As the United States continues to carry out military exercises in the Korean peninsula, and Western-allied forces in the region are denounced for attempting to build an “Asian NATO,” Korean anti-imperialist organizers in the United States are building up a grassroots response.
On July 27, Korean diaspora organization Nodutdol for Korean Community Development officially launched their new campaign, “US out of Korea.” Campaign launch events were held at the People’s Forum in New York City, as well as in Oakland and Los Angeles.
Nodutdol has come out with a robust list of anti-imperialist demands, which include “the full and permanent withdrawal of US troops and weapons systems from Korea; and the return of all Korean land, water, and airspace appropriated for the US military to the Korean people,” as stated by the organization.
Demands also include an end to US-South Korean alliances, ending aggression against North Korea including sanctions and nearby military exercises. Nodutdol also includes a bold demand to unite various anti-war struggles, phrased as “ending the war economy,” which encompasses diverting “US government spending from war, prisons, and policing; and into housing, education, healthcare, and climate justice for working people.”
As Ju-Hyun Park, US Out of Korea Campaign Lead for Nodutdol, described, “we are just weeks away from the US conducting nuclear war exercises in Korea. These war drills do not keep Koreans safe—in fact, they are pushing the Korean Peninsula towards open warfare.”
According to Park, “For more than 70 years, the US government has pursued a failed strategy of aggression against North Korea. Now, the US is escalating its aggression to try to turn Korea into a battlefield for the New Cold War.” Park continued, “We are launching the US Out of Korea campaign to shed light on the US as the aggressor in Korea. As Koreans in the diaspora, we refuse to stand by as the US foments war in our homeland. We believe standing up to US imperialism in Korea is not just in our interests as Korean people, but in the interests of the majority of people in the US as well.”
Other anti-war and progressive organizations are joining the campaign to call for an end to US involvement in Korea. According to Ibrahim Younes, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, which has been on the frontlines of the Palestine solidarity struggle for the past ten months, “The United States’ increased hawkishness and display of military force on the Korean peninsula is of grave concern to us as Palestinians and Arabs. The US has a track record of keeping nationalities politically fragmented and geographically isolated from one another to benefit their own geopolitical interests.”
Younes continued, “This has been the case in Palestine for three generations, just as it has been on the Korean Peninsula. Nodutdol’s US Out of Korea campaign connects the dots that we need to be connecting right now as peoples across the globe affected by the long arm of US empire and renewed attempts by NATO to meddle in and ultimately prevent the reunification and return to all of the land that is rightfully—and collectively—ours.”
Jacqueline Luqman, of the Black Alliance for Peace stated that her organization “works to oppose both militarized domestic state repression, as well as the US state’s global policies of destabilization, subversion, and permanent war agenda.”
“Through our founding campaign, US Out of Africa/Shut Down AFRICOM, and our recently launched our Zone of Peace campaign, BAP organizes to build region-wide coalitions to foster a network of popular-peoples’ struggles in order to challenge, confront, and finally rid our communities of imperialist warmongers,” Luqman continued. “It is in accordance with our efforts to continue and expand this anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-militarism, and pro-peace coalition-building work that BAP endorses and actively supports Nodutdol’s US Out Of Korea campaign. BAP is excited to continue this struggle against US imperialism through our support of liberation for the Korean people.”
Manolo De Los Santos of the People’s Forum in New York City also expressed support, stating that, “US out of Korea is not just a demand but a crucial necessity for the sovereignty and survival of the people of Korea and people across the world. The People’s Forum stands in full solidarity with all those who fight for liberation and fully endorse the demands of the US Out of Korea campaign.”
