Sarajevo Queer Festival violently attacked over and over again

Some weeks ago, I got an invitation to join the “Queer Sarajevo Festivalu” on Facebook. On the page of the group, it said that the festival had the aim to make the festival symbolizing a free space based on principles of self-defining, self-identity, individuality, and freedom of choice. It should expose the connection between various forms of violence and discrimination, as well as the necessity and potential for a queer movement to prompt change and achieve respect of human rights for all. I immediately joined the group but sadly declined an invitation to the festival.

Continue reading on OhmyNews.

Paper cranes, okonomiyaki and peace

HIROSHIMA – The signs in English are pointing to the streetcar that goes to the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Peace Memorial Museum.

Arriving as a tourist to Hiroshima, these are the most likely places to visit. You come to see the traces of the atomic bomb that detonated over the city in the early morning of Aug. 6, 1945.

Read the rest of the article in JoongAng Daily.

 

The article was publishied in JoongAng Daily on September 5, 2008.

Prints of sexual slavery

View Album

 

 

My friend Eunhye walks up to the wall that is covered by prints of hands in clay. She looks at the wall, then slowly lifting her hand,letting her fingers sink into the print. After a while, she takes her hand away, lookts at her palm and touches it with her other hand. Then she puts her hand into a new print.

 

During World War II and the Japanese colonialisation of Korea, more than 200,000 women were abducted by the Japanese military and used as sexual slaves, as comfort women. The women were Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Taiwanese, Burmese, Indonesian, Dutch and Australian.

 

In 1991, Kim Hak-soon was the first who came forward with her experiences during World War II. Dedicated to her cause, she kept on telling her story over and over again. And others followed. Today, 220 comfort women have come forward. The stories of the women have become like pieces of a puzzle, pointing out locations where the Japanese military where keeping the women.

 

Eunhye keeps on following the clay prints. She stretches out her fingers in the prints, let her fingertips touch the fingerprints.

 

The Sharing House was established in 1992 in Seoul by private funds from Buddhists and Korean nationals. The aim was to provide a home and place of healing for “halmonies”. Since the term “comfort women” comes from the Japanese military, the word “halmoni,” meaning grandmother, is used to refer to the women. In 1995, the house was moved to the current location, outside Seoul, and in 1998 “The Museum of Sexual Slavery by Japanese Milisary” opened. Today seven halmonies live in the house. The clay prints are all from Korean women who have come forward, telling what happened to them during the war.

 

Eunhye has reached the end of the clay prints. She doesn’t say anything, she just looks at me and shows me her palm. Around her neck is the new necklace I just bought her.

 

The Museum is not yet completely adjusted for people not speaking Korean, Japanese or Chinese, so a group of volunteers are organizing tours in English twice a month during the summers and once a month during the winters. The volunteers pick up the participants in Seoul, following them all the way to the Sharing House. The tours usually have between 20 and 40 participants, most working as English teachers in Korea. When one of the halmoni feels well enough, they come and speak to the visitors.

 

“What do you want to hear,” Lee Ook-san says and looks at the group in front of her. Everybody is silent. The girl interpreting for her explains that we can ask anything. But the group remains silent. Lee looks at us, she doesn’t move, she just keeps her body in the same position. Then she starts to speak.

 

“I am exhausted from saying ‘I was taken to China as a comfort woman when I was 16,’” she says. “But it is important for people to hear the story from my mouth.”

 

Lee was born in Busan, in the south of Korea. From the age 7 to the age of 15, she cried every day.

“I wanted to go to school so badly,” Lee says. But the family was too poor.

 

When Lee was 15, she was sent to be a maid in a family that had a small restaurant. They promised that they would let her go to school, but instead, she was hit everyday. When she tried to run away, she was captured and sold to another household. The mistreatment went on.

 

At the age of 16, Lee was captured in the street and thrown into a truck together with five other girls. They were put on a train to China and as prisoners of war, where they first worked on a constructing site. After some time, Lee and other girls were taken to another site. They were give cloths, but once they had taken them, they were told that they had to pay back. They had to serve as comfort women.

 

Lee couldn’t stand the treatment. She ran away, but was caught.

“I refused to say ‘I mad a mistake,’” Lee says. Instead she kept on saying that she was going to run away again, that she cannot live like that. Somehow, they did not kill her.

 

Lee came back to Korea on June 1, 2000. 58 years after she was thrown on that truck. When she returned, she didn’t have a citizenship any longer. Her family had reported her dead. It took her a year to reclaim her citizenship.

 

For Lee, the Japanese colonialisation is the reasong for everything bad that happened during her life. Without the colonalisation, her family would not have been poor and she would never have ended up a sexual slave.

“Even if they all die, I will always have this outraging anger,” she says. “It is not against the Japanese people, but their government.”

 

Lee believes that the Japanese government is only waiting for the women who were comfort women to die off. She is questioning why the prime minister issued and apology in the United States. She thinks he should have come to the Sharing House, giving an apology straight to the people who were suffering.

 

Many share Lee’s opinion. Every Wednesday, there are protests outside the Japanese embassy. In February, number 800 was held, meaning that the protests have been going on every Wednesday for over 15 years.

 

When Lee gets tired, the whole steps out to the yard of the Sharing House. It is a beautiful day and we sit down having our lunch looking at a green field. Malcom Trevena, one of the volunteer, starts to tell about his work. Before he came to Korea, he lived in Uganda, working with women going through the same thing as Lee did. In Uganda, Malcom and his friends started an NGO with some women. The women started to do handcraft that they are selling in an attempt to make the women have some income. Malcom has brought bags and necklaces. Eunhye walks up the Malcom and starts looking through the necklaces. She keeps on returning to one with several colours. I buy it, and put it around her neck.

 

After the lunch, Malcom takes us into the museum. At one place, a “comfort station” is built up. It is a small hut of wood. I follow Eunhye into it. It is dark inside, with a bunk as the only furniture. Outside the hut we hear Malcom speak.

“There were three reasons for having comfort women,” Malcom says. “They wanted to provide stress relief to the men even when they were far from cities, reduce STD and avoid spies.”     

Eunhye listens to Malcoms words, then lower her head, letting her fingertips follow the splinters of the wodden wall.

 

 

 

Seoul. September 4, 2008.

 

 

The Sharing House

comfortwomen.wordpress.com

www.nanum.org

 

Grassroots Uganda

www.grassrootsuganda.com

 

Women’s active museum on war and peace, Tokyo, Japan.

www.wam-peace.org

 

Hiroshima remembers, calls for peace

Hiroshima Memorial Day 2008

The girl next to me is crying silently. Katsuko Kawamoto starts speaking slower and her voice starts to tremble. It is 63 years ago that the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima and Katsuko became hibakusha, a survivor.

Every year around Aug. 6, people from all over the world come to Hiroshima to join the peace memorial ceremony in remembrance of those who suffered the bomb but also to discuss about how to never let it happen again.

Read the full story on OhmyNews.

 

Hiroshima. August 8, 2008.

Tough G-8 Protests for Korean Activists

The G-8 protests in Japan were both a disappointment and a good experience for Korean activists Do Young and Cho Yak-gol. On Saturday afternoon, they spoke about their experiences at a screening held by the radical language exchange group Seoulidarity at Kuchu Camp in Hongdea, Seoul.

Read my article on OhmyNews.

 

Seoul. July 20, 2008.

Book review: Not even death can silence cult writer

Kurt Vonnegut is a person I would have liked to meet. His collected short stories mixed with small drawings in “Armageddon in Retrospect” make me imagine him as someone approaching even the hardest things in life with a joke. But, unfortunately, the book was published one year after his death on April 11, 2007.

Read my review published in JoongAng Daily.

 

Seoul. July 5, 2008.

Review: Looptroop Rockers – “Good Things”

Looptroop Rockers

“Good Things”

Label: Bad Taste Records

Genre: Hop-hop

 

I admit. I dance in elevators. at lease when I am alone and listening to Looptroop Rockers’ fourth album, “Good Things.” While the rhythms force me to dance, the lyrics of the Swedish hip-hop band make it hard to stay indifferent.

Looptroop Rockers are famous for their politics. They have compared Swedish immigration policy to the Berlin Wall. On this album, the lyrics are about trying to live a life outside the norm: to find your own way to build a family, to avoid busyness and keep being yourself. Sometimes there is little hope in the lyrics. “Blood & Urine” is about people and DNA: “Like an unwanted pregnancy / I fell they don’t wnt to see mroe people like you and me.”

On the other hadn, waht can be more empowering than: “Let me be who I wanna be / Let me be who I am / Let me be naive,” combined with compulisive rhythms? There is only one downside. I can’t stand “Living on a Prayer,” the only cover on the album. Apart from that, Looptroop Rockers is Swedish hip-hop at its best.

 

Seoul. June 30, 2008.

Published in JoongAng Daily

You can’t win over the people

There is a sentence I cannot get out of my head. For a week, it is the only thing that comes up when I read the news, talk with friends, or walk through downtown Seoul where the streets are filled with police buses and people protesting beef imports and government policies.

Read my opion article on OhmyNews.

New media and Korea’s protests

On June 27, OhmyNews held its fourth international citizen journalists’ forum with the title “Candle light 2008.” BJs, bloggers, journalists, and schoolars meet to discuss about how the media ownership has changed during the candle light vigils.

Read my articles:

Candlelight 2008: New Media and Korea’s Protests

Korean Bloggers and Journalists Should Learn from Each Other

Seoul. June 28, 2008.

Seoul Celebrates ‘Candle Night’

“Sometimes we have to stop and think,” said one of the organizers and started counting down. The audience followed, and on zero, the lights of Seoul Tower was shut down step by step. At other places in Seoul, Lotte Department Store, Dong-ah Daily, City Hall and Kia turned off their lights. Simultaneously, big buildings in Tokyo and Beijing were turning off their lights and in other time zones, about 20 countries participated in the event.

Read my article on Ohmynews.

Seoul. June 24, 2008.

Provoking memories and introducing new ones

RADIOHEAD

“The Best Of”

Label: Parlophone 

 

I have mixed feelings about best-of albums. I tent to think of them as produced only to make money. Still, I own a couple and they belong among the albums I listen to most. 

Listening to Radiohead’s “The Best Of,” a selection from Radiohead’s seven albums, makes me recall friends. In my hometown, we used to turn up the volume of “Creep” and sing alon gwith the words “what the hell am I doing here / I don’t belong here.” On a hot summer night somewhere in the Balkans, my friend Bojan aksed me to close my eyes and listen to the words of “Everthing in its Right Place.” As I did so, a sudden cool breeze came in from the balcony. 

Listening to the album is like travelling through my own memories and Radiohead’s musical development. Maybe that’s the real purpose of best-of albums: to provoke memories and introduce us into new ones. 

I play track 16 again. Listening to the words, I can just say: Bojan, you were right. Everything is in its right place. 

 

Seoul. June 16, 2008. 

Published in JoongAng Daily

A container wall dividing people

Protests on July 10th

It started with the police buses. During the last month, I have been watching the number of buses with barred windows growing every day, parking around the governmental buildings in downtown Seoul. Then, the groups of policemen started to appear. I first ran into them at a street corner in the late evening. About 20 policemen, all in their early 20s, sat in a square position prepared with shields.

Since I came to Seoul two month ago, the discontent with the newly elected president Myung-bak Lee has been growing. On June 10, the anniversary of the protests in 1987 that took the military dictatorship down, the protests that have been going on daily reached their peak. Ten thousands of people took to the streets to speak up against the president.

Read my article on Ohmynews.

Seoul. June 12, 2008.

Book review: Listen to the words of ‘Jia’

The book review “Listen to the words of ‘Jia’” is published on Ohmynews.

Seoul. June 6, 2008.

“Silvertown Shine!” aims reintegrating through culture

 

 

 

This weekend, the reintegration festival “Silvertown Shine!” will take place in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. During three days, the town will be filled of cultural events. The big night is on Saturday when both local bands and bands famous all over Bosnia and Herzegovina such as Zoster, Block Out and Hladno Pivo will perform.

The festival started six years ago when young people working in the Youth Center Srebrenica wanted to bring more culture to their town. They felt that the town often only was connected to the violent history from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. During the years, the festival has been growing, attracting more and more visitors from all over the country as well as famous bands from ex-Yugoslavia.

The festival starts on Thursday, June 5. During the first two days, there will be a photo exhibition, artistic films, a graffiti party that will redecorate the youth centre, DJ parties and a meeting of youth organizations on the topic “Development of Culture and Youth Activism trough Implementation of the Festival.”

On Saturday, Zoster, Block Out and Hladno Pivo will perform on the sports playground in Srebrenica. Lavirit from Zvornik, Š.T.R.A.J.K. from Bijeljina, Sasi and Zadnije Popis from Srebrenica will also perform.

 

 

Seoul. June 4, 2008

Cuts for beauty

Eunhye was on her way to the university when a girl sitting opposite to her suddenly started waving her hand. Eunhye looked around, not really knowing whether the greeting was meant for her. Then the girl stood up and came over to Eunhye saying “hello.” 

“She knew my name, but I couln’t reconice her,” Eunhye says. “I had to ask for her name.”

When the girl told her name, Eunhye was confused. It was a girl from her high school class, they only graduated few months ago. But Eunhye couldn’t get the appearance of the girl to go together with her memory. 

“When I said I am sorry that I couldn’t recognize her, the girl said she’d had a surgery,’” says Eunhye. The girl had made her eyes bigger, her nose smaller and cut a part of the bones to make her face to get a v-shaped appearance. 

The story is far from unique for Eunhye. She cannot count how many of her high school friends did a surgery during the summer break between high school and university. 

“Some even did it already for the graduation,” Eunhye says, remembering how she could the scares on her friends eyelids on the graduation day. 

The most recent governmental poll on plastic surgeries, made in 2004, showed that 53 percent of the Korean women had undergone a cosmetic surgery by the time they entered collage. 82 percent aimed to have liposuction.

In Seoul, the advertisement for plastic surgeries can be seen everywhere. But in certain areas the presence is more obvious. When exiting the metro station Apgujeong, an area dominated by young, rich and fashionable people, the walls are covered with ads from different plastic surgery clinics. Walking around in the area, the clinics can be found every where.  

Recently, while having dinner with some new friends in the area, a guy asked me to guess the age of two of the women present. I thought they were in their 20s, maximum in their 30s. The guy just smiled at me and whispered that they are both over 40. When I tried to explain the misconception by blaming that Asians look younger than Europeans to me, they guy just mumbled something about that all women go trough so many  surgeries. Then he turned to the others and added something to their conversation about golf. 

Most common is making your eyes bigger trough a cut in the eyelid, making your nose smaller, liposuction and cutting the bones in the cheeks to get a more v-lined shape of the face. Recently, also whitening of the eyeballs is becoming popular. The conjunctiva, the outer surface of the eye, is said to loose its luster with the age and is therefore removed in order to let healthier cells grow. The surgeries are fast,  sometimes they do not last longer then 10 minutes. 

Since the number of clinics are increasing, the prices of the surgeries are becoming cheaper, making it an option for more and more people. 

One year ago, one of Eunhye’s closer friends told her about her plans to get surgery. Eunhye was chocked. 

“I begged her not to do it. I told her she is pretty the way she is and if she would do a surgery she would look like everybody else,” says Eunhye. 

Since then, they haven’t seen each other, and Eunhye isn’t sure if her friend went trough the surgery or not. 

Not even Eunhye is spared from the pressure of being beautiful in the right way. 

“People tell me I should fix my eyes and my nose. But that I don’t have to do the v-line, they say I already have it,” she explains. “But I don’t want to. I like myself as I am.” 

 

Seoul. May 25, 2008 

Food, fear and politics

Close to the subway exit at Konkuk University, some students have set up a table , handing out leaflets. They are also holding up signs in the air with the South Korean president Lee Myung-bak’s photo crossed over with red colour. 

For weeks, the streets of Seoul have been filled with people demonstrating. They don’t want Korea to import beef from American cows, frightened that the United States will send meat infected by the mad cow disease. The protests have expanded into a mistrust in the president, elected only in December last year. 

“Before, we didn’t import the meat from cows older than 30 months,” says a  student of Konkuk University. 

Reports on the mad cow disease tells that the cows are not likely to be infected if they are younger than 30 months. Even if beef sold in supermarkets will be labeled with the country of origin, people are afraid of the places where you cannot chose what kind of meat you are eating. 

“The canteens in schools and at working places, they don’t care, the just want the cheapest meat,”  says the student. He thinks that the president is not caring enough of the health of the people of South Korea. 

In other areas of Seoul, american soldiers are fearing other types of meat.

“We are not allowed to eat anything on chicken base,” says a soldier based in Korea since several years. 

Almost at the same time as the demonstration against the beef import  started, the bird flue broke out in Korea. Quickly, the disease spread over the country and was soon found in central areas of Seoul. 

Reports on the both diseases are presented in the newspapers, telling that no Korean has ever been infected by the bird flue, but are more likely than Americans to get the mad cow disease even though there has not been any case so far.

In the end, the agreement between Korea and the U.S. has gotten postponed. The Korean president is trying to find a solution so that he can keep the Koreans on his side. Now Korea will be able to stop the import in case of a mad cow disease outbreak in the U.S. Meanwhile, the bird flue has turned out to of the strain that doesn’t infect humans. 

 

Seoul. May 24, 2008 

 

 

Using books to fight a territorial conflict

Mr. Jung’s phone is calling all the time. “It’s going to be a busy day today,” he says. He is a journalist at Korea Times, specially covering the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The Japanese ambassador is called by the foreign minister of Korea. Recently, Japanese media have reported that a group of islands that Korea sees as their is going to be mentioned in Japanese school books for middle school social studies classes as Japanese territory.

 

The group of islands that is called Dokdo in Korean, Takeshima in Japanese, and Liancourt Rocks in English, is situated in the sea between Korea and Japan. The sea is called East Sea from Korean point of view and Sea of Japan from the Japanese side. The dispute over the islets can be traced back to pre-modern times.

 

In 1905, when Japan occupied Korea, they also occupied the islands. After the Second World War there was an instruction telling that the islands should be given back to Korea, but in the final Peace Treaty of San Francisco, they were not mentioned.

 

The islands are still a hot topic. And an emotional topic.

 

Some weeks ago, I had coffee with some students at Konkuk University in Seoul. They were discussing a lot of political issues, and after a while, they asked me: “What do you think about Dokdo?” At the time, I had no clue what Dokdo was.

 

The student explained that the group of islands have always belonged to Korea, but Japan is trying to get hold of the islands because the want the sea to fish in. And that the people living on the islands are Korean. Simple calculation: The islands should belong to Korea.  

 

When googling on the islands, I read that the islands are uninhabited, except for a small Korean police detachment, administrative personnel and lighthouse staff.  

 

Just after the news about Japanese text books, the Korea Dokdo Reasearch Center, which is a governmental institute, has been telling media that they are composing a report in English titled “Was Dokdo really Japanese Territory?” They are also planning to translate 14 essays that are arguing that Dokdo is Korean territory into English and publish them in a book in October.

 

The text books and the publications in English in Korea are just few in a long line of material on the islands. The examples are many. In Japan, there are brochure released by the Japanese foreign minister. In Matsue, a “Takeshima Day” is celebrated once a year. In Korea, there is a project on promoting the islands trough media corporations like National Geographic, letting them show the history, geography and natural resources. 

 

 

Seoul. May 21, 2008

With the mission to stop a nuclear war

“We are in an extremely dangerous situation right now,” is one of the first things Steven says to me when I meet him and his colleague Shiotani Norio in Seoul Station.

They have been dragging around their suitcases for an hour, not managing to get a free coin locker, even though they have been guarding the lockers in case someone should come and pick their luggage up. It annoys Steven, but he keeps on speaking.

“We think that there is a big risk that nuclear weapons will be used this year,” he says.

I first met Steven when I was an exchange student in Hiroshima. He had just become chairman of Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. The organisation is based on the A-bomb experience of the city, aiming at contributing to world peace and human welfare trough building peace culture. The work is done trough information, such as Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, other exhibitions and lectures, as well as trough international exchanges. Currently, the foundation is focusing on getting more members to the Hiroshima based organisation Mayors for Peace and a touring A-bomb exhibition in the United States.

But what Steven seems to be most concerned about is the risk of a nuclear war.

Fear of a nuclear war

We find the food court and Steven and Shiotani can finally be relieved from their suitcases, parking them next to the table. As soon as we have gotten our food, Steven resumes speaking about the worrying situation in the world. He points out the growing competition for oil and other recourses, saying it is causing a disruption in the economical framework.

”It is happening very fast right now. And it is very similar to the 20th century when the British Empire fell apart,” Steven says.

The British Empire tried to hold onto smaller states to stay in control. To Steven, what we see in the world today are effects of that the U.S. empire is falling apart. States as Afghanistan and Iraq are prompting for independence, and the U.S. is losing its control. Based on the experiences in the 20th century, this can be a sign that we are heading towards serious violence.

”What we are really afraid of is that it could lead to the use of nuclear weapons,” Steven says.

Steven almost hasn’t touched his food. He just holds the chopsticks in his hand, as if being prepared to eat.

Steven and the foundation are not alone about their fear. In the US, people like Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector to Iraq, Seymour Hersh from the New Yorker, and Jacqueline Cabasso, one of the leading peace activists in the US, are finding it likely that United States will attack Iran.

”They think that the US will bomb Iran to destroy their nuclear weapons,” Steven sights.

What then could happen is that there would be some kind of revenge. That in turn could lead to that the U.S. enter Iran and, once again, face a dead end just as in Iraq.

”We would find ourselves again confronting a force that is too much for us. Then, at that point, we will use nuclear weapon in trying to defeat the top of the elite in Iran,” Steven says.

Steven is afraid that once the nuclear weapons are used, there will be an escalation in the usage.

Lobbying that gives result

Although the alarming situation, Steven can see positive developments. Last year, Barack Obama clearly stated that U.S. should make an effort to build a nuclear free world.

”That is an effect of lobbying,” says Steven and finally picks up some pickles from the side plates. He starts eating the rest of his food, too, but keeps on speaking between the bites.

Peace activists in the U.S. didn’t use to raise their voices against nuclear policies. But now they are starting. Furthermore, there has been an editorial in the Wall Street Journal in January two years in a row, where Henry Kissinger and George Shiels, both former Sercratries of State under Republicans, William Perry, from the Defence Department and Sam Nunn, head of the Arm Service Committee, stated that it is time to illuminate nuclear weapons.

Steven sees the weapon industry as the biggest obstacle to this development. There is a lot of money being made on nuclear weapons.

Focusing on the future

When I come home the same evening, I tell my friend Su-jeong Kim, with whom I am living, about Steven. She gets interested at once, starting to ask me questions about how Steven, as an American, can have become chairman of a Japanese peace organisation. After all, it was the Americans that bombed the city.

The next day, Su-jeong calls me. She is a journalist, working in one of the leading newspapers in Korea, and she wants to write about Steven. The same night, we meet up with Steven and Shiotani. Su-jeong is eager to ask questions, confronting Steven with all her feelings of contradictions..

Steven explains that the president of Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation is the mayor of the city, Tadatoshi Akiba. His main concern is the need of reconciliation, meaning that people have to work together for the future past to overcome what happened.

“In a way, I am sort of an evidence of that Hiroshima works that way, that Japanese and Americans are working together to eliminate the use of nuclear weapons,” he says.

10,000 Koreans died in 1945 when the A-bomb hit Hiroshima. Most of the victims were taken to Japan as forced labour during the Japanese occupation of Krorea. Su-jeong is critical to that the history of the occupation is not more extensively mentioned in the Peace Museum in Hiroshima.

Steven agrees that the Korean victims have not been recognised enough, but at the same time, he is following majors Akiba’s way of thinking.

“I think that if we start talking about the Korean history and Chinese history, it leads us immediately to Western colonisation, and that would make us blame the US, and that is not our goal,” says Steven.

Instead, the foundation wants to focus on the problem of today: The need to stop an escalation of the use of nuclear weapons.

“I think it is very difficult for you to illuminate nuclear weapons,” Su-jeong opposes.

Steven nods.

“But the main problem is America,” he says.

To Steven, America is the only country that is trying to dominate the world. Even countries like China, Russia and India are willing to illuminate their weapons, but then the US also has to do it. What Steven is looking for, is someone to put a pressure on George Bush.

“If just someone that he trusts could tell him not to use nuclear weapons within this year, we could be safe,” Steven says eagerly.

Just a month ago, president Myung-bak Lee of Korea met Bush. The Korean newspapers were filled with photos of the two of them together, laughing and waving to the cameras. Lately, the Korean and the Japanese president Yasuo Fukoda are also getting closer. Steven sees that as a possibility.

“If only the Korean and Japanese presidents together could tell Bush not to use nuclear weapons, prompting on their close position to North Korea, it could be a big step on the way,” Steven says.

The following Sunday, Su-jeong leans over the breakfast table, showing me a full page in the newspaper. It is her article about Steven.

“It was a hard work for me, I really needed to try to focus on what he wanted to say to Korean people,” she says. Then she is pointing at the title of the article, translating it as: “South Korea and Japan should work together to illuminate nuclear weapons.”

Seoul. May 4, 2008

Everyone’s Olympics

The big lawn in front of the city hall in Seoul has turned into a sea of red flags.

“Go China go,” is the constant sound from that sea.

The Olympic torch is on its way through Seoul and more than 5,000 Chinese students, from different universities all over Korea, have gathered in Seoul to show their support.

“We have already been waiting for four hours,” says Lili.

It is four in the afternoon and the Olympic torch is planned to arrive any minute. Lili leans out from the sidewalk to be able to see well. A Chinese flag is covering her shoulders. Lili came to Korea to study in an University in Daejeon four years ago. It takes about four hours with the train from her university to Seoul, so Lili and her friends arrived already last night. This morning, they were up early to find a good place in the Olympic Village where the 24 km long torch relay started.

Suddenly, busses with barred windows drive up and stop in front of us. The doors open and policemen are flooding out. They line up like a wall along the sidewalk. Lili don’t think that they will move, so we get down in the metro to chance side of the road. Once up in the fresh air again, we can see about 30 busses lined up along the whole road. China has especially asked for big security around the relay due to the protests that have occurred around the world.

“There were some people who protested in the Olympic Village but they disappeared pretty soon,” says Lili.

She thinks it was because of the presence of so many Chinese students.

From other parts of Seoul, reports come about that Chinese students have been throwing stones and water bottles towards anti-China demonstrators, and a reporter has been hit in the head by one of the stones.

Around the City Hall I have only seen three people in t-shirts with the print “Free Tibet.” Instead, it is the Chinese students that carry the messages. There are banderols with the texts: “Tibet has, is and will always be a part of China”, “The Olympic Games in Beijing will absolutely succeed” and t-shirts with the print “We suport Beijing Olympics. We support China”. One of the most common messages seems to be “One world, one dream,” visible on both banderols and t-shirts.

A girl comes up to us and gives us some pennants and stickers with Chinese flags. Lili smiles at her and sticks a flag onto her cheek.

“I am happy so many have come to support our country,” she says.

Lili is getting cold. She asks me what time it is. It is almost seven. The torch is already three hours delayed. Then, suddenly, a helicopter comes flying over the City Hall. Lili starts jumping up and down. Again, people start shouting:

“Go China go.”

Lili is shouting, too.

Finally, the torch arrives, surrounded by a crowd. We can only see the flame over the heads of the people in the crowd. Hundreds of policemen have been trained specially to run along the torch relay runners trough Seoul. Lili reaches up her camera in the sky, trying to catch what is happening. Then she looks down on her watch, realizing she needs to catch her train. Tomorrow she has to be back in her classes in the university in Deajeon. Lili takes my hand and says:

“You know, it is not our Olympics, it is everyone’s.”

Then she is off.

The day after I am drinking coffee with a journalist from a big Korean radio station who has to report on the torch relay. He finds it hard, because he was not out in the streets. But still, he has been watching tv and read newspapers. He stays silent for a while, then he says:

“This is Seoul. That a lot of Chinese students use violence here is not right. They have to be prosecuted in some way.”

 

Seoul. April 28, 2008

From Space, Korea is united

Koreas’ first astronaut So-yeon Yi is dreaming about an united country. This Saturday she landed in Kazakhstan after 11 days in space.

So-yeong has become a part of the history as the first Korean astronaut in space. The proudness over her can be seen in the streets of Seoul. During her journey, there have been several exhibitions on the theme and she has constantly been in the news.

In an interview, made right after the landing in Kazakhstan, So-yeong describes her impressions from space:

“The Korean Peninsula I saw from space was one and united. The sight of the peninsula before I entered the Soyuz capsule still lingers in my mind.”

She also says that she is looking forward to come home to Korea and share her experiences with the public.

Seoul. April 21, 2008