JEJU ISSUE GAINING SUPPORT AT INT'L PEACE CONFAB

Catholic priest is yanked off the top of a cement truck by police in Gangjeong village

I had dinner last night, following the close of the Asia-Pacific conference, with Global Network board member Wooksik Cheong (Peace Network) who lives in Seoul, South Korea and Youn-Ae Park who lives in Gangjeong village on Jeju Island. They spoke at the conference and will be doing additional speaking appearances along the east coast and in California.

Wooksik is the person who delivered the invitation to the Global Network to hold our 20th annual space organizing conference in 2012 on Jeju Island from Gangjeong village leaders. He will now facilitate a committee of people to help plan and implement the conference.

During dinner we went over all the details and sorted out who would do what. The hosts will essentially cover all lodging, food, and internal transportation costs while it will be my job to raise the funds to get our Global Network leaders to Jeju. The program we came up with will be very exciting.

The presence of Wooksik and Youn-Ae at the weekend conference gave the Jeju Island Navy base fight a strong visibility. It is clear that the Jeju Island issue has now become one of the top international concerns among the peace community in the U.S. and beyond.

What is most exciting is that a growing linking of Hawaii-Guam-Okinawa-Jeju is happening where not only the anti-base struggles in these places becomes known but key activists from each location are increasingly being connected and are coordinating their efforts. There were several calls during the conference to hold coordinated actions at each of these locations, and others, across the Pacific in the coming year.

There was a very large delegation of Chinese at the conference. I met one lawyer from the National University of Singapore who specializes in space law and I look forward to having more communication with him. We have found few who work on space law and share our view that the heavens are the province of all human kind. There is a growing movement within the aerospace industry to pull the U.S. away from the Outer Space and Moon Treaties which don't allow private control of celestial bodies.

Just a bit more about Gangjeong village. In recent days Catholic priests have increased their efforts to block cement trucks from entering the Navy base construction area. Several have been arrested. This is a welcome development as the Catholic community in South Korea (10% of Koreans are Catholic) increasingly expands their support for the Jeju Island struggle.