Beyond the Anti-US Base Movement: How the Corals of the Jeju Eco-Peace Movement Resist the Nations

Image provided by speaker

Monday, May 22, 2023
4:00 PM (Pacific Time)

10383 Bunche Hall

Gangjeong is a small seaside town in the southern region of Jeju Island that captured public attention through its longstanding protest of the construction of a Republic of Korea (ROK) naval base on its land. Since 2007, the movement has grown to receive support domestically and across the world. However, despite fierce opposition, the development of the naval base continued and completed construction in 2016. Through this period, the village also began to experience divisions within the community between pro and anti-base supporters and witnessed the emergence of the 강정지킴이, which loosely translates to keeper of guard of Gangjeong, to describe those who struggle and stand in solidarity with other anti-militarization efforts domestically and internationally, while also expanding into a movement for queer rights, feminism, and eco-peace.

Gangjeong struggle is intricately connected to longer histories of Japanese and US military occupation on Jeju Island and the collective resistance to militarization of the US Pacific, such as the 4.3 Uprising and Massacre and the Okinawa anti-US military base movement. In this talk, Hyea-Young Choi will share her experiences through her long-time peace activism work and research in Gangjeong, the everyday resistance towards the naval base, the multifaceted protest of growing militarization of the Pacific, and the eco-peace movement of the 강정지킴이. 

Hyea-Young Choi (she/her/hers) is a long-time feminist-peace activist and an artist-scholar based in Jeju, South Korea. She is an organizer with 강정지킴이, co-founder of Friends of Gangjeong, and a key part of the effort to resist the militarization of the Korean peninsular and US imperialism in the Asia Pacific region. After the completion of the Jeju Naval Base, she began her PhD in sociology at Jeju National University, where she completed a master's thesis on the "Gangjeong Jikimi" based on her experiences as an activist and research on past and current politics of resistance to the Jeju Naval Base. She is finishing her doctoral degree at the moment. Hyea-Young also works as an independent curator as well as a documentary film producer. The documentaries include: Some Queer Bo-Ki (2020), Map Without Island (2021), and Coral Love (2023). She also began underwater photography and videography in 2014 to survey the soft-coral reef and has complied her work into a photo book in 2021, Coral Blue: A Record of the Jeju Soft Coral Reef.

koreanstudies@international.ucla.edu

Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies