Professor Christine Hong joins Linda Olson-Osterlund on More Talk Radio to discuss the latest events around the peace movement on the Korean Peninsula. Call (503)231-8187 to join the conversation.
from peoplesworld.org
Family separation was one theme for Christine Hong, a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who focuses on transnational Asian-American issues, the Korean diaspora, and critical Pacific Rim studies. She pointed out that the Korean War in 1950-53, which has never been ended with a peace treaty, “ensured that one in three Korean families was separated. We’re not talking about separation of a matter of months—we’re talking about separation that has lasted for seven decades.”
“In the U.S.,” she said, “there are over 100,000 Korean Americans—you probably know some and you’re talking to one, too—who have family members in the North.” Observing that recent developments on the Korean peninsula, including the coming together of the two Koreas, are making this a very different time than a year ago, Hong said, “Peace in Korea has appeared, amazingly, as a prospect on the horizon,” but reminded the crowd that in the absence of a peace treaty the countries that signed the armistice agreement, North Korea, China, and the U.S., are all responsible to hammer out a peace agreement. She cited two critical issues: whether the U.S. and North Korea have the same understanding of denuclearization, and whether the two countries “have the same concept of peace—it’s not just denuclearization, it’s peace.” Hong called on the crowd to help to build a people’s movement for peace with North Korea, “which has never existed,” and to think of “the people in their communities who have been part of separated families for over seven decades.”
Christine Hong specializes in transnational Asian American, Korean diaspora, critical Pacific Rim, and comparative ethnic studies. At UC Santa Cruz, she organized with students, staff, and faculty for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. Dr. Hong received her PhD from the UC Berkeley English department and is working on a book project titled “Blurring the Color Line: Racial Fictions, Militarized Humanity, and the Pax Americana in the Pacific Rim,” which examines the double-fronted nature of U.S. Cold War counterrevolutionary violenceand emergent, anti-militarist human rights politics in the Asia-Pacific region following Japan’s Pacific War defeat. She is a board member of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, an executive board member of the Korea Policy Institute, a coordinating committee member of the National Campaign to End the Korean War, and a member of the Working Group on Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific.
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