[Textx Fw] Solidarity Letter from Japan with Jeju

* Makiko Sato sending email to the South Korean embassy, Washington DC (consular_usa@mofat.go.kr) on April 28, 2010
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Dear someone concerned,
Please forward this to President.
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Dear President Lee Myung-bak,

I would like to send you, as an ordinary citizen living in Japan, my opposition email against the plan to construct a naval base on Jeju, which is said to be promoted by the US administration as well in order to deploy MD systems to surround China.

If constructed, the naval base is going to inevitably intensify the bilateral relations between the north and the south of the Korean Peninsula, thus, putting East Asia in more dangerous situations, leaving it more hopeless for the seperated families on the peninsula to meet each others. I know all this situation does not need my poor explanation, for you must know precisely about it as President.

Then why do you dare to proceed to the planned construction, I wonder.

Why Korea has been kept seperated, I wonder more.

I was told when very young by a Korean guide on a cultural tour with my then colleagues to South Korea that the seperation was because of Japan's past annexation of Korea.

It was, for sure, and there is no excuse on Japan's side about it. But not any more now.

It has long been because of the US military policy, and there is no excuse for that, either, no matther how much propaganda there is both in SK and in Japan of ' threat by North Korea' or 'threat by China.'

I'm sure you know also about this better than I:

Many farmers on Jeju fled to Japan during the harsh oppression and killings towards them around '50s when SK was under the US administrative, colonial, rule.

Those on Jeju at that time wanted an integrated country, while the Cold War had already begun on the Korean Peninsula. So the US wanted to oppress the movement for independence from the US rule by Jeju villagers.

It is said the population of Jeju decreased to less than 30,000 in '57 from 280,000 in '45. The descendants of those who fled to Japan still live here, bearing discrimination by Japanese against them, as their older generations who well remembered the massacre on Jeju chose to stay, not going back to their homeland, for they were afraid of possible still harsher discrimination, even legal accusation against them.

In the prefectural rally in Okinawa on 25th this month against another US military base in Okinawa, all the invited speakers from Okinawa mentioned discrimination by both the US and Japanese governments toward Okinawa.

The same thing can be surely said about Jeju especially these days when the opposition by villagers on Jeju against the planned naval base quite echoes that by Okinawans against the US bases in Okinawa.

Jeju and Okinawa are brothers in their histories under the influence of the US, some people here say. People on Jeju and those in Okinawa have similarly suffered both discrimination by the mainlanders of their own country and the merciless US military policy toward them.

Why is Korea still separated? It is half of your people, your family over there in the north.

Do you want your country, which once existed in its histry as an integrated, peaceful kingdom, kept separated endlessly in the future due to the US military policy, while the leaders of the United States haven't seemed and won't seem to care about the pain of your people at all, regarding SK as just a huge US military base?

I must say now that the separation of you country has been kept by some Korean presidents as well as by the US military policy, but I imagine all the SK presidents so far after the war on the peninsula must have felt more or less of pain about it.

Please ask yourself the unsettled question ever and make efforts to make Korea integrated in peace by halting the ongoing naval base construction plan in the first place. Please order a halt.

I can't go to Jeju today to stand in the brave line against the construction,
but my wish and those of many people in Japan for peaceful Jeju are with Jeju people over there.

Please order a halt.

Makiko Sato