Join Cathi Choi (Women Cross DMZ, Executive Director) and Arash Azizzada (Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, Co-Director) for a report back of WCDMZ's 10 Year Anniversary Korea Trek.

In addition to joining the historic women's peace march in Pyeongtaek, we:

Met with progressive South Korean National Assembly members in Seoul to discuss democracy and women’s peacebuilding in Korea, and the U.S. travel ban on North Korea;
Spoke with organizers at Pyeongtaek Peace Center about the legacy of villagers and farmers impacted by the expansion of the largest overseas U.S. military base, Camp Humphreys;
Visited organizers staging an encampment at Dongducheon’s “Monkey House” to prevent the destruction of this historic site, where the U.S. military and South Korean government forcibly detained and subjected thousands of Korean women to STD treatment in the 1960s and ‘70s;
Participated in a memorial at Jeju Island’s 4.3 Peace Park, recognizing the mass killings of over 30,000 Jeju civilians by U.S.-backed Korean forces in 1948-49;
Met with organizers resisting the South Korean naval base in Jeju Island’s Gangjeong Village due to its human and environmental impacts;
Joined BDS Korea at the “42nd Urgent Action by Korean Civil Society Condemning Israel’s Genocide in Gaza”; and
Met with organizers from Scarlet Cha Cha and Birch Tree Association in Yongjugol fighting for the basic social rights and livelihoods of sex workers resisting eviction, criminalization, and marginalization.

We saw glimmers of hope for what our future can look like. At every site, we learned how everyday people — especially women — are working to end the Korean War and reverse decades of harmful militarism. We met with leading organizers and communities caring for each other, investing in each others’ health, education, and well being. Our international delegation drew connections to their own struggles against U.S. militarism and forever wars in their respective homelands, from Afghanistan to Turtle Island.

We know that militarism and policing are not our only options; we deserve more from life.

Full recap here.

Cathi Choi (she/her) is the Executive Director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of activists mobilizing to end the Korean War, reunite families, and ensure feminist leadership in peacebuilding. She co-coordinates the Korea Peace Now! Grassroots Network, launched in 2019 to organize communities in calling for demilitarization and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. She obtained a JD from Harvard Law School. Previously, she worked at a civil rights law firm in Los Angeles, and clerked for Judge Denny Chin on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Prior to attending law school, she completed the Dual Degree International History Program at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and obtained her BA from Columbia University. She is the Program Committee Co-Chair for GYOPO, a collective of diasporic Korean cultural producers and arts professionals generating progressive, critical, intersectional, and intergenerational discourses, community alliances, and free educational programs. Her writing has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy In Focus, In These Times, Journal of Policy History, the Asian Pacific American Law Journal, Yes! Magazine, The Hill, and The National Interest. She has appeared on KPFK, NK News, Radio Korea, and WBAI Radio.

Arash Azizzada (he/him) is an immigrant, Afghan-American filmmaker and community organizer based in Los Angeles, California. He started his activism by leading voter registration campaigns for the Afghan-American community, translating voter guides into Dari and Pashto. While living in Washington, D.C., his work focused on ending the 20-year US-led occupation of Afghanistan and promoting the voices of women and other marginalized groups in Afghanistan as peace talks and reconciliation efforts took shape. Ahead of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, he co-founded Afghans for a Better Tomorrow (AFBT), spearheading evacuation and rapid response coordination efforts. Today, he leads the organization’s operations as its executive director to ensure Afghan newcomers can lead dignified lives. Arash also serves on the board of the Afghan Cultural Society based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is a 2003 Rockwood Leading from the Inside Out Fellow. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Vice News, The Washington Post, NPR and Netflix.

Women Cross DMZ 10-Year Anniversary Korea Trek Report Back