A Statement on the July 27 Armistice Day
My dear folks,
It has been a long time. It seems almost like an eternity, spanning as it has a lifetime from the cradle to the eternal resting place. Yes, it is really hard to believe that fifty-seven years have passed since the armistice to the tragic Korean War was signed at Panmunjom.
I still vividly remember that day under the scorching sun in the summer of 1953, when the multitudes hit the streets in joyous celebration of the historical event, seemingly promising an eventual day of a full peace agreement. The people filled the streets dancing and waving national flags. It was a jubilant street scene etched in my memory.
But here today under the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial we gather as a people still bound in the fear of war on the Korean peninsula. Fifty-seven long years after that joyful day, the sword of Damocles hangs heavy overhead in the skies of our fatherland. We the rightful and blessed Americans of Korean descent are gathered here together to express our thanks to the Korean War veterans.
At the same time, we, the Americans of Korean posterity and the American general public, for that matter, are gathered here to make it known to the world that we want no more war on the Korean Peninsula, that we urge all of the Americans and citizens of the world to come out of the cocoon of antagonism shaped under the pretext of ideological difference and to work together to rebuild a relationship of reconciliation and harmony between the North and South and to bring down the wall dividing our fatherland into two for so long. No nation in the history of humanity has been kept divided this long.
It is very simple, that is to say it’s not difficult at all, to achieve that goal. All we need to do is to support the principles of peace as manifested in the June 15 Declaration.
When Korea was liberated from the yoke of Imperial Japan’s colonial rule in 1945 thanks to the victory of allied forces, our fathers brought to the Korean Peninsula a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are free and entitled to enjoy happiness in life.
Tragically, almost two generations after the truce pact was signed we Koreans and Korean-Americans are not free from the fear of another war. We are still sadly crippled by the manacles of war and the chains of war games. Fifty seven years after the Armistice, we live on a lonely island of unreason in the midst of a vast ocean of peace and welfare.
Sixty years is regarded as a life cycle in the Confucian value system and we pay high respect to those who have passed the cycle. With only three years now remaining before that value cycle since the Armistice, we are still languishing in the corners of the earth and we find ourselves as exiles in our own globe. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
The world order is under the rule of a world power, and America is a world power, second to none. America is a great nation, for this nation gave birth to such great Americans as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr, who all represented and worked on the principles of reconciliation, harmony and peace.
Now it is about time for America to initiate a peace agreement and bring an end to the terror of war suffered by people in both the North and South. It will come as a great beacon light of hope to the tens of millions of people who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It will come as a joyous daybreak to the Korean people to end the long night of their captivity in the shadow of war on the Korean peninsula and the rest of the world, the brethren of the same great old nation of Koguryo whose territorial boundaries extended as far as North-Central Asia. Thank you.
Harry “Truman” Lee
Editor-in-Chief
US News
600 Light St, Suite 305, Baltimore, MD 21230
Phone 410-900-3900
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