteller based out of New York, NY. She graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College in 2022 with a degree in History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, where she completed a thesis on a cultural history of internationalism as forms of political and cultural intimacies between northern Korea (DPRK) and Third World Liberation movements during the 1960s. As an undergraduate student, Solby worked as editor and intern for Barnard’s Communications department, pitching and writing profile stories and campus news starting her sophomore year.
Solby earned her master’s degree in Oral History from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2024, where she created Tidal Notes: A Critical Oral History of Asian and Asian/American Student Organizing at Columbia and Barnard, 1990s to 2020s. Additionally, she served as the public programming fellow for Columbia’s Oral History Master of Arts (OHMA) program as a graduate student.
Looking forward to seeing you this week!
Sincerely,
Cathi Choi
