1 year ago
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On Wednesday, President Joe Biden pledged to deploy nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in 40 years. Alongside South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol, Biden also pledged to involve officials from Seoul in nuclear planning operations targeting North Korea. The visit between the two leaders comes as the U.S. and South Korea mark 70 years of military alliance under 1953’s Mutual Defense Treaty, signed at the close of active conflict in the Korean War. No peace treaty was ever signed by the North and South Korean governments, meaning the two countries are still technically at war. We discuss continued tensions on the Korean Peninsula with Christine Ahn, founder and executive director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War, and the coordinator of the campaign Korea Peace Now! Ahn says the Korean War marked the dawn of the military-industrial complex and that ever-more militarization of the peninsula is not the answer. “There is momentum now to transform this state of war into a permanent peace,” she says.
