North Korea Flies Into South Korean Air Space, South Korea Begins Military Drills To Shoot Down The DPRK's Drones
Regardless, we call for peace. We call for a removal of travel restrictions to North Korea. We call for change. It's our turn.
Opinion
SEOUL- This week civilian airports in and around Seoul were told to cease takeoffs after North Korean drones were identified in the area, one of which traveled as far as over Seoul itself, South Korea’s capitol. This led to South Korea’s military firing warning shots and scrambling fighter jets.
Today (28-12-2022) South Korea has staged large-scale military drills to simulate shooting down North Korean drones, the country’s first set of major anti-drone drills since 2017. It’s speculated one reason North Korea sent up to 5 drones over South Korea and the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone, the most heavily guarded border in the world) that separates the 2 countries was to observe the ROK’s (Republic of Korea) and United States’ readiness and protocols.
The tension on the Korean Peninsula is now going on its fourth generation and has become akin to the common kids story, “The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf”. Many in Asia, and world at large, have just tuned out anything remotely sounding like potential for an emergency situation on the peninsula despite ongoing nuclear and ICBM tests in the north. But as the story goes, there’s eventually a real emergency and no one takes heed and suffers the consequences.
A thought comes to mind, maybe politicians aren’t the best tool to use to achieve peace on the peninsula. They have been given nearly a century now to make the situation less tensive but to no avail. It’s time to give another approach an opportunity but for American peace-makers and humanitarian workers the U.S. government is standing in the way of its most experienced advocates for reconciliation and unification.
In 2017 the Trump administration via the U.S. State Department restricted Americans from traveling into the country and this travel restriction, aka the Geographic Travel Ban (GTC), is being upheld by the Biden administration to this day. Most if not all U.S. humanitarian and Christian outreach workers who have been providing the essential services such as medicine and food to the citizens of the DPRK for several decades now haven’t been able to return to the North since the GTC was imposed.
Having American citizenship myself, I grew up thinking I was among the freest in the world. But now many of us expats from the U.S. are experiencing a different reality, one where we see a very unfortunate similarity between our own government to that of many authoritarian ones and that is specifically the restricting of traveling by its citizens.
The hope is that we can all agree change in the North needs to happen. The question remains, How?.
Apparently outside pressure doesn’t work, at least it hasn’t now going on a century. Maybe say in a hundred years plus a day it will produce the peaceful outcome we hope will become commonplace in the North. Not likely if the past 70+ years is an indication for different results.
Goals like this happen from the inside and is only possible via peace-makers who live and work in the country who build genuine relationships and friendships with the people.
Many find it nuts to want to live and work there in North Korea. But those of us who have lived and worked there find it ludicrous to keep doing the same thing expecting different results. It’s time for a different approach to say the least to bring unification and reconciliation to the Korean Peninsula.
What you can do:
Contact your senators to inform them of S. 690 The Enhancing North Korea Humanitarian Assistance Act
Contact your congressmen to inform them of H.R.1504 also known as The Enhancing North Korea Humanitarian Assistance Act to ask them all to support these bills.
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