EXTRACT OF MESSAGE SENT
TO PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (USA) COLLEAGUES & FRIENDS:
Subject: concerns re. Korea
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 14:05:45 -0400
From: garychess@earthlink.net
To: ......
Dear friends and colleagues,
Greetings from Silver Spring, MD. .....I am writing to
write you as key PC(USA) General Assembly staff, general presbyter and
committee chair of Grace Presbytery (of which I'm a retired member), and
a few other friends who will be interested in what I have to share.
Some of you know that I am a Korean War veteran,
having been there as a very young soldier of the U.S. Army in 1950-51. A
few of you know that earlier this month I made my second return trip
since the war, the first visit being in 1995. Still fewer of you know
that my experience in Korea during the war significantly influenced my
sense of calling to the ministry and to international mission service.
During and after seminary (for about 5 years) I was a PCUS candidate for
service to Korea but health problems eventually led Chess and me to
Latin America instead.
I am sending with this two reports about the August
1-9 Veterans for Peace delegation to South Korea. I believe they're
sufficiently self-explanatory with need for little more explaining. Let
me simply add a couple of points not mentioned in the reports. One,
thanks to Insik Kim and Art Kinsler for names and tel. numbers, while in
Seoul I had valuable telephone conversations with the General Secretary
of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, the Rev. San Hak Kim, and the
Ecumenical officer of the Presbyterian Church of the Republic of Korea,
the Rev. Hae Won Chae. They were both very gracious and would have been
happy to have received me and others of our delegation in their offices
but unfortunately our schedule did not allow that. The conversation with
Dr. San Hak Kim was quite short since he had to leave a meeting to take
my call, but he was very gracious and appreciative. Ms. Chae told me
that her office was relatively close to the hotel where we were staying
and we tried unsuccessfully to plan a meeting. As an expression of her
interest she asked me to share with her any written report about our
experience.
Let me add also, as I pointed out in a message to
Syngman, Insik and a few others prior to our trip, I was pleased to read
an article in Presbyterian News Service from this year's General
Assembly in Lousville regarding the greetings of visiting moderators of
these two Korean partner church general assemblies, expressing their
concern about the missile defense program proposed by President Bush,
and their appeal to PC(USA) to continue with them in supporting efforts
for the peace and reunification of their broken and divided country.
While I understand some of the difficulties for our
denomination to deal with these concerns and issues, given the special
characteristics, tensions and threats of the present time, and while I'm
surmising that some of you may find difficulties for concurring fully
with the objectives and findings of the June 23 Korea Tribunal in New
York and the work of the Korea
Truth Commission, I ask for your comments about these two attached
reports and I respectfully request of you initiatives toward a
responsible response from our church and other churches of the United
States to these findings, to the growing movement against the U.S.
military presence in South Korea, and the challenge for our denomination
to give greater support to the proposed process toward peace and
reunification initiated by the presidents of South and North Korea a
little more than one year ago.
I will appreciate your sharing with other interested
colleagues the enclosed reports, both of which along with reports of
other delegation members will be presented to the national convention of
Veterans for Peace this weekend in Albuquerque, NM. As I told Julia Ann
Moffett, who encouraged me to write to you, I wanted first to share
these reports with you before they possibly get attention in the
commercial media.
Many thanks for your attention and in advance for any
feedback you're up to sharing.
Shalom-Peace-Paz-Pyan Hwa,
Gary Campbell.
~~~~~~~~
Personal
report
My second visit to Korea since
the war
- Personal reflections of one participant in a
six-member delegation to South Korea sponsored by the Korean Truth
Commission (KTC) and Veterans for Peace (VFP), August 1-9, 2001 -
Among the few "theological gems" still
lodged in my memory from seminary years 42 to 45 years ago is a phrase
of a famous Protestant preacher of the time, George Buttrick: "The
books of God must ultimately be balanced." My second visit to Korea
since being there as a soldier for about sixteen months (1950-51) during
the Korean War reminded me of that phrase.
This second visit surprisingly made a greater personal
impact than my first visit. In 1995 I had gone with Brian Willson and
other peace-advocate veterans mainly for two purposes -- first, to join
an international delegation led by United Methodist minister Kiyul Chung
to a Korea reunification conference in Seoul and later to participate
during the final days, in Korea and Japan, of a year-long peace
pilgrimage of Christians, Buddhists and others "walking" from
Auschwitz to Hiroshima for the 50th anniversary commemoration of the
atomic bomb Holocaust.
Before now I couldn't have imagined experiences of
greater impact than those of 1995. Such as seeing Inchon again for the
first time after nearly 45 years when on September 17, 1950, I arrived
on a ship two days following the troop landing directed by General
Douglas McArthur. And still in 1995 the vivid memory of the city burning
and the battleship USS Missouri firing from Inchon Harbor its heavy
artillery toward Seoul. And among other experiences of the 1995 visit,
in Seoul by pure luck meeting a veteran of the ROK Army who had been
attached to the 31st Infantry Regiment where I was assigned in the war
zone of North Korea during my last four months there in 1951. These and
other moments were all deeply moving emotional experiences in the 1995
visit.
But this time our delegation had a more-focused
purpose - mainly to visit civilian massacre sites, some of them not
previously visited by international KTC representatives. Our delegation
of six included Brian Willson and four other veterans (of WWII, Korean
War and Vietnam) and Yoomi Jeong, Korean Truth Commission Deputy
Secretary who served as our coordinator and translator. Original plans
had included a larger delegation and an equal amount of time in North
Korea but at the last minute the northern part of our itinerary had to
be dropped. Whatever the outcome might have been otherwise, the result
of this brief nine-day program meant for me unprecedented visceral
experiences similar to what I had heard many international visitors
comment about their visits to Nicaragua during the Contra War and my
years there (1986-99), when we would often hear a visitor say something
like, "my life will never be the same."
The key difference in my two re-visits to Korea since
the war was this time the greater sense of wrongness for my being in
Korea for the war in the first place and the sense of being a member of
the same armed forces found guilty of criminal aggression against Korean
civilians widely practiced by U.S. troops. That I had not experienced in
1995 to the extent that I did now in the visit of August 2001.
Probably the moment of that greatest personal impact
was during our visit of just a few hours to Pusan. There's where I had
lived and worked for 10 of my nearly 16 months in Korea during the war
(mid-September 1950 to late December 1951). Of course I now saw little
that was familiar and our schedule didn't allow any time for looking
around. But the contrast between what I remembered and what I now saw
out the window of our microbus was staggering. One of our hosts told us
that in 1950 Pusan's population quickly grew from 150,000 to more than
200,000 with the influx of refugees fleeing south. The official
population size in 1996 of this second largest city of South Korea was
3,878,918.
Somewhere in my old photograph files are scenes of how
it was in Pusan in 1950 when a huge U.S. military tent city was quickly
built for our unit - the Third Logistical Command - with a surrounding
fence on one side of a small open water canal and on the other side was
another fenced-in huge tent city - a prisoner of war camp of North
Korean and Chinese soldiers. Years later, while a student at Florida
State University (1953-56) I often had a recurrent dream of that place
and those days, most unforgettably the image and voice of a small Korean
shoeshine boy who waited outside the camp gate to shine the boots and
shoes of us U.S. soldiers. For some reason he and I had hit on
identifying each other with the Japanese word (another occupational
armed force's language in Korea for many years) for small - skoshi - so
that I would call him and he would call me, "skoshi boy!" The
repeated dream of that little boy whom I guessed to be about ten, with
his image and his voice crying, "skoshi boy, skoshi boy!"
became eventually what I believed to be a symbol and sign of God's call
for me to prepare myself for the ministry and international mission work
for peace and justice on behalf of the Korean people.
Now, nearly 51 years later, one of the testimonies we
heard in Pusan was a dramatically unique reminder of that boy and that
dream. His name was Choon Sung Lee, and he told our delegation that in
the summer of 1950 when he was 12 years old, he and his family had fled
toward Pusan from their home in Seoul. They were part of a group of some
350 civilian refugees crowded onto a small ship which was strafed by
U.S. Air Force jets killing many of them including his mother and father
and other family members. He described the difficult process today of
trying to identify those who were killed and those who survived because
the younger survivors do not remember and the older ones are gone or
cannot remember. At the end of his testimony, Mr. Lee said, "I
believe that in the quest for truth and justice the United States
government must create the right situation to recognize and admit their
guilt for crimes like this one." In later personal conversation,
Mr. Lee told me that he too had been a Pusan shoeshine boy in 1950!
As a separate delegation report explains, our August
1-9 visit to South Korea took us over some 1,350 ground miles to twelve
representative massacre sites in nine towns/communities of two provinces
plus the large cities of Inchon, Seoul and Pusan, observing material
evidence and hearing shocking, heart-rending testimonies from many
survivors and witnesses of the massacres. We saw again as I had seen in
1995 the U.S. military presence and the barbed wire and the bridges to
forbidden roads toward the north, of this tragically divided land. We
visited the 51-year old "Vieques of Korea" - the US Air Force
bombing range at the village of Machyang Ri, 50 miles south of Seoul. I
was reminded repeatedly of the words of Moses as he thought about his
oppressed people, "I have heard the cry of my people!" and
of the Psalmist as he thought of the too many years of suffering,
"How long, O Lord?!"
And as I saw and heard the symbols of enmity and
brokenness for over 50 years of this little country, still officially at
war, it seems that once again that long-ago call of "skoshi
boy!" has become an urgent call for me - to find new possibilities
and new ways to challenge and encourage other U.S. veterans, other U.S.
citizens, other U.S. Christians, and especially the leaders of my church
-- the Presbyterian Church (USA) - to take seriously the findings of the
Korea International War Crimes Tribunal and the ongoing work of the
Korea Truth Commission, and to be faithful advocates for justice, peace,
reparation and reconciliation for all the Korean people.
I'll keep hoping for the people of Korea as well as
for the rest of humanity (but not without some fear and trembling!), the
realization of Buttrick's prophetic words, "the books of God must
ultimately be balanced!"
James Gary Campbell
Korean War veteran (U.S. Army)
Presbyterian Church (USA) minister/international mission worker
(retired)
Silver Spring, MD. Aug. 21, 2001.
~~~~~~~~
Report
of the Delegation
REVELATIONS CONTINUE TO MOUNT OF U.S. WAR
CRIMES IN KOREA
Date: August 21, 2001
Summary Report of U.S. Veterans Delegation to
Korea, August 2 - 9, 2001, a project of the Korea Truth Commission (KTC)
planned with members of Veterans For Peace (VFP). Yoomi Jeong, Deputy
Secretary General, Korea
Truth Commission, served as guide and translator.
Our delegation traveled 1,350 ground miles to Kwangju
(South Cholla Province) and to Chinju, Masan, Hamanhn, Eryung,
Changnyung, Pusan, Ulsan, Kyongsang, and Taegu (each in South Kyongsang
Province). We visited 12 representative sites at which massacres were
committed in 1950-51 by U.S. forces, or South Korean paramilitary and
military units under the command of U.S. forces, meeting many of the
survivors and receiving extensive, riveting testimony from more than two
dozen witnesses. Several of these sites have only recently been
revealed, including: (1) a rugged mountain location near Kwangju where
reportedly a biological (mycotoxin T-2?) or chemical (gas or herbicide?)
warfare agent (a "whitish powder" or mist sprayed from light
planes) was used causing a dark skin discoloration prior to killing
several hundred villagers in the fall of 1951, suggesting death from a
type of hemorrhagic fever; (2) a newly discovered second Japanese mine
near Kyongsang that served as a depository for hundreds of bodies; (3)
the Jin Chi Ryung railroad tunnel near Chinju; and (4) the Wonbuk
railroad tunnel near Masan. These latter two tunnels, where civilians
were murdered in the summer of 1950, are 90 miles from the now famous No
Gun Ri railroad viaduct massacre site.
The grief and rage experienced by Koreans who survived
numerous traumatic assaults on their families and villages, especially
from 1945 to 1953, have been psychically stored for more than 50 years
without chance for expression due to fear of repression, even death.
This deeply repressed rage and grief is called "Haan" in
Korea. Only recently has it been "safe" for these survivors to
publicly express their memories. Thus, the revelations of atrocities are
still unfolding, likely to number in multiples of hundreds before all of
the stories are finally public.
We visited the Kwangju Cemetery and Memorial where
many of the victims of the May 1980 Kwangju Massacre are buried. General
Chun Doo-Hwan had taken over the military in a coup and declared martial
law. Thousands of protesters were expressing outrage throughout Korea,
with Kwangju witnessing the most robust of demonstrations. As many as
2,500 Kwangju residents were murdered with the complicity of U.S.
political and military officials. It is worth noting that this massacre
took place during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who came into office
in 1977 on a pledge of promoting human rights as a center of his foreign
policy. Yet the "first priority" of the Carter administration
in 1980 as communicated to Korean military officials was the
"restoration of order in Kwangju" through use of "firm
anti-riot measures," to assure prevention of "another
Iran" in South Korea. It is also worth noting that the
U.S.-friendly but ruthless dictator, the Shah of Iran, had been deposed
in January 1979, and on November 4, 1979, Islamic militants seized the
U.S. embassy in Tehran and took hostage its 62 staff members.
We visited the 51-year-old U.S. Koon Ni bombing range
(the "Vieques of Korea"), once referred to by the U.S. as
"nightmare range," at the village of Maehyang Ri (South
Chungchong Province), 50 miles south of Seoul. This bombing range is
vigorously opposed by most Koreans. We also visited the 56-year-old DMZ
(Kyonggi Province), 25 miles to the capital's north, which involuntarily
divides as many as ten million Korean families. We participated in a
march, rally, and cultural event in Kyongsang with the 350-strong
Reunification Vanguard of young people traveling to various Korean
locations promoting reunification. We attended and spoke at a rally of
the Daewoo workers in Seoul attempting to forestall the
"neo-liberal" sale of Daewoo to foreign investors.
We had an interesting meeting with representatives of
the Korean Truth Committee on the Vietnam War (regarding conduct of the
312,000 Korean soldiers who fought there as mercenaries for the U.S.).
They have active projects in Vietnam making apologies and reparations.
This Committee is comprised of a handful of Korean soldiers and
concerned citizens, and is instructive for our Vietnam veterans in the
U.S.
We stood in solidarity with the Korean Women Against
U.S. Occupation, a silent rally held weekly in front of the largest U.S.
military base in Korea, Yongsan, in downtown Seoul. At this event we
were under the watchful eye of a dozen or so men believed to be agents
of the "secret" Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS),
formerly the KCIA. These apparent agents reported informally to one of
our delegation members that they were well briefed about our presence in
Korea, as well as the date of our scheduled departure. They admitted
they would be relieved once we departed Korea.
We interviewed several former long-term political
prisoners, all of whom served long prison terms for violating the
unbelievably draconian South Korean National Security Law prohibiting
discussion of reunification. Some activists have been executed for
advocating Korean reunification, numerous others sentenced to life
imprisonment. Recently, many prisoners have been released due to a
relaxing of the law's rigidity, and to pressure exerted by domestic and
international human rights organizations.
Two of the long-term prisoners we met (now released)
had been students nearly 20 years ago at a university in the United
States where they were watched by Korean agents working with the
complicity of the FBI and other U.S. officials. The two were returned to
Korea, along with 20 other Korean students. They were originally
sentenced to death, others to life imprisonment, for discussing their
reunification dreams on campus. Jack Ryan of our delegation had been
involved in verifying information on the two students when he was still
an FBI agent in the midwest. Ryan was later fired from the FBI for
refusal to investigate as "domestic terrorist suspects"
several U.S. nonviolent peace activists. Among those suspects were the
four participants in the 1986 water-only Veterans Fast For Life who sat
daily on the steps of the Capitol in Washington for 47 days protesting
lawless U.S. policy in Central America. Delegation member Brian Willson
was one of those fasters.
Delegation members Grant and Willson, two principals
of Santa Cruz Film Associates, are making a documentary on the history
of the U.S. in Korea. Seventeen hours were videotaped during this trip.
The final documentary will be transferred to 35mm film when completed.
Evidence we garnered makes it clearer that the
original, callous author of the most egregious post-WW II crimes in
Korea was the U.S. government. Its decision (surprisingly with the
Soviet Union's approval) to divide Korea upon the August 15, 1945
surrender of the Japanese, and the subsequent U.S.-directed reign of
terror, led directly to the civil war, then the so-called "police
action," where as many as five million were killed, to be followed
by extensive periods of military dictatorships supported by the U.S.
government. This succession of U.S. actions have ensured continuous U.S.
hegemony over Korean sovereignty. Protection of "our way of
life" (National Security Council Document 68, 1949-50) originally
demanded total suppression of dissent in Korea to assure success of our
containment of "communism" (i.e., elimination of independence
movements) as enunciated by U.S. State Department officials Dean Acheson
and George Kennan. The assault has left deep scars and 37,000 U.S.
troops at 100 military installations preventing reunification. All this
intervention - carried out against the wishes of the vast majority of
the Korean people - must rank as one of the cruelest tragedies of the
Twentieth Century.
We are grateful to the Korea
Truth Commission (KTC) and Veterans For Peace (VFP) for the
opportunity to have represented them in this visit to South Korea. We
commend VFP's support of the KTC's June 23rd War Crimes Tribunal in New
York City. We urge VFP to reaffirm in every possible way its continuing
support of the ongoing work of KTC and the Korean people's efforts to
reunify their Peninsular country absent U.S. troops and weapons.
Signed,
James Gary Campbell,
Korean War (Army)
Presbyterian Church (USA) minister/international worker (ret.)
VFP member at large
Edward A. Everts,
World War II (Army Air Corps)
Activist, TV Producer
VFP member of Green Mountain Chapter (VT)
Michael (Mickey) Grant,
Vietnam War era (Marines), served as civilian
in Laos during Vietnam War
Film maker/director
VFP member at large
John C. (Jack) Ryan,
MP at nuclear weapons site (Army)
Former FBI agent
Co-Director Catholic Worker House
VFP member at large
S. Brian Willson,
Vietnam War (USAF)
Author/Activist/Executive Film Producer
VFP member of John Steinbeck IV Chapter (CA)
~~~~~~~~
The author: Gary
Campbell and his wife, Chess, officially retired in 1999, and now
life in Silver Spring, Maryland. Gary's last assignment was at the
Presbyterian Center in Louisville, where he was missionary in residence
with the Presbyterian Hunger Program, coordinating PC(USA) involvement
in the international debt relief campaign, then called Jubilee 2000, now
re-named Jubilee USA. He adds that since retirement he and Chess have
kept in touch with Jubilee and continued to do some speaking on that as
well as some church engagements on international mission, especially in
Nicaragua and Central America.
Gary says further: "I'm a retired minister of
Grace Presbytery and ... my wife Chess and I retired in September 1999
from PC(USA)'s Worldwide Ministries Division after 36 years of
international mission service in Mexico and Nicaragua. But the most
important thing you can say about us these days is that we're
experiencing almost daily some of the challenges and responsibilities
but mainly the joys of grandparenting! "
As noted by links above, you can find more
information on this issue on the website of the Korea
Truth Commission
