The recent six-party talks in Beijing highlight the urgency of bringing a lasting peace to the Korean peninsula. While considerable movement toward reunification and new and important exchanges are occurring at all levels in North and South Korea, misinformation on the Korean situation abounds outside the peninsula. Korea Peace Day, to be held on November 10, provides an opportunity to make a difference. The next round of six-party talks is currently scheduled for November. This makes Korea Peace Day 2005 particularly timely.
Peace Day is a project of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK), an organization of scholars working in the United States and in other countries who are concerned with U.S. policies toward the Korean peninsula. On this day we call upon all concerned people and organizations to join together on college and university campuses throughout the United States to express a commitment to a peaceful resolution of the ongoing tensions between the United States and North Korea.
Major Peace Day events are planned at a number of other institutions across the United States, including Arizona State University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Lewis and Clark College, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UCLA, the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), and the University of Texas at Austin.
At the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Peace Day events will include a forum titled Peace on the Korean Peninsula, sponsored by the Korean Graduate Student, and several film screenings.
5: 30 p.m.
Samulnori performance. Samulnori means
“four instruments” and refers to the four instruments played by the
musicians:
kwaengwari, jing, janggu, and buk. With roots in Buddhist
and farmers' music, the style has changed through the years and evolved in
different ways.
Music Video. 2004 SBS Reunification Project (All Stars). Features Shinwha, Kim Gunmo, Kim Bum-Soo, Lee Hyori, Lee Seung-chul, Seven, Wax, Kim Jong-guk, Maya, Ok Ju-hyun, and others.
6:00 p.m.
Feature Documentary. The Game of Their Lives. In
1966, the North Korean football (soccer) team shocked the world by knocking
out Italy. Using archival footage and interviews with the seven surviving players,
this award-winning documentary tells the remarkable and highly entertaining
story of the pint-sized giant killers.
7:30 p.m.
Feature Film. A
Bold Family ( 간큰가족 ). What would you do if the only way
to get an inheritance from your father was enabling him to see a unified
Korean peninsula? That’s the question this comedy asks itself. Starring
Kim Soo-Ro, Gam Woo-Sung, and the father figure of Korean cinema,
Shin Goo, this film bears a vague resemblance—at least on the surface—to
the German film Goodbye,
Lenin. But, of course, you’ll find out the two are very different.
Very.
9:00 p.m.
Korean Graduate Student Association Forum. Discussion of the films and comments
by students on the relevance of Peace Day and their views on the current
nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Moderated by Professor Jun Yoo, Department
of History.
Combined singing: “Hand in Hand” (Koreana).
For additional information about Peace Day events across the country, visit the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea Web site (http://www.asck.org).
Background image by Don Ryun Chang, Seoul.