FROM THE POPE TO WAR GAMES IN SOUTH KOREA

Pope Francis was just in South Korea for 100 hours and there was much popular movement action in the streets across the nation.  His translator on the trip was one of the Catholic priests who has been involved in the Jeju Island Navy base struggle and he met with Jeju Catholic Bishop Kang who has been a huge supporter of Gangjeong village where the Navy base is being built.

English language newspaper the hankyoreh reported:

 In his Aug. 15 mass for the Feast of the Assumption in Daejeon, the Pope urged attendees to fight the “spirit of unbridled competition” and reject “inhumane economic models.” This was also a blunt criticism of the South Korean economic system and its focus on the “myth of growth.”

“When the Pope said we need to change from globalization of capital to globalization of solidarity, he was calling for both a spiritual change in the ones who exclude the poor as well as a change in national and international institutions,” said Jung Tae-in, director of the Corea Institute for New Society.

Global Network board member Sung-hee Choi, long time activist on Jeju Island, wrote today:

Recently, Pope Francis has visited Korea from Aug. 14 to 18. He left us many moving messages of peace and justice, but the South Korean (ROK) conservative Park Geun-Hye government  started the World-biggest war exercise Ulji Freedom Guardian (In government drill, about 480,000 personnel join. In military drill, about 50,000 Korean soldiers and 30,000 US soldiers) started along with the United States on his leaving day. It ends on Aug. 21. The exercise targets North Korea and the strategy includes preemptive nuclear strike against her. The exercise will be a passage for the US to push for the US-Japan-ROK trilateral military alliance and Missile Defense system.

Australia, France, Denmark, and some UN Command in ROK - dispatching nations join it as observer.