hankyoreh

KACE Executive Director

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

As one of its major goals for 2013, Korean American Civic Empowerment (KACE), an organization for Americans of Korean descent, has decided to urge the Obama administration to engage directly with North Korea to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula. KACE has already started seeking out help from congress.

Getting involved in the North Korean issue is unusual for KACE, which until now has directed its influence on Capitol Hill toward achieving greater rights for Korean Americans, such as visa waivers and immigration reform.

On Jan. 3 (local time), KACE began sending members of congress a document called the ‘Seven Pressing Policy Tasks for Korean Americans’. In addition to reforming immigration law and increasing the number of visas for professionals, the document also calls for the resumption of dialogue with the North to relax tensions on the Korean peninsula, an increased American role in responding to the actions of far-right political groups in Japan, and more support for reunions of separated Korean families.

KACE said, “We want to express our deep concern about America’s insufficient willingness to enter dialogue with North Korea about its development of nuclear weapons. The US’s decision to not negotiate with North Korea has ended up giving North Korea the time to strengthen its nuclear capabilities.”

“By asking China to exercise its political and economic influence in North Korea, the Obama administration has been complicit in the expansion of Chinese influence in Northeast Asia. We are asking Congress to take steps so that the US can work together with South Korea to reopen dialogue with the North,” the group said.

KACE was established in 1996, bringing together around 50,000 Korean American voters living in New York and New Jersey with the objective of expanding the political influence of Korean Americans and strengthening ties between the US and South Korea. It is regarded as perhaps the only Korean American organization with influence in Congress.

In 2007, KACE succeeded in leading a drive to pass the Comfort Women Resolution, which called for the Japanese government to apologize and offer compensation to those forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.

“There are a lot of Americans who aren’t able to tell North and South Korea apart,” KACE Executive Director Dong Suk Kim said about the organization’s motivations for getting involved in pushing for dialogue with the North.

“When incidents such as North Korea’s missile launch increase tensions on the Korean peninsula, American attitudes regarding Korean Americans worsen. Ultimately, Korean Americans are also victims of such events.”

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