Okinawa and Jeju: Bases of Discontent

Journalist and author Donald Kirk draws eye-opening comparisons between militarism and protests on the southern island prefecture of Japan, that is, Okinawa, and Korea's southern island province, Jeju. Don draws upon reporting and research for his latest book, Okinawa and Jeju: Bases of Discontent, showing parallels between Okinawa and Jeju in terms of the protest movements against bases on both of them. He sees the controversies from all sides, on the basis of interviews with officials, analysts, protest leaders and ordinary citizens.

The topic is especially timely in view of mounting tensions in the region as seen in China's increasingly strong claims to the island that Japan calls the Senkakus and the Chinese know as Diaoyu. Adding to regional tensions are China's claims to the Ieodo rocks southwest of Jeju on which Korea has built a heliport complete with navigational and weather facilities.

Don brings to his study a number of years as a journalist and author, reporting and writing from Korea as well as Japan. Previous books include: Korea Betrayed; Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine, Korean Dynasty; Hyundai and Chung Ju-yung and Korean Crisis: Unraveling of the Miracle in the IMF Era. He has written for numerous newspapers and magazines ranging from the Chicago Tribune to the Christian Science Monitor to the International Herald Tribune to Forbes Asia and Forbes.com as well as reports for CBS Radio. He gravitates between homes in Seoul and Washington but spent most of the last year in India.

Search "Clouds over Okinawa" to locate Don Kirk's information for this presentation. Don Kirk began his presentation with three key line drawings of Okinawa and Jeju, focusing on their geographical locations and drawing visual as well as detail comparisons on the two naval bases. He states that though Asia is currently at peace and has been for many years, it is hoped that the base in Okinawa and the base under construction in Jeju will not be needed but will remain as backyard bases.

Some surprising parallels between the two naval bases are:

Both Okinawa and Jeju are entrenched in legacies of tragedies. In the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, 200,000 people were killed (12,000 US soldiers fought in the battle). Similarly, Korea has had its own invasion and battle but theirs was an internal war, a war fought between the leftists and the rightists and Jeju Island was the location of the largest conflict. On April 3, 1948, massacres in Jeju and soldier invasions killed an estimate of 30,000 Koreans. This was a kind of genocide. The 30,000 figure is in fact thought to be very modest as the numbers massacred is believed to be much higher.

Both Okinawa and Korea (not Jeju) have US troops placed and are said to be there for the maintenance and balance of powers in Asia. In Okinawa at least 27,000 troops are posted mainly for keeping the balance of power with China as the Chinese also claim the island, calling it Diaoyu. 27,000 foreign troops on an island with a population of 1,200,000. Jeju Island has a population of about half that of Okinawa, approximately 584,000. Among these, a relatively few are protesting and the anti-naval base sentiments are not being radically expressed. [This seems to be a postioned statement.] Don Kirk reports the existence of some small and on-going demonstrations but it is believed that since most of the population lives on the northern side of the island and the base is located on the southern shores, the people do not feel violently opposed to the construction - perhaps a latent NIMBY attitude being expressed here.

There are no foreign bases on Jeju, and the US is scaling back on troops in South Korea having only 25,000 troops in South Korea at present. Therefore, even though there is opposition and (small) demonstrations against the construction of the naval base, which is already about 50% complete, there is no realistic logic to protest the base as being used as a naval base by the US. The parallel large dock being built parallel to the military docks for Korean ships is said to be potentially for the docking of tour boats, which could potentially bring in 500 tourists per ship with their pocket change, but this is all rhetoric as no conclusive decisions about the base and its full ultimate purpose has been disclosed.

Nevertheless, the presence of the naval yard in both Okinawa and now Jeju does raise questions on the pacific atmosphere in NE Asia and whether this tranquility will continue as there is growing concern about the possibility of a regional war. There is evidence with increased claim to controversially owned islands and other issues that the fluctuation and flexing of power in Asia is indeed real.

Hwanghakjeong Archery Tour

On the lower slopes of Inwangsan and looking off to the east is Hwanghakjeong, the royal archery range founded by King Gojong. It is slightly higher on the mountain than Sajik Park in Chongno-gu and within easy walking distance of Kyoungbokgung, one of the five royal palaces of Korea. This archery range is considered the royal range, easily recognizable since the range colors are red and gold, and only a king could use such colors. Though Korea does not have a royal family anymore, the colors for the king's range remain.

Opened by King Kojong in 1898 and originally located at Gyeonghuigung, another of the royal palaces, Hwanghakjeong was moved to its current location in 1922 during a restructuring period in the Japanese colonial period. It is the only Daehan Empire-period archery range still in existence and remains a functioning range to this day. The tour in and around the Inwangsan area was led by Robert Koehler, writer-photographer for both a Seoul-based culture magazine and a freelancer who also writes the popular blog The Marmot's Hole. Cho In-souk, holding a PhD in architecture as well as being an avid Korean historian and member of Hwanghakjeong, gave "tour" information while at the range. She presented particularly fascinating information about Korean archery as a meditative martial art, the principles behind the mind control for being a good archer, and then explained to us English speakers the practice requirements before being inducted as an amateur archer. 

Learners must practice in the room designed for shooting. On the walls of the room are various styles of traditional handmade bows and their natural materials. 

After an explanatory video on the principles of archery, the making of the bows and arrows, and an attempt to practice shooting a bow in the practice room, Cho In-souk then guided us to the archery range above the practice room. Only learners who have taken lessons and practiced for a minimum of three months are allowed to shoot in the archery range above. Until that time one must practice-practice-practice in the practice room to perfect one's breathing, strength and form all while meditating. One reason amateur archers are not allowed to practice in the range further up the mountain is respect for others as the arrows, if not pulled back strongly enough for them to hit the distant range, would rain down on others walking the trail up to the range. The other reason is strength as only those who have trained regularly can have the strength to pull the bow back enough to hit the distant range. With the three targets 145 meters away, a lot of strength is needed. 

On this particular day we were given the rare privilege of witnessing a jipgungnye, an induction ceremony for novice archers. Several men and a couple of women, having practiced a minimum of three months for attaining the sufficient strength and for being considered proficient in their meditative form, were being inducted as amateur archers. 

Officiator standing by the "court" musicians.

The officiating judges are now arriving. Most if not all of the judges have played a huge role in the development of Korea, e.g. a former mayor, a famous bridge architect, a high-ranking officer from the Korean war, to list a few.

The officiating judges have arrived and been seated seated. The bows for the ceremony have been prepared in advance, as well as the covers for the bows which are in the royal colors of the guild - red and gold.

Now the archers for being inducted file in. Notice they aren't wearing any color as yet.
They represent the peasant who has yet to obtain any kind of guild status.

The archers to be inducted line up as "attendance and participation" is called. Once the registered number is verified, archers are asked to sit in unison.

The archers then respectfully seat themselves.

Many other of the guild archers were in attendance, and one particular fellow wearing his thumb and forefinger guards was taking video of the performance. The guards are important to prevent the bow string from causing too much friction. Of note is the fact that Korean archers do not pull the bow string back with the fingers but rather with the thumb. With this method the Koreans are said to easily attain 145 meters instead of the more typical 70 meters with the western bow.  

The respectful bow, performed by each newly inducted member to show heart-felt thanks and appreciation to the older "Confucian" man.

For some odd reasons all the new archers went down to the range prior to taking any shots.

The new archers line up to demonstrate their strength. Before they shoot, three of the officiating judges or officials took representative shots at the distant targets to start off the more practical side of the ceremony.
A comment on the usage of space here. Two of the reporters in black were actually rude and incorrect as only a qualified archer is to go down the stairs to the shooting platform. Visitors and non-participants MUST stay silent and must NOT position themselves any where near the shooting platform. This rule applies at all times.

No matter how well or how poorly anyone shoots, the archer whether experienced or an amateur must remain reflectively silent and not be visibly proud or disappointed. These are fundamental rules of Korean archery - reflection and meditation.

Once the experienced archers have shot, the amateurs one-by-one take their shots. I believe each member shot either three or 5 arrows. Another rule in Korean archery:  No one is to shoot simultaneously with another, but rather to lend one's patience and non-verbal encouragement on doing one's best to each archer in turn.

Manufactured arrows. Handmade arrows are W30,000 each or more! 

Two of the officiators (forefront) among several "court" musicians.

As recognized archers the newly inducted can now go to the range for shooting their arrows, but one of the many rules when shooting is to never shoot alone. Therefore, archers must wait until at least two or three others have arrived before using the archery range space. Though a meditative sport, it is to be done with a collective spirit.

The archery range, Hwanghakjeong, gets its name from the large wooden arbor-building where the ceremony was held. The arbor-building was originally built in 1898 (2nd year of Gwangmu) to the north of Hoesangjeon of Gyeonghuigung Palace. Hwanghakjeong was relocated to its current site of Sajik-dong in 1922. This was because the official resident of the Monopoly Bureau of the Japanese Government General in Korea was built on its original site after the demolition of Gyeonghuigung. The current place where the building now stands is the site of Deunggwajeong, one of the five bow arbors in Seochon. Following the Gabo Gyeongjang Reform in 1894, bows were excluded from the weaponry of the military and almost all of the bow arbors disappeared from across the country. However, Emperor Gojong gave an emperor's command to encourage archery for the cultivation of the mind and body of the people. Following this command, Hwanghakjeong was built in the royal palace, and it was opened to the public. It is said that Emperor Gojong often visited Hwanghakjeong and personally enjoyed archery. Homi, the bow used by Emperor Gojong, and his quiver were kept at Hwanghakjeong (the range) before they were transferred to  Korean Army Museum at Korea Military Academy. As an example of bow-shooting arbors, Hwanghakjeong is a historical site, and archery events continue to be performed in continuance of Korea's long tradition of archery.

Renegotiating "Homeland" for Korean Adoptees

Andrea Kim Cavicchi, a PhD candidate in Modern Korean History at the UCLA gave this presentation on "Rediscovering 'Homeland' and Negotiating Belonging for Overseas Korean Adoptees in Korea." Her research in diasporas, transnationalism, globalization, multiculturalism, nationalism, race, ethnicity and identity brings her to Korea to explore the return migration of many of the Korean babies and children who were sent abroad for adoption and return as English teachers, researchers, students, and visitors in search of a glimpse of their ethnic heritage that they were severed from at a very young age. I believe she said in her presentation that she is not one of the adoptees, although she is of Korean heritage raised in the United States.

Her research project explores the lives of Korean adoptees who were born in Korea, adopted overseas to Western nations as infants or young children through the practice of overseas Korean adoption, and who return to Korea for a brief visit or for a span of living as adults. It is estimate that approximately 200,000 children have been adopted from South Korea to Western nations since the 1950s. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, roughly 2,500 of these not adult adoptees return to their birth country every year to search for birth families, teach English, study Korean, attend conferences that aim to cultivate an international community for Korean adoptees. She is investigating how these adult Korean adoptees negotiate the question of belonging in relation to institutional and social structures, and conversely, the different ways that the Korean state deals with these adult Korean adoptees.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Her project is shedding light on the issues that adult Korean adoptees confront as they maneuver the shifting discourse of Koreanness in Korea. One aim of her project is to investigate ways in which overseas Korean adoptee subjectivities have been constituted through shifting fields of power and managed through historically particular, geopolitical, social, and economic discourses, all linked to the Korean state. Another aim is to investigate the creative ways that adult adoptees construct and imagine their own identities, empower themselves, and subvert the very institutions and sources of power that constitute their subjectivities as Korean adoptees.

Her main questions to be addressed are:

1. What compels these Korean adoptees to return to Korea as adults, and why do many of these adoptees search for their birth families?
2. Why have a number of "lucky" Korean children, who were adopted by parents living in affluent Western nations, returned to Korea as adults and formed an activist adoptee community that advocates immediate adoption reform and for the rights of unwed mothers? [Unwed mothers needs to be defined: unwed mothers are distinguished between single mothers who could have been married but when they gave birth were divorced, separated, widowed or other. Unwed mothers were not married prior to giving birth.]
3. Why does a nation that boasts one of the most powerful market economies in the world and expresses so much shame over sending its children overseas through media publications and government policies continue its overseas adoption practices in 2014?

Some informative snippets shared on the initial motivation for international adoption and more recently the return of those adoptees are:

Korean adoption didn't start until the late 1950s. The Korean War (1950-1953) left a shattered and desolate country with documentation of over a million displaced people in 1954. The country was in poverty, children were being born of mixed parentage from the large numbers of foreign soldiers present and who interacting with Korean women, and the first children internationally adopted were those mixed blooded children, the unwanted children in a country that was intolerant of racial mixings of blood. However, the poverty of the nation soon provoked impoverished families who couldn't raise their children to give up their young ones. Later, and especially in the 1980s during Korea's rapid industrialization, unwed women were giving birth to pure-blooded Korean children, but the shame in this was the connotations of sexual frivolity besmirching extended family honor. Those children could not be raised by single mothers with family support and therefore, new homes--mostly overseas--were found for those also unwanted children. In the mid-1980s more than 8,000 children were adopted overseas a year. This was abruptly curtailed for a brief time during the Seoul Olympics as the media picked up on the fact that South Korea was "marketing" their children abroad. North Korea was particularly censorious of the act, and the shame of the North Korean criticism did bring about a brief moratorium on international adoption and then a decline in the numbers adopted overseas.

Some historial kilometer markers in the history of population control in Korea ...
which of course affected adoption policies too.

In the 1990s these adoptees sent outside of Korea were starting to return to Korea, to learn about their ethnic heritage, to question why perhaps they were adopted. South Korea was ill-prepared to "welcome" the adoptees back and many citizens were downright rude to the Korean blooded young people who didn't know the Korean language ... as if that were their fault. In Korea, family means everything, and therefore, these family-less adoptees were to be scorned ... and they often were. In more recent years, however, attitudes have been changing and the Korean adoptees are now given tours by the government, some get study scholarships, and the Korean people have become more open-minded to adoptees returning to Korea. Much of the open-mindedness is a result of adoption being heavily featured in Korean dramas as well as movies. Obviously, for the topic to peek its head in so many types of media is to reveal a country that has a strange fascination with the topic.

"Homeland" is a perspective term. While it might mean the land of one's birth, it does not always feel like "home", and the term needs to be deconstructed and reconstructed. There is certainly an issue of belonging and yet not belonging with the returning adoptees. Many say it feels good to "belong" because "everyone looks like me", but on the deeper note, they don't really "belong" as their upbringing values have been shaped differently; their expectations of the other are different as well.

Many of the adoptees go in search of their biological families. This is a very hard process, and one that often involves a cluttered paper trail, and unwilling adoption agencies who are more protective of homeland citizens (the mothers who gave up the children) that the Korean children who were forcibly expatriated. Some adoptees have a deep desire to be reunited with their birth families, usually only locating the mother is possible; some have no desire. Some are curious, having no particular desire, but as they interact and form bonds with other adoptees who are searching or are of the few who have been reunited with family members, many of the mildly curious become interested in the search too.

Some of the organization within Korea now and which help returning adoptees are:

GOAL (Global Overseas Adoptees' Link) - more of a service based organization for helping returning adoptees adapt to Korea (language assistance, study scholarships ...) as well as help adoptees locate birth family members.

ASK (Adoptee Solidarity Korea) - their mission is to address associated problems with Korean overseas adoption. Through education and activism, they aim to raise awareness, activate change, and support alternatives to overseas Korean adoption.

TRACK (Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community in Korea) - Their goal is to raise awareness, make change, and set the record straight on adoption practices that do not consider either truth and transparency or the rights of the child who is treated in a top-down fashion.

KoRoot (the house of Korean roots) - KoRoot is a guesthouse for Korean adoptees from all over the world and who return to visit their "mother" country. It is also a NGO finding solutions on overseas adoption matters.

INKAS (International Korean Adoptees Services) - INKAS is the only organization included in the big five organizations helping adoptees that is not run by adoptees or a combination of adoptees and native-born Koreans. Their activism stems from within the country of Korea itself and the change they strive for isn't led by returning adoptees but Korean-born Koreans.

While Korean adoption is a very hot and controversial issue in Korea with the government making laws that deny the rights of children thought "best" to hide in non-transparent adoption situations, the returning adoptees are speaking out on behalf of the future adopted children. The adoptees feel well within their rights as objects of the "sociopolitical exchange" to represent those undergoing more modern sociopolitics in finding "homes" for more "unwanted" children. And one of the hottest, most contested issues in the non-transparent adoption world in Korea is the practice since 2009 of the Baby Box. The Baby Box is basically a "safe" place where a mother can deposit her unwanted baby in a designated box, ring a bell and disappear knowing that she won't have to raise the baby but someone will take the baby in and give it a home. Adoptees who are blockaded from finding their birth parents because of Korean bureaucracy know that a paper trail to their mothers at least does exist but just can't be accessed. However, for the babies deposited in the Baby Box there is no trail and these babies who question who they really are at a later date will forever be frustrated by never knowing who their parents were ... not to mention the fact that a government which allows, in fact encourages, a mother to drop off her baby as she would a load of laundry is a government that needs to be censured and a practice that demands change.

Another point of harsh criticism is the Special Adoption Law (SAL). "Special" in English suggests something positive, something gratefully received or viewed, but there is nothing "special" about this hated new ruling. The Special Adoption Law is very new (sorry, don't know the initial year it was enacted) but it was underwent great revision in 2011 with amendments being enforced in Jan 2012. The law basically revised ruling on (1) Family Preservation, (2) Domestic Adoption, (3) Overseas Adoption, and (4) Institutional Care. ASK, TRACK, KoRoot, Gong-gam, KUMFA, and Mindullae represent the child in these new amendments and they are NOT happy with how the child is viewed as a commodity in the law and not treated as a citizen with equal rights. [Large argument, small space here, so I can't begin to give details.] They argue that the law is rife with contradictions, loop holes and possible arbitrary interpretation possibilities. As these groups stubble to access adoption records and reunite adoptee with birth families, the law does not facilitate nor support the adoptee and not even the unwed mothers and their children, which the law should be supporting so as not to create more adoptees in society. The law also supports the creation of a National Adoption Day which was established by the Ministry of Health and Welfare as May 11, starting in 2005.

Basically there is no conclusion to the problem as "orphan" children, who are not orphans but almost always have two living parents, are still being sent overseas or adopted domestically or being locked into an orphanage where they "live" until adulthood because they cannot be adopted as their parents, for whatever reason, will not sign them out of the orphanage giving permission for adoption. And so the battle continues ... there is no conclusion ...