ANGJEONG, South Korea — Dozens of banners adorn this village on the southern coast of South Korea’s southernmost major island, trumpeting anxieties that have invaded this otherwise idyllic community and divided it so deeply that residents say some fathers and sons have stopped talking to one another.
Related
*
Times Topic: South Korea
Related in Opinion
*
Opinion: The Arms Race Intrudes on Paradise (August 7, 2011)
*
Unwanted Missiles for a Korean Island (August 6, 2011)
Enlarge This Image
Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune
Song Kang-ho opposes the base, fearing that it could draw South Korea into a regional conflict.
“Fight to the death against the American imperialists’ anti-China naval base!” says one banner.
That declaration — and the underlying issue dividing this village of 1,000 fishermen and farmers on Jeju Island — mirrors the broader quandary South Korea faces, caught between the United States, its longstanding military ally, and China, its former battlefield foe but now its leading trading partner.
In January, the South Korean Navy began construction on a $970 million base in Gangjeong. Once completed in 2014, it will be home to 20 warships, including submarines, that the navy says will protect shipping lanes for South Korea’s export-driven economy, which is dependent on imported oil. It will also enable South Korea to respond quickly to a brewing territorial dispute with China over Socotra Rock, a submerged reef south of Jeju that the Koreans call Ieodo. Both sides believe it is surrounded by oil and mineral deposits.
American ships cruising East Asian seas will be permitted to visit the port, the Defense Ministry says, and many villagers and anti-base activists from the Korean mainland suspect that the naval base will serve less as a shield against South Korea’s prime enemy, North Korea, than as an outpost for the United States Navy to project its power against China.
Fear of becoming “the shrimp whose back gets broken in a fight between whales” — a popular saying in this country, whose territory has been the battlefield of bigger powers — is palpable in this village, where palm trees sway in the wind and low-slung homes lie snug behind walls of volcanic rock.
“I don’t understand why we’re trying so hard to accommodate something people in Okinawa tried so hard to resist,” said Kim Jong-hwan, 55, a tangerine farmer, referring to the Japanese islanders’ struggle against the American military base there. “When I think how the Americans go around the world starting wars, I can only expect the worst.”
Older islanders have harrowing memories of war. Shortly before and during the 1950-53 Korean War, government troops cracking down on people they suspected of being leftists who might sympathize with North Korea devastated Jeju, burning villages and killing about 30,000 people, or one-tenth of the population. In 2005, the government designated Jeju, sometimes romanized as Cheju, as a “peace island.”
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق