Civil Society Alliances and International Agreement for Peace Making in the Northeast Asia Region

Civil Society Alliances and International Agreement for Peace Making in the Northeast Asia Region
Prof. Lee Jung Ok

1. Civil Society Alliances Go Beyond International Agreements

Women's Initiatives

Feminist alliances crossing national borders were made immediately after the comfort women issues became a source of public discourse. The feminists dug out the issue 50 years after the war. From the victim's side, the voices against the war were raised during the post cold war period starting from the comfort women's issues.

The comfort women's issues received worldwide attention because of its particularity and universality. The particularity originated from the direct state-control of the Japanese soldiers' sexualities, which were treated as private needs. Thus, the immoralities of the state can be revealed through the voices of victims.

The universality came from the victimization of the women's body that could easily be combined with the feminist movements agenda. The coalition originated from the women's organizations that invoke gender discourses in the domestic sphere. Feminist and nationalist coalitions had been made in turn, and then provoked the state and civil society differentiated responsibilities surrounding the war criminalities.

The state versus state level compensation had been made just after the war without sufficient consultations with the victims themselves. The bilateral agreement for the full basket compensation of war had been made at the government level that cannot win the legitimacy even after the military coup d' etat in South Korea. In contrast with the western criminal court of war, there was no keen monitoring of the northeastern war criminal court, especially from the people's side. Though there were strong resistances against full basket agreement of war compensation at the government level, those voices were silenced by the strong military and police control. After more than 30 years of oppression of the victims' voices who were denied state compensation, the women's groups articulated the war atrocities starting from the comfort women' issues. Even the existence of victims has been denied by the authoritarian state that has formally represented the victims' voices in the international level. The rights of the victims have been violated even from their own state.

The movements of the victims have developed into building a coalition for the state compensation of war crimes. The repeated answer from the Japanese side that all the compensation had been made at the government level could not satisfy the victims' demand that push for the direct state compensation to the victims. Over emphasis in the legal procedure from the Japanese government without deeper reference to l'esprit d'loi, which has been the base of legal processes in democratic societies could not soothe the victims' anger. One Japanese scholar attributed this endless and useless answer, which is only based on the legal aspect, to the imported superficial democracy that did not refer to ethical base of the law. (Kinhide Mushakoji, 2000)

The development of comfort women movements has raised questions of state representation. It also asserted the possibilities of building wide alliances crossing the national border and gender border.

Building Alliances for Civilian Victims in War

After the comfort women issue was brought out, ordinary citizens' recognition of war crimes done by the state were sharpened. In Korea, war victims during the Vietnamese and the Korean wars were highlighted. The victims of the Vietnamese War with over exposition of Agent Orange that amounted to 40,000 persons who registered as victims based on the legislated law on compensation for Agent Orange victims.

The state versus state compensation was agreed in 1964. Affected by the successful result of the lawsuit by the American and Australian victims against the manufacturing company of Agent Orange in 1984, the Korean victims started to raise their voices out from the silence. However, the private level of compensation could not be sourced out because of the American domestic law deadline. Lately, mobilized Korean victims of Agent Oranges tried to demand the state of direct compensation to the victims with the 270 signatures of parliament members in Korea to represent the government position, instead of the Ministry of Justice who officially did not give its signature. The American government insisted that compensation could only be through the government-to-government level.

The reason why the victims have been so passive in demanding for compensation was that their voices were so strictly controlled and justified by participating in good will war for democracy. Korea is one rare case that there is no anti-Vietnam war campaign partly because of the strict cold war ideology control through the authoritarian government and partly because of the overwhelming concern with domestic resistances for democratisation. While solidarity had been built between the Japanese progressive movements camp and the American progressive anti-Vietnam war campaign, there were no alliances built with the Korean progressive side. During 1960s, students' movements were targeted against the Korea-Japan treaty including the full basket colonial compensation.

After raising the comfort women issue, the progressives turned to deal with the peace keeping and peace making discourse that eventually spilled over the different progressive movements. The citizen's active involvement in accusing the criminalities of war such as the civilian massacre done by soldiers was surfaced. The cases of the April 3rd civilian massacre done by U.S military regime just before the Korean war; the No Keun Ri (The name of S. Korean village) massacre done by American soldiers during Korean war were debunked by innocent citizens' - some times journalists, other times students or villagers - personal efforts. The citizens' involvement in criminalizing the civilian massacre went beyond the national boundary or the so-called nationalist patriotism, easily co-opted by the fascist regime.

The reason why those issues had been silenced was explained as follows:

The 4.3 (April 3rd) Event and its violent closure in a massacre pre-figured the Korean War in 1950. The ideological battle of the cold war ended in a stalemate with the loss of millions of lives. Although the Cold War has ended, anti-communist ideology continues to dominate state politics in South Korea and has effectively silenced much of the memory of the 4.3 Event. Since the end of World War II, it could be said that Koreans have lived under the 'state of emergency' for national unity and identity. The profound sense of emergency has served to justify state violence in the separate regimes of South and North Korea. As it is described as ' a microscope on the politics of post war Korea', the 4.3 Event remains stigmatised as a primal scene in the acceleration of Korean modernity, which is closely related to the political violence of the state (ibid).

For example, No Keun Ri and April 3rd massacre issues could not get worldwide attention if the American ordinary citizens did not detect it. So criminalizing the civilian massacre and civilian monitoring of military activities during the war under the standards of human rights by the war initiating countries citizens was the new possibilities to build citizens' alliances for not only for peace keeping but also peace making. In Korea, a possibility has appeared in this war crime discourse by accusing the civilian massacre done by Korean soldiers during the Vietnamese war. A young student who studied in Ho Chi Min University devoted her time and energy in digging out the civilian massacre done by Korean soldiers. Her innocent eyes showed war crimes that will give shock to the ordinary Korean citizens who believed in the good will of Korean soldiers' involvement in the Vietnamese war.

An American citizen discovered the No keun Ri civilian massacre while a Korean student discovered the Vietnamese civilian massacre done by Korean soldiers. The comfort women's issues got the attention among Japanese citizens who were willing to do civilian compensation on behalf of the Japanese state level negligence of dealing with these thorny issues.

The new possibilities came again from the common campaigns for relocation of U.S Army base both in Korea and in Japan. The civilian resistances came from the rape case committed by American soldiers, which seriously violated universal human right issues. In Okinawa, the case of a girl raped by four American soldiers on her way back home from the school in 1995, triggered the repressed anger of Okinawa citizens to actively participation in the relocation campaign of the US military base which accounted for 58 civilian atrocities cases from 1972 to1998. More than 85,000 inhabitants gathered to campaign for the relocation of the American military base in those days. They proceeded to request the correction of unequal agreement of SOFA, which has spilled over to Korean citizens who became conscious of the American post colonial rule after 1980 Kwangjoo uprising.

The rape cases done by the American soldiers were bases to build alliances on universal standards of human rights and human security of women. It has been a worldwide concern especially after the 1995 International Women's Conference in Beijing.

Citizens' solidarity building had been stimulated by the arrogance of the US military bases, which were allowed as free zones that goes beyond environment protection and human rights standards. The tolerance towards the US military base was mainly because of its role in peace keeping during the cold war period. However, the citizens later seriously questioned their presences. The questioning came firstly from the citizens influenced by the universal discourse taught in school and then through the local government who joined in the questioning. In Okinawa, Seoul, and Taegu where the American military bases are, the representatives of the local communities started to strongly demand the relocation of these bases to protect the local inhabitants' security.

One remarkable possibility to intervene in the state order, built from the colonial legacies and the cold war remnants, was working through the local government or through non-governmental organizations with the practise of peoples' participatory democracy.

2. State versus Civil Society

In contrast with the European NGOs and civil society, Asian civil society's intervention was slow in the disarmament and peace keeping issues, partly because of the Confucian tradition of giving priority to the state decision-making right and partly because of US policy in the Northeast Asian region. The state tries to prevent any disturbance of the law and order through the tightening of surveillance, control, and punishment.

While the differentiation of state and civil society has been accelerated in the western world through the NGOs voices and involvement in international conferences and summits, it is still very difficult to find NGOs to intervene into the peace making issues in regional or cross border level.

In China, there are no NGOs differentiated from the state. In Korea, many of the NGOs are involved in domestic democratisation and civil society building. Major NGOs such as CCEJ (economic justice), PSPD (People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy), KFEM (environment movements), and KWAU (Korean Women's Associations United), which were established from the anti-dictatorship to the democratisation movements, cannot deal with the post cold war peace making issues starting from disarmament. In Japan where the right of national militarisation had been suspended after the World War II, militarisation is now regarded as the restoration of the sovereignty as an independent nation state. This resulted in the transformation of a peace constitution, without much disputes even from the opposition party and the civil society, which gave Japan a position in peace keeping and peace making in the Northeast Asia region.

The keen interest on security based on the standards of universal human rights and human security made a new differentiation between the state and the civil society. Especially from the victims' point of view, the state level agreement, without reference to consensus building, is deemed unacceptable. Global networking among NGOs on human right issues is a way out from the tight state control and surveillance.

3. Traditions and Modern World System in Northeast Asia

We have only phased out the Cold War in East-West relations but not yet in the non-western world. No leader from a non-western world participated in disarmament talks in Geneva, even though 22 million people in poor lands have died in more than 120 conflicts since the Second World War. The main casualties of the Cold War were in the non-western world, yet this 80% of humanity was forgotten when peace was finally made between the east and the west. There is no forum today discussing issues of peace and disarmament in the non-western world.

Asia is sailing against the prevailing global winds of reduced military spending. While it went down by 37% globally during the 1987-1994 period, military spending in South Asia went up 12%. East Asia is even much higher. The total number of soldiers was reduced by 16% during the same period though it increased by eight percent in South Asia. While military holdings of combat aircraft, artillery, ships, and tanks went down by 14 % in the world, they went up by 43% in South Asia.

The Northeast - so-called Fareast area - came to have special historical background because of its distances from the western centre. The modern capitalist system that originated from the European expansionist process has allowed regional hegemony in this region. The direct western intervention has been started only after World War II with the US military rule.

This special geographical situation provided this region with special and exceptional take off in this modern world system, which allowed partial Japanese colonial rule instead of a western colonial rule. The regional hegemony has been replaced dramatically through external demand. The shift of hegemonic role in this region can be briefly abbreviated as follows (Table-1).

Before the Meiji Reformation (1868), the traditional regional cultural centre had been in China. Japan had been a receiving country via Korea of the Chinese civilizations such as letters, foods etc. though they assimilated them with their endogenous tradition. Those cultural dependencies did not necessarily lead to political economical dependency. Those relationships were similar with the Confucian hierarchy based on seniority within the family such as the protector and the protected. The Japanese was more prepared for openness through the Meiji reformation especially when it was confronted with the forced penetration into the modern world system by casual visits of westerners. China and Korea with their traditional dynasties, however, were more reluctant to modernization and westernisation.

After the victory of the China-Japan War and the Russia-Japan War, Japan was allowed to have colonies of its own followed by western imperialist empires. Japan had an expansionist policy that covered Korea, Taiwan through Manchu-China, South East Asia, and finally to Hawaii, until the nuclear bomb that ended the war against the US

After the World War II order, Japan was automatically under the US military rule. However, Korea was in an ironical situation after the war. US treated Korea as part of the Japanese Empire while ordinary Koreans welcomed the US military regime as the Salvation Army from the Japanese colonial rule that had been psychologically humiliating to the traditional Koreans' cultural pride as the older brother. The main reason why the Koreans' national liberation movements were so strong and persistent, which sometimes threatened the Japanese empire, comes was from the traditional cultural pride, especially from the Confucius Yangban culture.

However, the American interest was more in building alliances against the socialist camp in the northeast region covering South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan while the socialist camp was established in North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union. The World War II order was imposed from the external need and not from the regional needs. Building alliances between S. Korea and Japan under the umbrella of the US stimulated strong resistances from the South Koreans who are more antagonistic to Japan than to the US or other hegemonic countries.

The formation of an anti-communist bloc and of an anti-communist ideology effectively displaced the US imperialism question. The arrival of Post Cold War Era re-opened the political space for questioning. To secure its governing power, political regimes in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have formed alliance with the US to combat communist enemies. The effectiveness of the anti-communist fear did not allow the posing of the question of imperialism to the Big Brother.

During the Cold War period from 1945 to1989, the superficial peace keeping had been at the state level influenced by the existing world system order. However, in the civil society level, the pre-war psychology - anti-Japanese colonialism from the Koreans versus covert and overt racial discrimination towards Korean Japanese among the Japanese - had been predominant with the prolonged colonial relationships. For Koreans, Japanese did not pay for their war crime and colonial exploitation. Koreans were reminded of Japanese military invasion by their conservative history textbooks that deny the imperialist past and the invasion of other countries. The after-war compensation agreement between Japan and the Korean military regime, which came out through the military coup and that lacked legitimacy and civil society consensus building, was driven by international acknowledgement.

To establish the Post Cold War order, the US wanted to explore a partnership to save on their military expenditure in the region. They invited Japan as a close guardian to keep peace in this region, especially preparing for the tension management between Taiwan and China, and South Korea and China. A new policy guideline was adopted in this region at the end of 20th century in preparation for the new millennium peace keeping. The intention of the US for the Asia Pacific region's stability was focused on "Trialogue" among US, Japan, and China. Briefly, the contents of the "Trialogues" is as follows:

• Japan, PRC (People's Republic of China), and the US all face regional and global challenges such as the Asian financial crisis and the proliferation of long-range missiles and weapons. These challenges underscore the importance of regional and trilateral dialogues, consultations, and coordination. Global changes resulting from the increased flow of information and capital across national borders, the emerging and contradictory influences of non-state actors at the local and international level, and the difficulties of reconciling the constraints of domestic political imperatives with the responsibilities of international leadership also require trilateral coordination.
• Developments resulting from the Asian financial crisis and the exchange of the summit visits between American and Chinese political leaders point out the need.
• (Table-1) The changes of centre-periphery relationships in Northeast Asia issue will continue to surface as a critical Beijing's agenda with Tokyo and to substantially improve Sino-Japanese relations, the weakest leg of the US-PRC-Japan triangle, through more intensive consultations, active back briefing, and transparency surrounding high-level bilateral meetings.
• Management of cross-strait tensions continues to be a central policy concern of
  Washington - both in the context of clarifying and containing the future direction of the US-Japan relationship and as part of competition between Beijing and Taipei for international support and recognition.
• The tensions over Korean peninsula and the South Asian Nuclear tests may provide opportunities for multilateral cooperation among the US, China and Japan, but the
  sensitivity of these issues may also limit the productiveness of coordinated action. Long-term objectives for the multilateral cooperation among the US, China and Japan regarding the Korean Peninsula may conflict.

Challenges of the Post Cold-War leadership that includes the Asian financial crises, enhanced trilateral cooperation, trilateral cooperation and regional security issues, and the Sino-Japanese Dialogue. - Conclusion: Psychology of Trilateral Relations

4. Colonial Legacies, Cold War Remnants and the Club 51 Syndrome

The general tendencies of Post Cold War order such as the people's involvement in peace making issues; growing interest in human rights based on global standard instead of nation-state based economic competition; the transformation of the concept of human security from national security based on militarisation - have not spilled over Northeast Asian region.

The Post Cold War order has been characterized by economic liberalization, so-called globalisation which have emphasized the positive side of that process such as 'global dreams' which gives the images of 'world citizen and world universal culture". After term globalisation was in fashion, positive aspects towards foreign capital have been exaggerated. Another positive aspect that has been nurtured under globalisation was the image with which nation state barrier will be weakened and everybody can cross the national boundary very easily. This type of new image emphasizes the cultural universalism.

The more concrete cases on the process of globalisation are regional integration such as the European Union, NAFTA, and APEC. The European Union became the most advanced model among the regional integration cases in its level of cooperation and integration.

However, in this region, the concern about national territory became more and more pivotal especially the bilateral fishery agreement between China and Japan, Korea and Japan, and Korea and China. The contested discourse about the belongings of Dok Do between Korea and Japan is a reminder of the colonial invasion in this region. Unlike Germany that initiated World War II, Japan lost the chance to build trust within this region by belonging to the US military and economic umbrella.

In contrast with the other region's integration and cooperation, the Northeast Asian Region is still in the Cold War period. The Cold War tension between Taiwan and China, and between South Korea and North Korea is alive and complicated with the colonial legacies of anti-Japanese hegemony in this region. The bilateral relationship under the protective umbrella of US nuclearisation cannot contribute to the disarmament in this region.

After the transformation of the peace constitution in 1997, fascistic sentiment towards armament of Japan has been restored, which stimulate and justify the increased expenditure in armament in this region.

Heavy militarisation in the state level and the Club 51 syndrome in the personal level characterize the East Asian Region. The Club 51 syndrome was borrowed by a keen observation of a Taiwanese scholar who started to analyse the appearance of Club 51.

In the middle of 1996, the letter regarding the missile crisis across the Taiwan Strait, "An open letter to the Social Elite", reached the Tsing Hwa University mailbox. The letter, signed by Club 51, called for "Statehood for Taiwan. Save Taiwan. Say yes to America". When the two-state special relation controversy broke out in the early 1999, Club 51 was on the forefront protesting at the American Institute in Taiwan - that is equivalent to an Embassy. The seven-page letter made the readers feel that it was in support of the U.S intervention in the Taiwan Strait to counter the PRC attack. (Kuan-Hsing Chen, 2000:1) Acting under the shadow of Hong Kong's return to China in 1997 and at the same time evoking the nasty communist devil image constructed historically, the Club proposes to the Taiwanese elite not to immigrate to other places on an individual bases and in a selfish way, but to do it together - change the nationality and citizenship here and now so that one does not have to leave home. As it states in the later part of the letter "once Taiwan becomes a state of the US, and Taiwanese do not have to migrate to other places throughout the world where they become the minority of minorities in local societies

The letter begins with an attempt to bring out the mood of insecurity produced by the military threat. Based on the logic of fear, the threat of military forces will lead to war that result to destruction of life and accumulated wealth. Hence, the need for guaranteed protection mechanism, that is, to be part of US The major argument of Club 51 is based on "radical plural opportunism", which would capture any possible opportunity on plural fronts. Operating within a largely right-wing political society, without the density of critical forces to be able to propose radical alternatives, such position has been practiced in politics and in business, even in the so-called civil society or NGO groupings. In this sense, instead of epocal claim of the decline of the nation state, the Club 51 posits the possibility of the identification with a big strong state in all senses and imagery - symbolic and real.

To be sure, "the Club 51 can best be understood not so much as a unique Taiwanese experience but as an instance of structural configuration in the post World War II US hegemony throughout the world, particularly its cultural infiltrations in the East Asia, and now reconfigured into the globalisation context, within which the notion of nation state takes on a different meaning and when national sovereignty can no longer do its old function. (Kwan-Hsing Chen, 2000: 3-5)

Through 20th century, the two most critical forces that shape local and national cultural formation in the East Asia region were the Japanese colonialism in the first half of the century and US neo-imperialism in the second. While literature on historical experiences of the Japanese colonialism has been abundant, studies on US imperialism and its cultural impacts in East Asia seem to be relatively absent.

Most current studies of imperial and post-colonial culture, however, tend to omit discussions of the US as an imperial power. The history of American imperialism strains the definition of the post-colonial that implies a temporal development that relies heavily on the special coordinates of European empires in their formal acquisition of territories and the subsequent history of de-colonization and national independence. How would this Euro-centric notion of post-colonialism apply to the history of American imperialism, which often does not fit this model? There is an epistemological break between Euro-centrism and American-centrism. In the era of American hegemony, the issue of imperialism gets dissolved.

Historically, as a dominant cultural imagery, "America has never been outside Asia just as Asia has never been outside America ever since mid-19th century. Japan was opened by the US state in 1858 through the port treaty system. The seemingly light impact through economic and political forces cannot be understated. By the 1930s, America had become a constitutive element in Japan identity. The shocking passage uttered in Takanobu Murobuses's 1929 America, recently cited by Shunya Yoshimi, testifies to this point: Where could you find Japan not Americanized? How could Japan exist without America? And where could we escape from Americanization? I dare to even declare that America has become the world; Japan is nothing but America today.

Obviously, the rise of the US as a global power after the WW I was not only felt in the imperial centre in East Asia but also in the European empires and colonies. As a new colonial power, the US's strategy of " self-determination" to move into already partitioned territories proved to be effective not only in competition with the established imperial power but also in winning over the collaboration of colonized nationalist subjects.

The defeat of Japanese imperialism after WWII was immediately replaced by the US. In the context of Korea, as Bruce Cummings puts it, Americans found that they had to use the Japanese system of recruitment for the bureaucracy. Even such a quintessentially American institution such as a free election had to be conducted in 1946 according to colonial rules and procedures. Whether it was in the military, the bureaucracy, or polity, the Americans during the occupation found themselves playing midwife to a Japanese gestation rather than bringing forth their own Korean progeny.

From the Cummings analysis, one can find that there seems to exist a genealogical handover from the Japanese to the US imperialism throughout the East Asia region. After the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bomb incident, the Japanese nation state has been living under the permanent shadow of the US and, South Korea and Taiwan have been hailed as loyal allies. The PRC, which was never directly under the US influence, saw the US as the negative order - the representative of the West. Since the 1950's, America has become an " inside outsider" or an "outside insider" against which slices of national identity and fragments of cultural subjectivity have been formed.

5. The Post Cold War Period World Order

After the cold war period, more universal values have been emphasized such as human right and human security with appropriate eco-level re-balancing. The concept of human right as the paper tiger in the U.N declaration has been revived in memory of the 50th anniversary of 1948 U.N.'s declaration of human rights.

The United Nations developed and perfected many of its peace keeping techniques during the onset of the cold war immediately after the birth of the UN Whenever conflict broke out between nations, the first order of business was to arrange zones of peace, and to initiate a dispute-settlement mechanism. The Security Council powers were often invoked under Article VII to impose an embargo against an aggressor nation, particularly on arms shipments and on some forms of trade. Conventions and treaties covered all phases of war between nations prohibiting biological warfare, censuring bombardment of civilians, and ensuring humane treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva convention. Most of real action was in the Security Council. National security gets more attention in the UN corridors. The human security is largely ignored.

The end of the cold war caught the U.N off guard. It has not yet recognized that most conflicts are now within nations and not between them. Nor has it accepted that these people-centered conflicts require a new concept of people-centered security. But the secretary general of UN made an eloquent reference to the issue of human security in a 1994 speech to the Preparatory Committee of the World Summit for Social Development: "The summit is a time to respond to the new imperatives of human security all over the globe. Human security can no longer fight battles of tomorrow with the weapons of yesterday."

The self-conscious efforts of peace keeping and peace making at the level of ordinary citizen under the umbrella of the NGOs have appeared especially in the western hemisphere. The reason why many NGOs began to make voices was related with issues of the representation of the people of the world. It is interesting to recall that the UN was created in the name of the people and its preamble starts with the stirring words," We, the people....." Yet in practice, it has become only an interstate agency, with the voice of the people only faintly represented through invitations to NGOs for periodic U.N conferences and summits.

The major concerns of western NGOs that have covered international level can be summarized within the concept of peace, human right, and eco-balance. International movements like the Clean Cloth Campaign (CCC) are proposing a Code of Conduct to regulate the transnational corporate sector. An international campaign opposing the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) has shown the capacity of the international civil society to mobilize opinion.

Paralleled with the rising concern on human right, the humanitarian intervention can be justified even when it violate the sovereignty right. The nation state had to change from a economic-oriented order into applying humanitarian and eco-balance standard. The under or undeveloped countries could be intervened following the rule of advanced or core countries in human right level and eco-balance level, which became to be a normative world order.

The so-called good cause intervention stimulated the nationalistic resistances. For instance, NATO bombed Serbia to punish Miloshovich in the name of human rights and democracy. However, it left the Albanian Kosovo unprotected, and hence, not at all in support of their human rights and human security.

The over emphasis on the universal criteria of human right paralleled with the same level of emphasis on universal market is to give the other side justification of fascist nationalism and religious fundamentalism.

The recent U.N interventions in trouble spots around the world such as Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, betray this lack of adjustment to the new realities. Soldiers in blue berets are being sent to countries that cry out for socio-economic reforms. External intervention is being organized in situations that can be handled only through domestic action. After all, who are the combatants in Somalia and Rwanda? Who are punished with embargoes? Who are the U.N soldiers dispatched? When people fight within a nation, it is radically different situation from when nations fight. Yet UN is applying to these new situations the same peace keeping method it applied to conflicts between nations. (Mahbubul-Haq, Human rights - Security, and Governance, pp 3-6).

Some developing countries worry that human security might be used as an excuse for the UN to intervene in domestic crises. This anxiety stems from a misunderstanding, for it is the present system that is interventionist, with a handful of powerful nations in the Security Council deciding where to intervene and how. Soldiers are sent to police socio-economic conflicts between people and between ethnic groups. It would be far less interventionist to send development workers, rather than soldiers, to poor lands according to agreed rules of the game - in place of the present ad hoc system - and to make decisions in a Human Security Council that could represent developing countries far more adequately than the present Security Council.

New guidelines must be prepared on where the U.N should intervene, with what objectives, and for how long. U.N intervention can be helpful mainly in preventive measures before situations deteriorate. What the U.N needs to send to countries is real development rather than soldiers, and it need to do this far enough upstream to prevent the eruption of an internal explosion. The international community must recognize that it cannot police internal conflicts - it can only hope to prevent them.

Under this new world order, if the particularistic use of humanitarian intervention in the name of universalism can easily take place, it can give full excuse of the revival of fascism and fundamentalism in defence of their own particularistic security. Unfortunately, the new justification of nuclear nationalism and fundamentalism in the level of nation state to get security has started. The South Asian resolution came up with nuclear nationalism. The North Asian strategy of securing security has been satired as Club 51 syndrome, which conceptualised ordinary citizens' desire to get security by becoming the US 51 statehood. (Kwan-Hsing Chen, 2000)

The other side of insecurities came from the commodification of human rights that can be found in the quick reactions of the financial markets to Kosovo and East Timor. The positive side of the neo liberal order is the promotion of democracy and human rights, human security and human development, as well as other civil values to the extent that they help to reduce the "country risks" in different undemocratic countries. This is the reason that a "new contitutionalism" is supported by the "industrial democracies". Generally, all forms of terrorism, illegal migration, and other factors of disturbance to the neo liberal order are made the object of tight surveillance, control, and punishment. (Mushakoji, 2000)

6. Re-imagining Human Security in Northeast Asia

The people's insecurity is one of the basic characteristics of the present global age. It is a consequence of the "New Colonial Global Order". The global colonial order is composed by one single "security communities" in the global North which includes a complex network of interacting fragmented "security communities", and a network of interacting fragmented "security communities" in the global South. The present global political economy thus generates in the North various sources of insecurity within the "security". It also generates insecurities between security communities in the South. This is why the new global colonial order has developed the concept of "global governance".

The efforts of the hegemonic security system to shape, respond, and prepare for any threat to the security of the New Cononial Security Order is simply a "match/pump" Operation. (Mushakoji, 2000) In this post cold war order, the emphasis on human right led to the conscious emphasis of human security. The growing consciousness of human security in the level of ordinary citizens result in more militarisation on the one hand, and de-construction of the concept of human security towards security of people and not just territory, security of individuals and not just nations, security through development and not through arms, and security of all the people everywhere - in their homes, jobs, streets, communities, and environment.

East Asia, still under cold war remnants complicated with colonial legacies, has secured its security through militarisation in the state level and the Club 51 syndrome in the personal level.

In this region that increased military expenditure after the cold war, it is sometimes argued that military expenditure is vital for national security, that development is useless if a country loses its independence to external aggression. No one will deny genuine needs of national security. The trouble will arise when there is a serious imbalance between national and human security. We have seen that in the 1980s, the military to social spending ratio was the highest in Iraq (8:1), Somalia (5:1), and Nicaragua (3.5:1), and yet these three countries could not protect their national security or the national sovereignty of their people.

On the other hand Costa Rica spent nothing on its military, having abolished its army in 1948, and spend one-third of its national income on education, nutrition, and health. It is the only prosperous democracy in a troubled Central America. In the General Assembly of U.N, there are two nuclear states that are not recognized by the existing nuclear states, India and Pakistan. Their challenge to the Non-Proliferation Treaty is a welcome reminder to the World of inequality built into this convention. Their nuclear armament increases rather the human insecurity.

Thus, there is a need to build human security not of the rich nor imposed by the outside powers, but human security of the most vulnerable peoples - gender-wise, class-wise, and in ethnic terms. Human security that is the concern of each security community is a cause for conflict when the communities see in each other threats to their human security. This is why security governance should be based on "common security" and "common human security" between the different security communities.

A common front based on shared interests in not being commodified, exploited, or excluded and is built on shared values of democratization, human right, and, human security and human development. Such common fronts require trade unions and civil movements to join hands with all the peoples' movements victimized by the neo liberal order, the feminist movements, the movements of the "poor", the indigenous peoples' movements, the movements against the Dhalit, Buraku and other status discrimination, the migrant workers movements, the ethnic self-determination movements, the religious minority movements, and other movements of the excluded peoples. It has to be based on an ethical resolution to change the course of history towards a more just and equitable world. Human rights, human security, and human development should be unambiguously interpreted "for the last child walking on this earth" as Ghadiji has stated.

References

Chua Beng Huat (ed). Pattern of Consumption of Asia New Rich. Routledge.

Commings, Bruce. "The Legacy of Japanese Colonialism in Korea" in Peter Duus et al (eds). 1984.

Gill, Stephan & James Mittelman (eds). Innovation and Transformation in International Studies, Cambridge University Press. 1997.

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Prof. Lee Jung Ok
Co-Representative, Korean House for International Solidarity
Professor, Department of Sociology, Hyosung Catholic University
Executive Board Member, Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives
E-mail : jolee@cuth.cataegu.ac.kr
Tel: 82-53-850-3215
H.P. 82-16-417-9180
Fax: 82-42-482-9181