Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Exposure & Education Program
The mission of DEEP is to bring activists and socially concerned Korean Americans to the northern part of our homeland, in the only such program in this country. Because of the biased and negative portrayal of north Korea by the US government and mainstream media, most of us [even Koreans who are already committed to social justice], are poorly informed about the DPRK. This program helps to demystify the DPRK, and build person to person understanding. To organize in this collective, socialist society. Each year, DEEP organizes a fundraising drive to support the people of north Korea and uses the proceeds to bring medical supplies, books, and other materials to the DPRK.
For more information or to apply for DEEP, contact with the subject title: ‘DEEP’.
DEEP 2008 Report Back in San Francisco, “TWO WEEKS IN NORTH KOREA” NOV 19 & 20
In preparation for their trip, the participants were required “to read a tremendous amount about modern Korean history, including Japanese colonization and the Korean War, as well as current issues facing North Korea, such as the nuclear crisis, food and energy shortages, and human rights,” indicated Ahn. Emphasizing intensive study as a major component of the program, Christine Hong, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and a member of this year’s delegation, stated: “DEEP is not a tour for curious overseas Koreans who merely wish to sightsee in North Korea. It’s a serious educational commitment that entails critical inquiry beyond Cold War and Bush-era caricatures of North Korea.”
For the Korean American and zainichi members of the delegation, exposure to North Korea through their DEEP experience enabled them to reflect upon and to question the narrowness of their identification with and orientation toward South Korea. Miho Kim, a director at the DataCenter, a NGO that conducts social justice research and one of two zainichi in the delegation, observed: “For those of us who have inherited a legacy of suspicion and fear toward North Korea, this trip represented the first opportunity that we’ve had, as people of Korean descent, to connect with North Korea not as a regime or a perceived global threat but as another place in the world where people live, work, raise children, practice sports, go to school, sing together, and go on dates.”
In addition to participating in study sessions and exchanges with scholars, farmers, workers, and students in North Korea, the members of the delegation visited sites whose revolutionary histories pre-date 1945, the year when the Korean peninsula was divided. “While reading Kim Il Sung’s essay on the participation of women in the anti-Japanese independence movement, I learned about a fighter whom he called ‘Washing-Club Woman’ in reference to her using a laundry club to bash in the head of a Japanese policeman so as to steal his weapons and join the frontlines of the guerrilla struggle. I was so moved to discover that North Korea commemorates this amazing resistance fighter at the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery in Pyongyang,” stated Kei Fischer, a zainichi member of the delegation and an elementary school teacher.
Having taken part in a peace delegation to North Korea, the Bay Area participants express a renewed commitment to establishing genuine security on the Korean peninsula. “While in North Korea, I couldn’t help but recall ‘Lim-jin River,’ a song written by the poet Se-Yong Park as he stood on what is today North Korean soil. Calling out to the birds overhead, Park asks, ‘Please, messengers of freedom who know no borders, tell me who divided our motherland?’ Half a century later, the task has fallen to my generation to secure a healing resolution to the enduring trauma of national division,” Kim stated. Echoing this sentiment, Ahn asserted the timeliness of peace advocacy for Korea: “In light of the financial crisis and its bloated military budget, the U.S. has greater incentive than before to sign a peace treaty with North Korea, which DEEP alumni will advocate for in the coming years.”
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008 (7-9 p.m.)
Eastside Arts Alliance
2277 International Blvd.
Oakland, CA 94606
(510) 533-6629
Thursday, November 20, 2008 (7-9 p.m.)
UC Berkeley
Dwinelle 370
youtube video - Japan’s Hidden Apartheid: Koreans in Japan [1/2]
[1/2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvxLHIXGFRA&feature=related
[2/2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwn6NK0tT9E&feature=related
The majority of ethnic Koreans living in Japan who are currently coming, belong to the forth or fifth generation of immigrants. In other words, Koreans have been living in Japan for a long time. An Al Jazeera reported about ethnic Koreans in Japan, so-called “Zainichi Koreans.”
The report focuses on how Zainichi Koreans in Japan suffer discrimination and racism, particularly in situations such as applying for a job or searching for housing.
Their situations are sometimes legally justified, because they are categorized as second-rate citizen, are marginalised and excluded. Since Colonialism Era, before the WWII, the Japanese government keep the polocy which should be called Apartheid against Korean minority.
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