Video report from February trip to Jeju Island (Bruce Gagnon/space4peace)

[bananas]

http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2012/06/jeju-video-conference-report.html

Friday, June 22, 2012

JEJU VIDEO CONFERENCE REPORT

(embedded video)

Here is my video report from our February trip to Gangjeong village on Jeju Island, South Korea that hosted the Global Network's 20th annual meeting.

Thanks to filmmaker Eric Herter for taking my raw video footage and making this film. He spent alot of time working on this.

You can order copies of this on DVD from the Global Network for $15. Send check to GN, PO Box 652, Brunswick, Maine 04011.


posted by Bruce K. Gagnon | 7:33 AM

The 45 minute video can be watched embedded in the blog post above,
or watched or downloaded in various formats at http://archive.org/details/JejuIslandsStruggleForPeace

For those unfamiliar with Jeju Island;

http://savejejunow.org/

Jeju Island is situated off the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and covers a lava plateau with a shield volcano at an elevation of 1,950 meters above sea level. The high biological diversity, unique volcanic topography and the culture of Jeju Island attract many tourists.

The home for this proposed military facility is the tiny village of Gangjeong, which is surrounded by three UNESCO World Natural Heritage sites and nine UNESCO Geo-Parks on an island that is designated a Global Biosphere Reserve. Construction is accelerating daily with the dredging of the island’s seabed and its coral communities currently underway.

Many observers of the region believe that the Jeju Island naval base will serve as a port of call for the U.S. military’s sea-based component of its ballistic missile defense system.

This is not only an issue of protecting the environment or preventing military expansion. Human rights and free speech are also at stake. Villagers have been arrested during nonviolent protests. Police and construction workers have assaulted elderly members of the community, who represent a large portion of the activists.