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Korean students organizing themselves under the name Student Action for Peace protest Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza outside the US Embassy in Seoul on May 10, 2024, and decry the crackdown on protesters on US campuses. (Kim Young-won/The Hankyoreh)

“The students of South Korea stand in solidarity! No war! We call for peace!”

“Stop the violent crackdowns on student protests worldwide!”
 
Members of the Student Action for Peace, a coalition of 14 student associations, gathered outside the US Embassy in Seoul’s Jongno District on Friday morning to demand that Israel end its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and to condemn the US government’s aid to Israel and crackdowns on anti-war protests.
 

Students organizing themselves under the name Student Action for Peace write messages of solidarity on a banner during their rally outside the US Embassy in Seoul on May 10, 2024. (Kim Young-won/The Hankyoreh)

Korean students organizing themselves under the name Student Action for Peace protest Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza outside the US Embassy in Seoul on May 10, 2024, and decry the crackdown on protesters on US campuses. (Kim Young-won/The Hankyoreh)

Before the press conference, the students wrote words of solidarity on a banner that sported an illustration of a tent in the colors of the Palestinian flag. The placards and banners set up by the students caught the eyes of many international tourists walking around Gwanghwamun Square.
 
Many took out their smartphones to snap pictures of the boards that read “Stop Funding Genocide” and “Stop Crackdown on Campus” in English. With the US flag soaring in the air behind them, the students decried the ongoing war.
 
Park Jun-sung, a member of Dongguk University’s history club Sadari, said, “Even now, as we participate in this press conference, there are many women, children and minorities who are suffering because of war. While the US claims to be the world’s police, it is doing nothing to stop the war. In fact, it is aiding and abetting Israel by funding it.”

Korean students organizing themselves under the name Student Action for Peace protest Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza outside the US Embassy in Seoul on May 10, 2024, and decry the crackdown on protesters on US campuses. (Kim Young-won/The Hankyoreh)

 
Park Se-hee, the head of the Seoul Women’s University branch of the Network for Progressive Students, said, “The US police are leading violent crackdowns on anti-war protests at universities, which began in New York’s Columbia University. The police are trying to silence students who condemn wartime genocide with yet more violence.”
 
In a written statement for the press conference, which was translated into three languages, the coalition declared, “Scars remaining from war still carry on into our modern history, as can be seen in the Japanese military sex slave issue, forced labor during Japanese colonial rule, the indiscriminate killing of civilians during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the May 18 Democratic Uprising.”

A passing tourist pauses and takes a photo of the protest outside the US Embassy. 

 
“Korean university students stand in solidarity with American students and support the anti-war protests spreading around the world. We, as students of a country that wishes to live in a world without war crimes, stand in solidarity.”
 
“Korean university students stand in solidarity with American students, support the anti-war protests that are spreading around the world, and stand in solidarity as university students of one nation who want to build a world without war crimes,” they continued.

Korean students organizing themselves under the name Student Action for Peace protest Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza outside the US Embassy in Seoul on May 10, 2024, and decry the crackdown on protesters on US campuses. (Kim Young-won/The Hankyoreh)

Student Action for Peace is made up of student organizations including the Peace Nabi Network, Seoul Women’s University’s radical feminist group Rhino Horn, Ewha Womans University Student & Minority Rights Committee, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies’ student-run library, Sookmyung Women’s University’s Amnesty club, and Korea University Student’s Association for Minority Human Rights. 
 
By Kim Young-won, staff reporter

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