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Greetings
and solidarity from Nodutdol for Korean Community Development.
© 2005 by Greg Dunkel.
Today
Nodutdol stands in solidarity with the Vietnamese victims and
all victims of Agent Orange. Koreans, tragically, can empathize
well with the Vietnamese people. Like Vietnam, Korea knows the
devastating consequences of U.S. sponsored war having experience
its own from 1950-1953. Some of the most beautiful land of our
country is still made deadly by landmines. Our nation remains
divided by a heavily fortified barrier that slashes across the
peninsula. Our grandparents and parents know first hand the chaos,
death and destruction caused by bombing and chemical weapons.
And like the Vietnamese people, and especially the victims of
Agent Orange, we know the effects of war do not die out with our
elders. They continue to haunt our communities, our families and
our young ones with physical, mental and emotional wounds.
But it is not only through comparison of the Vietnam and Korean
wars that we can sympathize with you. It is also because Korean
people and their families are victims of Agent Orange as well.
Because of South Korea’s unequal alliance with the U.S over 300,000
Korean young people were sent to fight the war in Vietnam. Of
these at least 7000 continue to suffer from exposure to Agent
Orange, enduring headaches, memory loss, skin and lung cancer
and nervous disorders. What is more, the US army also used toxic
defoliants along the DMZ during the 1960s and 70s with as many
as 30,000 Korean soldiers, as well as Americans, affected by related
illnesses. However Korean veterans, unlike veterans of Vietnam
from the U.S., New Zealand, Australia and Canada, but like the
Vietnamese people, have never been compensated by the U.S. government.
Nodutdol recognizes that the racism of U.S. sponsored war means
that peoples of color are often the first to suffer and the last
to be noticed. Therefore, we demand that the chemical manufactures,
the U.S. government and the U.S. president acknowledge the damage
they have done to the Vietnamese land, the Vietnamese people,
to all the young men and women sent to fight the governments’
unjust war, and to the children who continue to suffer from the
poison to which their parents were exposed. We call on them to
make retributions and compensate the Vietnamese victims of Agent
Orange fully for their suffering. We offer our support as fellow
Asian people who, like the people here today, refuse to remain
silence in the face of this injustice.
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