Editor’s Note

The Asia Solidarity Quarterly has dealt with various topics and fields of NGO activities in Asian countries since the foundation of the journal, Summer in 2000. The topics that we dealt with include watch power, human rights, anti-corruption, the South and North Korea summit meeting and so forth.

This issue focuses on environmental issues which we drew comparatively less attention before. However, this issue highlights Korean NGO’s endeavours to preserve a Korean Tidal Flat, Saemangeum on the west coast of Korean peninsula. Actually, hundreds of thousands of people in Korea came to be interested in preservation of tidal flat due to ‘Save our Saemangeum Wetlands Campaign.’ As a result, majority of civil organisations and people throughout the country actively participated in the campaign, too. In addition to the nationwide campaigns to save Saemangeum, these campaigns achieved firm cooperation and solidarity internationally. A lot of environmental organisations all over the world strongly extended their support to save Samangeum, and many of them actively participated in the campaigns flying to this country.

Kim Choony’s report, “Save Our Saemangeum Wetlands Campaign”, gives us not only overall mapping of environmental movements in Korea but the detailed activities on preserving the Wetlands in Korea. I hope you can find out examples of significant activities in this article, which enable you to understand what’s going on concerning environmental organisations in Korea. In the meantime, Nial Moore’s article, “Towards Conserving our Shared Natural Heritage: Wetlands and Birds”, widens our perspective on why we should save Samangeum Wetlands. He visited Korea and participated in Save our Saemangeum Wetlands Campaign. His article illustrates how international cooperation could be achieved particularly on environmental issues. “Sediment Fauna, Fisheries Catches and Land Earning form the Korean Tidal Flat” by Prof. Koh Chul-Hwan gives theoretical approaches to the Korean Tidal Flat, which deserves close attention.

As Historical Clarification Series, we publish Dr. Kim Dong-choon’s article on state violence in the 20th century in Korea. He not only tries to show us the reality of state violence, but also endeavours to how to resolve the tragedy of the past. Prof. Hamm Taik-young’s timely paper “North-South Korean Reconciliation and Security on the Korean Peninsula” analyzes the circumstances after the inter-Korean summit and the relation between two Koreas and the United States.

The members of the editorial board are pleased to include special reports on two recent events; World Conference against Racism (WCAR) 2001, and International Criminal Court (ICC). Among the five delegation sent to the conference from Korea, we are introducing two reports presented at the conference. Ahead of two reports, readers will find Lee Seonghoon’s article describing his personal reflection attending the conference. Lee Yoon-ju’s report on migrant workers, which this journal has steadily dealt. Chang, Bok-Hee & Kim, Gi-Youn’s report deals with the rights of refugees in South Korea. On the ICC, Kim, Gee-Hong reports on International Criminal Court as a practicing attorney at law while suggesting its implication to Korean society.

To our graditude, Chirawatana Charoonpatarapong contributes a paper of introducing one of very important international NGO’s ‘Focus on the Global South’, headquartered in Thailand, of which you are well aware. And the last article is a report about the decision of the constitutional court on activities of ‘the Civil Action for the 2000 General Elections in Korea (CAGE)’, which were verdicted guilty. The activities of the CAGE were specially covered in the first issue of the ASQ (summer 2000), thus, this article might attract you attention.

Solely owing to contribution to the ASQ, domestically and internationally, we are able to deal with various issues apart from the special one on environment in this issue. On behalf of all the staffs of the ASQ I would like to thank both the contributors and readers. Next issue will cover exclusively on ‘Anti-War, and Peace Movements’ of the world. Therefore, I would like to ask you to contribute precious experiences and opinions on the issue. I am looking forward to receiving as many contributions as possible in the near future.

Thank you very much.

Jin Youngjong

Editor in Chief

(young@mail.skhu.ac.kr)