DEMOCRACY NOW
AMY GOODMAN: You recently went to Jeju Island. Now, most people who are listening have no idea where that is, but it’s in South Korea. You went there in August, World Heritage site, where the government wants to build a naval base to house a U.S. missile defense system close to China. Earlier this year, I spoke with one of those leading the fight against this base. Kang Dong-kyun is the mayor of Gangjeong, a village on Jeju Island in South Korea. Mayor Kang has been arrested many times. He spoke to us through a translator.
MAYOR KANG DONG-KYUN: [translated] The base that’s being build on Jeju Island will not only be used by the South Korean government, but the United States also will be using this base. According to the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and South Korea, the U.S. military base will also use this base. So if this base is completed, I worry that it will lead to another Cold War. So when President Obama meets with Chinese leaders, I hope they will discuss treating each other not through a contest of force, but through peaceful, diplomatic engagement. The major powers have to reduce their military budgets, and in order to do that, they should start by getting rid of military bases on geostrategic islands like Jeju and Okinawa. I hope the U.S. and Chinese governments can make a peace agreement to bring about global peace, resolve problems not through war, but through dialogue and mutual understanding, so that Jeju Islanders and people of the whole planet can live as dignified human beings in harmony with nature.
AMY GOODMAN: That is the mayor of a village on Jeju Island called Gangjeong. Mayor Kang has been arrested many times as he protests the U.S. base that will be built there. Now, why, Oliver Stone, did you go to Jeju Island?
OLIVER STONE: I was on a trip to Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Okinawa, in conjunction with Untold History and commemorating the site of the atomic bombs. So I went to South Korea in addition, because it’s part of the same problem. The United States’s ax—pivot to Asia involves going—once again going back into our Asian positions, which we never gave up after World War II. We held onto Japan, and eventually South Korea, and we armed these countries to the teeth. Now we’ve armed the Philippines. We’ve armed—we’ve made an alliance with Vietnam. Taiwan, we armed with the most sophisticated stealth fighters we have, subs, everything. And Australia—we have troops in Australia. We’re ringing the Chinese border, as we have rung around—have now put NATO bases around Russia. It’s part of our global expansion, and we—to control the world.
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