"corean monsoon rain"

"rain....
so fresh and cools the soul
washing clean the leaves of the trees blossoming from the mountain side as people implore...
"when will it end? it has been raining for days to weeks non stop"
but there is something so pure and beautiful... as mother nature cleanses herself with her teardrops
so soothing the sounds of the dripplets dropping and the droplets dripping
on the trees and rooftops as they coexist on a mountain side
i admire the beauty as i make my way up my street which is at a 45 degree angle.. out of breath i sigh
holding groceries from the local corner market store in my hands, sweat dripping from my nose
the rain dripping from my clothes
streams flowing from the green hills past my door
making rivers out of the grooves in the asphalt floor
i make my way inside to enjoy an icecream bar i bought because of my loyalty to my favourite treats reminicent from my early childhood
mmmm so good...
but soon enough i find myself going outside again,
just to stand and admire the beauty of the corean monsoon rain...."
~sun
www.myspace.com/therealsun
facebook group: the real sun

p.s. GREETINGS! ah my first blog. ever. ^.^ I wrote this piece on July 26 but hadn't figured out this blog thinger majiger yet. for a good week or so the rain came, non stop. literally. but now it's stopping slowly. taking tea breaks as i imagine the clouds to be doing. haha. but all jokes aside, Michelle and I (stand up TORONTOO!!) are here now in Corea and yesterday we met up with Wol-San (of Migrant Trade Workers Union aka MTU) and Sukjong (KEEP Coordinator extrodinaire) at a hunger strike that was going into its 50th day. A company by the name of 기륭전자 (Ki-Rung-Jun-Ja) laid off their female factory workers just before their two year mark working at the factory. because at two years, by law, they then become regular workers and are no longer irregular workers (which cost the company more money). So they were all laid off, with (from my undrstanding,) the intention to re-hire them back as irregular workers robbing them of regular worker status. They have now been on strike over this issue for 3 years. And two of these women started a hunger strike 50 days ago. They have still not eaten. Their lives are really now at risk. Yesterday they took up a coffin to lay on the rooftop where these women are spending their (hopefully not their last) days. our camp was allowed to meet and speak to the women. Despite their struggles, they looked well spirited. Their eyes glowed with hope and their energies and expressions communicated that they were at ease with what they were doing. As if they were comforted, protected, and honoured by their uncowardly and strong commitment to the struggle. Unfortunately this issue is not getting much attention due to the stuggles and demonstrations in Seoul over the U.S. beef import issue... there will be more updates to come. in the meantime, for articles in Corean check: http://www.vop.co.kr/A00000217261.html and http://cafe.naver.com/kiryung.cafe

peace love unity
~sun

율동 in the rain! E-land women workers' struggle

In the shadow of the World Cup Stadium, Seoul, irregular women workers of the Homever store have set up a tent where they sleep every night, and every Friday, they hold a cultural rally that calls attention to their unjust firing. They are right there, unavoidable, for all the shoppers that emerge out of the subway exit.

The issue of irregular workers in Korea and the timeline of these women workers' struggle with the multinational e-land are very well summed-up in this series of articles (Riot police and young mothers face to face in Seoul, Asian Human Rights Commission )

Source: UNI Commerce Global Union

Immediate ironies: 1. The Homever store, branding itself as 'Sweet home forever' while firing single moms and lower-income workers so that they can't get benefits under the law- so 'home' is essentially a brand, but only consumable by the middle and upper class...

2. The World Cup stadium where Homever is located, formerly the stage of crazy nationalist-soccer fever in 2002, now a mall full of part-time contracted workers who have no benefits -
As it poured, student groups and union groups came out and performed 율동 to movement songs like 얼굴 찌프리지 말아요, smiling. In some ways, the rain transformed the event because everyone performing was vulnerable to it, and yet, soaked, it seemed to make people's spirits lift higher. Imagine it: a car pointing its headlights at a tent, lighting up the faces of students and union leaders singing, dancing, acting... I had gone to arrange the meeting for KEEP, and found myself staying until the end,

The tent where the striking workers sleep, next to the store...

KEEP 2008 makes its big debut at the Friday cultural rally in a few weeks--

Flashbacks to the past

This is Lee Myung Bak with a 'mad' cow (note the dark rings around the eye) riding a time machine - and they've skidded into the '80s. And even the cow, the mad cow, is saying, exasperated : 'Aigo (untranslateable- maybe- Oh dear)- look, we've gone too far into the past.'

What happened in Korea in the '80s? Starting with the long-hidden civilian massacre at Kwangju in May 1980 by state paratroopers and US approval, followed by years of repression, arrests, and a fearsome police state during the Chun Doo Hwan regime, the background of the cartoon shows it right: masses of people gathered together, and the riot cops running after them, but also, the feeling of being on the horizon of something new and unprecedented...

I think the sheer scale of the vigils and the violence of the state response is astonishing to see but not totally unprecedented; It IS reminiscent of the June '87 uprising; the student and worker demonstrations turned 'necktie' revolution, when anyone and their mother walked into the street to call for democratization and an end to military dictatorship-

The indelible image of tens of thousands of people gathered in Seoul to protest the US beef import and Lee Myung Bak's neoliberal yes-man persona is not something that can be blamed away, and yet the government has been targeting certain groups as masterminding the vigils.

So along with arresting or drafting arrest warrants for individuals of certain organizations and even those who WRITE about the arrest or the issue (link), JUST TONIGHT the police surrounded the building of KCTU- the major labor confederation of trade unions- with arrest warrants for its 3 top officials. The standoff is still ongoing... Link

And the parallels to the '80s keep on growing...

July 1st, NYC's KEEP Fundraiser: Remembered Hunger

Remembered Hunger: Readings & Performances by Lee Herrick, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, and Kim Sunee

Join KEEP in celebrating its 14th year for a night of readings and performances from guest readers, learn about previous KEEP trips, and meet with past and future KEEP participants!

WHEN: Tuesday, July 1, 2008, 7-9 PM
WHERE: The Asian American Writer's Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, Suite 10A, New York, NY 10001
Suggested donation: $10

CONTACT: Betsy, q.rayeula@gmail.com, 425-770-1106
www.keep.org, www.nodutdol.org

A b o u t t h e A u t h o r s :

Lee Herrick is the author of the poetry collection This Many Miles from Desire (WordTech Editions, 2007). He was born south of Seoul, Korea and adopted at ten months. His poems have been published in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, The Bloomsbury Review, Many Mountains Moving and MiPOesias as well as anthologized in Seeds from a Silent Tree: An Anthology of Korean Adoptees, Hurricane Blues: Poems About Katrina and Rita and Highway 99: A Literary Journey through California's Great Central Valley. He is the founding editor of In the Grove literary journal and teaches at Fresno City College in Fresno, California.

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs is a poet, librettist, teacher, and critic. She was born in Won Su Ji, South Korea. Her debut poetry collection, Paper Pavilion (White Pine Press 2007), received the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Her poems have been published in 5 AM, Crazyhorse, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, MiPOesias, Poetry NZ and the Tulane Review as well as anthologized in Echoes Upon Echoes (Asian American Writers Workshop 2003) and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W.W. Norton 2008). Dobbs holds a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California and teaches English at St. Olaf College.

Kim Sunée was born in South Korea, adopted, and raised in New Orleans. She lived in Europe for more than ten years where she owned an all-poetry bookshop in Paris. She is the author of Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home (January 2008, Grand Central). Her book, a memoir with recipes, was selected for the Spring 2008 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and is a January 2008 Booksense Pick. She is the founding food editor of Cottage Living and worked previously as a food editor for Southern Living.

KEEP'er Jennifer Kwon Dobbs herself is reading this night!
Please forward this on to your New York-dwelling peeps, and you can also click on the flier and save it to your computer too to forward.

People's Committees in southern Korea 1945-47

Another little-mentioned aspect of Korea before and after division are the people's committees that quickly formed all throughout Korea upon the end of World War II and Japan's defeat, from August 15, 1945.

In understanding the general lack of awareness about people's committees in this time, we can point to the fact that these insitutions of self-rule were promptly and thoroughly suppressed by the United States military government as soon as they came to occupy the southern part of the peninsula in September.

What were people's committees? Briefly, they were local self-governing bodies which organized all aspects of political, economic, and social decision-making necessary to restore peoples' lives and basic services as the Japanese colonial government left. They kept the order and organized food harvesting and distribution, set up legal bodies, etc. They were of various political ideologies, and only excluded those people who had collaborated most closely with the Japanese.

But when the Japanese colonial administration left, they convinced US military commanders that the emergence of these political bodies was led by Communists. So the US military government also sought to eradicate these independent people's committees. Naturally the most conservative elements of Korean society, such as the landlords who had profited under Japanese colonialism, were also against the redistribution and justice-oriented designs of the people's committees.

The picture below, of this time period, shows the extent and geographic spread of these people's committees in the South, and challenges the idea that people in Korea were not ready to govern themselves.



What else do people know about people's committees?
Another link (from US Library of Congress sources, no less) on people's committees.

이명박 실정 3개월 총정리 동영상 - in English

Do you want to know who President Lee MyungBak really is? Here's a pretty good video of him in his first 3 months in office.

http://www.heykorean.com/HK_Club/HK_Club_board/HK_Club_View.asp?club_id=10002490&board_no=14654&list_no=134&board_type=b&item_seq=792535&Page=1&Search=&key=&order=&by=desc

SILENCE: thoughts on the Japanese colonial legacy

Koreans executed during Japanese colonial period (marked with bullet practice signs)

That Koreans are a post-colonial (or even neo-colonized) people hardly seems to come up in the celebratory spin of the country as an economic powerhouse. That Japanese colonialism didn't simply 'end' in 1945 is rarely questioned.

What we keep returning to in our New York discussions is the deep-rooted impact of Japanese colonial occupation on not just the material realities of the time, the obvious exploitation of both Korean resources and labor, but also how the legacy is also psychic, relational, generational in terms of the way it fragmented and displaced and divided people from each other- which was then aped and magnified by the US military government when it occupied the south in 1945.

Who is the "I" of colonial Korea? What is the spectrum of complicity and resistance among Koreans living in this period? How do we address the fact that the social, economic, and political infrastructure of modern south Korea has been built on the foundation of those Koreans who benefited the most from collaborating with colonial Japan, who are still in power today?

And for all the witnesses and survivors speaking out decades later (such as those 할머니 who are still living among the 100,000-200,000 Korean comfort women), how hard was it to break the silence in the authoritarian, patriarchal nationalism of south Korea?

And so someone mentioned that what we are doing, what is still necessary, is excavating. Instead of History, we are unearthing histories - of everything that could not be spoken, that was taboo, that was buried, muffled, silenced, stored in secret all these years.

What do these histories mean to us now? How do they live on in the present for you?

New York's 학습 meeting schedule

Here is the schedule for New York KEEPers' study sessions for this year's program. The KEEP reader also follows this flow. We meet from 6:30-9:30 pm.

June 12- Introduction to KEEP
June 16- Legacies of Japanese colonialism and Independence movements

June 17- Post-Liberation (Division, US military government), Korean War and Syngman Rhee dictatorship

June 23- Park Chunghee dictatorship and economic development

June 24- Kwangju uprising and a turn toward democracy

June 30- Neoliberalism in South Korea (Trade, globalization, labor policies)

July 1-(subject to change)- 6.15.00 Summit and the unification movement

Generally, we are beginning each session by practicing our introductions in Korean, and we end each session by translating and singing some movement songs.

Our recipe: 1 facilitator. 1 Guitar. Food to share. Videos and pictures. 2 small children running around. Many voices. Shake, stir.