sorry to kind of drop in and unload this one on you guys, but i had a visit that was especially poignant for me recently here in seoul. i figured it would at least be better to copy and paste it rather than simply put my xanga link up and say go check it out.... i guess i'm curious on how you guys might respond to my responses at the bottom. and, here's the link in case you wanna see pics: copper moon sailing. it's the sept. 27th post.
ok, here we go. gonna try and backtrack a little bit and cover some stuff that happened in the past weeks or so.
so,
i'll start out with another part of my donggwang church trip... when we
went to see Duryebang. as i said before, duryebang, also called "the
sister's house," is a small ministry that was set up oustide of the
american military Camp Stanley in Uijongbu. it was set up about 20 or
so years ago by korean ministers or their wives in order to minister to
the women who were working outside of the base. there is a small
village oustide of the base now that consists of some apartments, a few
little shops and a lot of bar/clubs. women, mostly from the
philippines, some from russia, korea, and others, are usually told by
different business men (from various countries) that they are going to
be given a special chance to dance and sing in the south korean
entertainment business. all of the women are coming from extrememly
poor economic conditions, and are therefore extremely vulnerable and
ready to take any chance to make money and send it home.
so they
expect to be put on the radio or the t.v. or in music videos. but by
the time they get to korea, they find out that they are not auditioning
in front of record or t.v. producers, they are auditioning for these
bar club owners. when they get to the village, they are stuck in their
positions, which in some occaisions resemble slavery. the club owners,
who now hold the womens' korean visa power, put them to work, sometimes
merely singing or dancing, but usually as prostitutes. because the
owners keep their visas locked up, they generally have no chance for
escape. some owners have even taken to locking the girls up in their
apartments when they are not working. when they are not suffering
abuse from the club owners, many of the women suffer abuse from the
american military. since about 1955, there have been more than 100,000
recorded instances of sexual attacks on these comfort women by U.S.
military persons. before anyone assumes that these are mostly lower
level minorities who would be causing trouble in the U.S. as well, 90%
of that 100,000 were committed by white euro-american soldiers.
thankfully, the rate is decreasing, and there are fewer attacks these
days than there were before.
so, duryebang tries to give these
women a safe place to go where they can be treated with respect. they
try to provide free medical exams for them on a regular basis. they
help work out the process of visa forms when there are problems. and
they try to help report incidents of harrassment and abuse by either
the club owners or the soldiers. and now, because camp stanley is
going to close soon and the military will move, duryebang is trying to
find ways to help the village survive once the base leaves an economic
vacuum.
i
suppose it puts me in an interesting position as a U.S. citizen to
learn about a place like this, and to hear about the things that my
country's military is doing in that village. I am left with a few
choices as to how i can react. i can ignore that things that i hear,
claim that the stories are mostly made up by people who just don't like
the U.S. i can try to go on living in a sort of ignorant bliss
pretending that the U.S. only ever does good things in the world and
there is no reason for anyone to dislike the u.s. at all. i could also
go to the other extreme and fill myself with hate towards my own
country, try to become an expatriate and try to dissassociate myself
with everything that is the U.S. and pretend like the u.s. only ever
does bad things in the world. personally, i'm not a fan of any of
those responses. it is hard for me to not feel some guilt and shame
when i hear stories like this, even if i am not the one who committed
the crimes, as a voting american i must take some responsibility. as a
christian, i would have no integrity if i were to hear about sins that
my country was committing and then claim that we have no reason to
confess them. i know that the u.s. military does do some good things
in korea, but i cannot believe, and it is unbiblical to think that we
may ignore the horrible things they do just because they do some good
things. as christians we are called to confess our sins and then work
to rid ourselves of those sins, even if they are national sins that are
committed by individual members of our military. the other move is to be an example of an american who also condemns
such actions and such a situation. we can be examples of people who do
not believe that such injustice is ok simply because the troops need it
for their morale. then we try and learn more about how a situation
such as this could come about in the first place. i have only heard a
little about the SOFA agreement that is involved in what the korean
government will allow to happen around the u.s. bases. if i knew more
i might make another post. i hope to learn more about duryebang and
ways i can help their work throughout the year. for those of you who
read this, i pray that you do not close your hearts to this situation
and write me off as being unpatriotic. please pray for the work, and
pray for the women.
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