PYEONGTAEK, GYEONGGI

PROVINCE — It is pitch-dark by the time we near the village of Daechuri, onto which the U.S. Army plans to expand its Camp Humphreys base. We have traveled for two hours by bus, some 50 kilometers south of Seoul, to witness firsthand how dozens of families are resisting the U.S. military’s incursion onto their small rice-farming village. 

As the bus approaches, we arrive at one of two heavily fortified checkpoints outside Daechuri. It becomes apparent that getting through will not be easy. A couple hundred heavily armed police, regaled in riot helmets and shields and locked arm-in-arm, stand firmly behind huge metal barricades blocking the entrance. The tension inside and outside the bus begins to mount.

“Let’s stay inside the bus,” says Koh You-Kyung, a member of the Korea Coalition Against Base Expansion in Pyeongtaek. She informs us that the police will not let in people who are not residents of the village.

Access into Daechuri has been made more difficult since September, when the South Korean government sent in 22,000 police to bulldoze 68 homes and a human rights center. This was the second demolition following one in May, when police brutally attacked several hundred villagers who used only their bodies to protect their homes and farmland. After the violent clashes, many hundred were wounded, and the only school in the village, which residents built with their own hands, was destroyed. Despite the fact that the National Human Rights Commission has called the checkpoints illegal and a violation of the villagers’ rights, the police are still harassing residents and visitors to Daechuri. 

The residents of Daechuri welcome the delegation of supporters at one of their many candlelight vigils held since the South Korean government announced that the villagers would be relocated to make way for the expansion of the U.S. Army’s Camp Humphreys.

“Normally there aren’t that many police,” Ms. Koh says. “Please stay in the bus.”

She should have known better than to advise our delegation of 18 to stay put. Our group, organized by KAWAN (Korean Americans Against War and Neoliberalism), includes Korean American community organizers, university students, trade unionists, a journalist, a leader of a Colombian peasant organization, and mother-turned-antiwar-activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Needless to say, we get off the bus.

Since it is dark, it is hard to tell what is happening. Father Moon, a 73-year-old resident of Daechuri and president of the Korean coalition against the base expansion, starts talking with the police to allow the bus to pass. “We will not negotiate,” says Father Moon. “This is our human right.”

But it is when peace-mother Sheehan — towering well over 6 feet — walks toward the barricade to confront the police directly that the discussions start to yield results. The number of television cameras that seem to come out of nowhere to capture her entry into Daechuri probably helps. Facing the police and with the bright lights of the cameras shining on her face, Sheehan looks over at Father Moon and asks, “Is South Korea a democracy or a police state?”