SQB Articles
Three Iowa MFSA Members Honored in Korea
by Gene E. Matthews

Three members of the Iowa Chapter of MFSA were honored recently by an agency of the Korean Government for their past efforts toward the promotion of democracy in Korea. Bill and Jean Basinger and Gene Matthews, all former missionaries in Korea, were part of a group of fifty selected by the Korean Democracy Foundation to participate in a week of activities celebrating Korea's past struggle for human rights and democracy. Participants were invited from Canada, Germany, Japan, and the United States and included a number of overseas expatriate Koreans who have essentially been living abroad as exiles for many years.

The Korean Democracy Foundation was established in 2001 as part of the Korea Democracy Foundation Act of the National Assembly, Korea's unicameral legislative body. All funding for the foundation, one of whose tasks is to archive Korea's historical human rights struggle, is provided by the National Assembly.

The Basingers and Matthews had, in the past, long been active in a regular gathering of Protestant and Catholic missionaries and other concerned foreigners who gathered each Monday night both to document human rights violations committed by the Korean government and to provide assistance to victims of human rights violations. Because one of the primary functions of the Korean Democracy Foundation is to archive the struggle for democracy in Korea, participants in the events were asked to provide documents they had accumulated which were related to the struggle. A large number of documents were turned over the Foundation by members of the "Monday Night Group."

While serving in Korea both the Basingers and Matthews, because of their activities in support of the human rights struggle, had come under intensive scrutiny by various agencies of the Korean government including the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (later called the Agency for National Security Planning and recently renamed the National Intelligence Agency), the national police, and Immigration authorities. The scrutiny included daily visits and monitoring by the various agencies, interrogations, telephone taps, mail inspection, pressure on friends and acquaintances, limits on length of residence stay and, in the case of the Basingers, refusal to renew residence permits so they were forced to leave the country.

With these harsh experiences as background, the invitation, expense-paid trip, and warm welcome by an agency of the Korean government were heady experiences. To be involved with dear Korean friends, many of whom had been imprisoned and tortured under previous dictatorial regimes, was emotionally overwhelming.

The activities provided for us by the Korean Democracy Foundation took us back to scenes fraught with emotion but also to current scenes of great hope for the future of this tragically divided land. Early on in the week, the entire group was taken to the Blue House (Korea's official presidential residence) where we were hosted by Roh Moon Hyun, Korea's popularly elected president. In sharp contrast to the stern security of the dictatorial eras of the past, we found people from the countryside roaming around the beautiful grounds of the residence area. President Roh welcomed us into his home, sat at tables with us for tea and cookies, spoke to us for nearly a half hour in a most candid way and fielded questions from the group. It was an impressive performance from a man who is currently under considerable pressure from opponents who feel he is not behaving in a presidential manner.

One of the serious issues President Roh was facing at the time was pressure from the Bush administration to send Korean troops to Iraq to join "Coalition" forces there. Korea seemed seriously divided on this issue with opposition party members (perhaps to make life difficult for Roh) clamoring for the sending of troops and young people, who had been largely responsible for electing him, staging massive demonstrations in opposition.

A visit to the site of the former K.C.I.A. headquarters where we met the parents of two former students who had been killed during torture and where many of our close friends had suffered tortures was a sobering experience as was a visit to the site of the former West Gate Prison. The prison, created by the Japanese during their forty-year occupation of Korea and used by the Japanese rulers for torture and execution of thousands of Koreans during that time, has now been converted to a museum, dedicated primarily to the victims of the Japanese abuse. But this is also where many of our friends were imprisoned under brutal conditions and where we had spent many hours in the past waiting in line to visit friends and take food, clothing and books to them.

In 1975, Father Jim Sinnott and Gene Matthews stood at the prison gates to greet eight women whose husbands had just been executed that morning after being falsely accused by the dictatorial government of heading a plot (all fabricated by the K.C.I.A.) to overthrow the government. Two of the widows met us at the prison and we had a tearful embrace outside the crude execution hut as Father Sinnott led us in prayer.

One of the more hopeful aspects of the trip, especially in light of constant reports in the U.S. media, prompted by the Bush administration, of the threat posed by North Korean "belligerence," was revealed when we were taken to the Dorasan Train Station just south of the border between North and South Korea. The once impenetrable Demilitarized Zone has been pierced just north of this station and a train track now connects Seoul in the South with Kaesung in the north. The Dorasan station has been constructed as the final stopping place for travel to the north and as the first welcoming place for visitors from the north. After living for decades under a constant bombardment of propaganda about how evil the northerners are and how much they are to be feared, we were delighted by the atmosphere at Dorasan where our guide (the station master) spoke only positively about "our brothers and sisters" in the north and how we are now well on our way to reuniting with them.

Even the trip to the Panmunjom Truce Village was more positive than previous visits had been. In former years, American soldiers had conducted the tours and had filled their descriptions with snide remarks belittling the northern guards present in the village for being smaller and thinner and making fun of the north for its economic weaknesses and its inability to feed its people. They frequently boasted of their ability to defeat the north in case of conflict. In contrast, our tour this time was conducted by South Korean soldiers who spoke matter-of-factly about the actual physical layout of the village (dimensions, location of key buildings, etc.). The negative propaganda was happily absent.

A day-long trip to and overnight stay in Kwangju was one of the real highlights of the trip. This southwestern provincial capital was the scene of a massive uprising in 1980 when citizens demonstrated against the obvious intentions of Chun Do Whan, a military general, to take over the country following the assassination of former dictator Park Chun Hee. To suppress the demonstrations, General Chun had ordered brutal Special Forces troops to enter the city. Hundreds of civilians were ruthlessly slaughtered but eventually the citizens forced the troops out and took control of the city. A contingency of troops stationed at the front line area was then released by the U.S. Commanding General Wickam to travel to Kwangju and recapture the city. The incident was widely viewed at the time as evidence of U.S. support of Chun's intentions and provided further ammunition for the anti-Americanism so prevalent in parts of Korea today.

Our visit included stops at a number of the sites where citizens were slaughtered but perhaps most sobering was the visit to the cemetery where victims of the military brutality have been laid to rest. There Bill Basinger was honored to be part of a group which laid a wreath on the memorial to these victims.

At the final gathering on Friday evening, each participant was presented an elegantly shaped tablet inscribed in both Korean and English with the following words.

"On behalf of the Korean people, we present this Tablet in recognition of your effort and contribution towards advancing democracy in Korea."

We traveled to Korea with a deep concern over media reports that North Korea is developing nuclear weapons and, therefore, threatening the stability of the region. Gene Matthews has written previously about how he feels President Bush is responsible for much of this tension but labeling North Korea as part of his "Axis of Evil." Our visit confirmed Matthews' earlier opinions. With the exception of a few older people we did not find undue alarm about North Korea. Instead we found concern and a strong desire to help the people in the north. We came away convinced more than ever that the greatest threat to instability in the area is the U.S. government. Left to their own devices, the Koreans, one people artificially divided and kept apart by outside forces, will solve their own problems and bring about their own unification.

(The terms "North Korea" and "South Korea" are essentially nicknames. Technically, South Korea is The Republic of Korea, or ROK, and North Korea is The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, or DRPK. The nicknames are commonly used in the Korean language and for convenience. GM)