Can women cross DMZ?

By Semoon Chang

I am on an email list of the excellent Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. A March 17 e-News from the institute caught my attention. I followed up on the news to find an organization called WomenCrossDMZ, all one word with no space between words. Let me tell you what I discovered.

May 24 is the International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament, while the year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II as well as the beginning of the two Koreas. Earlier in March, a group of women made a proposal at the United Nations that on May 24, women peacemakers from around the world would walk with Korean women, north and south, to call for a new beginning for a unified Korea. They plan to walk across the 2-mile wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates millions of Korean families as a symbolic act of peace. They also plan to hold peace symposiums in Pyongyang and Seoul.

Organizers of the walk appealed directly to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to support and facilitate the walk. The walk requires not only the support of the United Nations, but also the approval of North and South Korea, which itself is a monumental hurdle to overcome.

Before I say what I think about the walk, let me introduce to you the key women behind the bold idea. There are two honorary co-chairs: Mairead Maguire and Gloria Steinem. Maguire is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her peaceful, nonviolent work on the religious and political conflict in Northern Ireland. Steinem is a well-known feminist activist and recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. The leader of the organizing committee is Christine Ahn, a co-founder of the Women De-Militarize the Zone, located in Honolulu, Hawaii. She was also a senior policy analyst at Global Fund for Women.

Members of the organizing committee also include Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of CODE PINK, a women-led peace organization with 250 chapters across the U.S.; Chung Hyung-kyung, a professor of interfaith engagement at Union Theological Seminary in New York City; Gay Dillingham who directs the Livingry Foundation and in 2010 traveled with New Mexico Gov. Richardson on a peace-keeping mission to North Korea; Suzy Kim, a professor of Korean history at Rutgers University; Vana Kim, a refugee from the Korean War who has a Ph.D. in education from Harvard University; Gwyn Kirk, a founding member of Women for Genuine Security, and the International Women’s Network Against Militarism; Sungok Lee, the assistant general secretary of United Methodist Women, the largest denominational faith organization for women with 800,000 members; Cora Weiss, the former president of the International Peace Bureau which she now represents at the U.N.; and Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq; among others.

What should President Park Geun-hye of South Korea do about the proposed WomenCrossDMZ?

I think President Park should express complete support for the walk without any hesitation or reservation. It is clear that the organizers have nothing but good intentions. At the same time, many good people in South Korea who feel sick of all the atrocities in, and nuclear threats from, North Korea maybe frustrated at the possibility of the walk being abused by the North’s leaders for misleading propaganda. When you think about it, however, any abuse of the walk by supporters and leaders of North Korea will only be temporary.

President Park should trust the peaceful intentions of the organizers and support every facet of the entire plan. The only thing the South Korean government should be careful about is the security of all participants, because many cowards in South Korea like Kim Ki-jong, who attacked U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert, will try to garner attention by repeating their cowardly acts. There is a good possibility that the walk will have a lasting impact, especially, in the minds of many ordinary people in North Korea.

What will the leaders of North Korea do?

They will reject the idea as proposed for fear of spreading the thought of freedom among ordinary people in North Korea. There is a possibility, however, that Pyongyang may approve the walk under tight restrictions, likely because they see room for using it for the familiar propaganda purposes that, as I stated earlier, will only be temporary. North Korea will have to control every step of the plan, which could be a rude awakening to the courageous organizers. Without tight control, there will be no women left in North Korea after the walk from the North to the South.

Semoon Chang is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies

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