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Novel laureate Maguire, female activists to lead peace march near DMZ
By YonhapPublished : May 23, 2018 - 15:41
Mairead Maguire, the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and dozens of other female activists from around the world will march toward the Demilitarized Zone this week in a campaign to call for lasting peace with North Korea.
"We demand the summit (between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un) to be held, not pass," the Nobel laureate from Northern Ireland said in a press conference for the DMZ event slated for Saturday.
"Why we demand the summit to be held is that the world needs peace, Korea needs peace and only the people working on building peace together with their political leaders can bring peace to Korea and our world," Maguire said.
The Saturday campaign will bring together Maguire, 30 female activists from 16 foreign countries and about 1,000 South Korean volunteers for a 5.5-kilometer march. It will start from Tongil Bridge, or the Bridge of Unification, the gateway to the DMZ, and head to Dorasan Peace Park, located closer to the DMZ.
Referring to the historic summit between President Moon Jae-in and Kim on April 27, Maguire said "Many people were deeply moved by this because we have been told for so long that they are enemies, they will be bombing each other and they want war.
"And what we witnessed with our own eyes was two men showing political leadership and saying to the world that there will be no war in Korea and we are working for peace," she noted.
"So we support Chairman Kim, President Moon and all they are doing to move Korean people and the world to unity of Koreans ... to a process toward a peace treaty after over 70 years of division," she also added. "Korea will surely be a light in a dark world which is crying out for peace."
In 2015, Maguire and about 30 foreign women's rights activists, including Gloria Steinem from the United States, crossed the inter-Korean border in a widely publicized trip from Pyongyang to Seoul as part of the "Women Cross DMZ" campaign, calling for measures for peace with the North.
This year, the organizers attempted to stage another march across the border, but the plan fell apart because of a US-imposed ban on American trips to North Korea, as well as the reluctance of North Korean women's groups.
Also wary of possibilities of any unexpected friction with the North, the South Korean government gave the activists a permission to travel to the off-limit areas only a few days before the Saturday event, the organizers noted.
During the press conference, the activists released a declaration for their march campaign that expressed their support for the Panmunjom Declaration adopted in April between Moon and Kim, as well as their hopes for successful talks between Kim and Trump.
The inter-Korean declaration proclaimed that there will be no hostilities between South and North Korea and that the countries' leaders will work toward forming a peace arrangement to replace their armistice. (Yonhap)
