cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/13426

This past weekend, hundreds of activists gathered at the inaugural “People’s Summit for Korea”, held from July 25 to July 26 in New York City. The summit, which brought together people from across the United States and from South Korea and Hawai’i, sought to deepen debates on topics such as Korean national liberation, the DPRK’s ongoing revolutionary process, resistance to US militarism, and more.

The historic conference was convened by Nodutdol, alongside other groups including Koreans for Anti-Imperialism and Sovereignty, Korea Peace Now Grassroots Network, Koreans 4 Decolonization, Korea Policy Institute, The People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, Anti-War Action Network, Dissenters, and the United National AntiWar Coalition).

Read more: People’s Summit for Korea unites struggles for national liberation to fight the drive towards “World War III”

The Summit ended with a march of hundreds through the streets of New York City to decry US imperialism and the drive towards major power confrontation in the Pacific region.

On July 28, Nodutdol member Miyeon Jang, an organizer in New York City, opened the Summit with a bold call to action: that Korean diaspora activists like herself not “sit quietly in the empire’s belly.”

“Our ancestors did not fight Japanese colonizers just for the United States to raise their flag instead,” Jang declared.

Miyeon Jang (Photo: Jaylen Strong)

Read her full speech below:

Comrades, thank you for being here at this historic moment. My name is Miyeon, and I’m a member of Nodutdol. I’m a proud daughter of a Korean adoptee and the granddaughter of a woman I’ve never met but whose life and survival carved the path that brought me to this stage today.

As the daughter of an adoptee, I used to feel estranged from a language I never knew and a history that my mother never had the chance to pass down to me. But through revolutionary organizing, I came to understand that being Korean isn’t just about birth place or blood, but about joining our people’s legacy of resistance and the fight for true sovereignty. To be Korean is to join the ranks of those who struggle for true sovereignty and dignity in our homeland and across the diaspora.

And maybe, like me, you’ve also questioned your place in this legacy, too. If so, know this. Your connection to Korea is not defined by miles or by blood, but in your commitment to its future.

Today is a day 26 years in the making. In the 1990s, Nodutdol’s origins were seeded by diaspora organizers who traveled to South Korea to learn directly from the people rising against US backed military dictatorships, laying the foundation for Nodutdol’s formal founding in 1999. And while organizing delegations to Korea, Nodutdol is also deeply rooted to Korean communities in Queens, offering English classes, and organizing to connect to the Korean diaspora with the international struggle.

In the post-911 era, when Islamophobic nationalism swept the country, Nodutdol stood firm against the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. That moment forged us, and we focused on delegation work and sharpened our identity as an unapologetically anti-imperialist organization.

Through trips to North and South Korea, members met with militant labor unions, farmers, factory workers and youth, all of whom affirmed a clear truth: The US military presence presents neither security nor peace. And across the peninsula, the shared desire was for reunification and independence and national liberation.

These delegations bridged Nodutdol to the Korean diaspora across the US, Canada and Japan, who shared a hunger for anti-imperialist Korean movement grounded in the centuries-long resistance of our people. Today, Nodutdol’s presence has grown beyond New York, and we are steadily building towards becoming a national organization that can act as a vehicle for our diaspora wherever we can be found.

Since 1999, 200,000 Koreans have immigrated to the US, including over 20,000 adoptees. Many of these immigrants left Korea not by true choice, under the illusion of choice, or were sold by the adoption industry. Many fled economic devastation engineered by the US-backed IMF crisis. Others were drawn in by false promises of opportunity, and many simply struggled to survive the chaos and instability manufactured by the United States.

Migration has never meant true escape. It simply drew a new front line in the war against the Korean people. How many of us grew up reconciling fragments of stories our families couldn’t finish telling, stories of our divided families, disappeared relatives, or stolen roots?

We were told to be grateful for life in America, even as our parents were broken by overwork, even as our elders died without care, and even as our communities are torn apart by threats of deportation.

US imperialism requires our elders to age in poverty and be denied life-saving health care. US imperialism requires our mothers to work multiple jobs while raising a household. US imperialism requires our communities to face disproportionate rates of addiction and alcoholism. US imperialism requires our students, Yunseo Chung, be threatened with deportation for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. These are the costs of keeping the empire churning.

This weekend marks 72 years since the signing of the Korean War armistice, yet the Korean people have yet to know true peace. The US remains the primary obstacle to formally ending the war.

They call it the Forgotten War. But for us, nothing has been forgotten. We are reminded daily of the injustice and the indignity of a peninsula divided not by our own choice. A homeland under US military occupation, and a diaspora exploited to serve the very empire who dares to treat our homeland as a launchpad for their next war on China. 72 years later, can we honestly say the war is over now?

This weekend also marks one year in the one year anniversary of the launch of our US Out of Korea campaign. We know that the US hides behind the rhetoric of democracy and humanitarianism when it comes to their occupation of the Korean peninsula. We launched this campaign to also build a movement to contest imperialism within the US.

The United States’s South Korean puppet soldiers will beat grandmothers until they need surgery simply for defending their farmland, and call it protection against North Korea. They impose lethal sanctions against pregnant mothers and children, and call it diplomacy. They staged war exercises that dropped bombs on villages like Nogok-ri, and call it peacekeeping.

We are not fooled. Our ancestors did not fight Japanese colonizers just for the United States to raise their flag instead. They weren’t massacred in the caves of Jeju. They did not bleed out in the streets of Gwangju, and they sure as hell did not topple four US-backed presidents for us to sit quietly in the empire’s belly.

We honor those who have walked the road of people’s struggle before us and gave everything for the cause of liberation. Martyrs like Yang Hoe-Dong, a district leader with the Korean Construction Workers Union who was killed in 2023 by the Yoon Suk-Yeol regime in a campaign of brutal repression and intimidation against workers.

The people did not let Yoon Suk-Yeol forget. Less than two years later, last December, the Korean Construction Workers’ Union embodied the spirit of the martyr, as they, alongside so many other organizations, mobilized millions to impeach Yoon Suk-Yeol and make him answer for his lethal repression of the working people.

We are armed with the clarity, the discipline and the revolutionary lessons of our elders and martyrs. As diaspora, we organize with confidence, and in the legacy of the Minjung, the people whose struggle shapes history. We move with conviction towards the scientific and inevitable truth. The people bend the arc of history.

And we are not alone. We are grounding our movement and the legacy of national liberation and socialist anti-imperialism through this summit. We are strengthening our political consciousness, building the relationships needed to wage the working class struggle and to strengthen our commitment. We are joined by millions of our siblings and kin in Korea who continue the fight against occupation, division and the exploitation of workers.

The era of US impunity and waging war without consequence is over. Across the US, we are organizing the working people to create consequences for the US empire and building towards our inevitable socialist future.

To all of you here today, we say thank you for standing shoulder to shoulder with us, advancing internationalist solidarity, and fortifying our movement as a global front against imperialism. The fight for Korean liberation and against imperialism and Korea is bound with people’s struggles everywhere.

We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, who rose up with the defiant call of toojeng, or struggle. From resistance against colonial rule to today’s organized labor struggle against US-backed repression, toojeng has echoed through the movement for Korean liberation and sovereignty.

When I call out toojeng, I want you to shout it back with fire in your lungs and your fist in the air. With all the conviction you carry for our people and for our struggle. After I say to toojeng, you say it back.

Korean Liberation! Toojeng!

Students! Toojeng!

Workers. Toojeng!

Internationalism! Toojeng!

The post Miyeon Jang: Korean diaspora must honor legacy of national struggle, not “sit quietly in the empire’s belly” appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

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