Let the water flow in Pyeongtaek | Korea |Axisoflogic.com

Introduction

Below there is a short statement that SPARK (Solidarity for Peace and reunification of Korea) is sending out concerning the current situation in Pyeongtaek, a town south of Seoul where there is a large US base complex.

The US wants to expand Camp Humphreys so that it can serve as the main US military center in South Korea along with the other US installations there, including naval and air bases.

The South Korean Ministry of Defense has been trying to seize the land by force and push the local farmers out so that construction can begin. Farmers, townspeople, and peace activists have held many protests against the land seizure and the US base enlargement.

Expansion of the base and the concentration of US Forces in Korea (USFK) is part of a wider plan to realign US military forces world-wide, which includes an effort to contain China. The peace movement fears that the US plans to use South Korea as a staging area to launch a preemptive attack against North Korea, which could lead to a wider war with China and might involve the use of nuclear weapons.

- Agatha Haun, Tlaxcala Translator*

Statement
2006-4-7 Pyeongtaek
Let the water flow in Pyeongtaek

There is a state of war in Pyeongtaek.

The Ministry of National Defense decided that if farming begins this year, it will cause a setback in the base expansion schedule, so they're using backhoes, bulldozers, and cement mixers, along with 750 private security personnel and 5000 riot police to shut off the irrigation water to the fields.

The bulldozers were used to dig up the rice fields and to fill in the irrigation canals, while backhoes tore up the roads between the fields. The local residents and activists crawled under the backhoes and lay down, and women protested by climbing on top of the bulldozers.

The Pyeongtaek farmers have been struggling for three years against the US and South Korean governments which intend to expand Camp Humphreys to three times its present size.

In 2005 the South Korean government tried to expropriate the local
residents' and by force, but more than 70 farming families refused to
submit, and continued to defend their hometown and do their farming work.

Many Korean citizens are willing to go to Pyeongtaek, because they want to help to defend it, support the local residents, and win the struggle against the land seizure. The Pyeongtaek farmers and peace activists in Korea need everyone's support and help.

Everyone's support is a great help to us. Join our struggle to resist the US and South Korean governments. We ask you to send protest messages to the Korean Defense Ministry's home page notice board, and to send e-mails everywhere to tell people what's happening here.

*Translated from Korean into English by Agatha Haun, a member of Tlaxcala (www.tlaxcala.es), and revised by revised by Hye Ran; Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea (SPARK); Tlaxcala is the network of translators for linguistic diversity. Read more about Tlaxcala!