HANKYOREH: “Amid a furor over the alleged contamination of U.S. military bases being returned to South Korea, the National Assembly environmental committee on Friday urged the government to release classified documents on its agreement with Washington or face legal action. Environmental worries have mounted as the U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK) returns 66 bases to South Korea as part of the U.S. military’s global realignment plan. The South Korean government has withheld the texts of the turnover agreement, citing “national safety.” In their on-site inspection of three U.S. bases north of Seoul on Thursday, lawmakers of the parliament’s Environment and Labor Committee found serious contamination, including oil flowing under the ground and chemical equipment dumped without proper processing. Amid a furor over the alleged contamination of U.S. military bases being returned to South Korea, the National Assembly environmental committee on Friday urged the government to release classified documents on its agreement with Washington or face legal action.” To read on, click here. For a view of Korean environmentalists from the US military and security perspective click here and here.
Comment: More blowback from our 62-year history of intervention in Korea. For readers unfamiliar with South Korean media, Hankyoreh has a proud history as an opposition newspaper dedicated to press freedoms and democracy-through-media. It was founded in the 1970s by reporters and editors who had been purged from the Dong-A-Ilbo and other newspapers in crackdowns ordered by the dictatorial government of President Park Chung-hee (Park’s daughter, Park Geun-Hye, is now running for president as a conservative. But she has moxie: in 2002, she visited the DPRK and met with Kim Jong Il). When I returned to South Korea in the 1980s as a reporter, I met and became friends with some of the journalists banned by Park’s police-state, and have always admired their perseverence in the face of very tough conditions.
On-site inspection at Camp Edward in Paju on June 14
