Hawaii delegation in Jeju, South Korea, can speak out for indigenous people there

Hoping to bring a large convention with its 7,000 members and attendees to Hawaii in 2016, a 39-member Hawaii delegation has been sent to attend the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s World Conservation Congress on Jeju, a beautiful island in South Korea about the size of Oahu.

They are probably unaware that a battle for saving delicate soft coral reefs and numerous endangered species is being waged just a few miles from the conference site.

This is because IUCN has denied requests from the villagers of Gangjeong to host an information booth at the convention, explaining what is happening there and asking for consideration.

Jeju Island has been named a UNESCO World Heritage site and has important environmental and cultural special status designations, and rightly so, for its unique coastline of a single massive bed rock, extremely pure fresh-water streams and many diverse endangered species.

Those include Korea’s last 100 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, which pass closest to Jeju off the coast where the village of Gangjeong is loca-ted.

Five years ago, in agreement with the U.S. to house Aegis destroyers in this strategic area, South Korea announced it would build a naval base at Gangjeong by artificially creating a harbor, dynamiting the Gureombi (a unique lava rock formation sacred to the residents) and plunging concrete caissons onto the reefs.

The new base construction by Samsung — a conglomerate with ties to the government — shuts out the fishermen, destroys livelihood, dooms endangered ocean habitat, and will subsume the village with military housing.

In response, the villagers have been protesting. There have been daily arrests, including priests, elders and farmers who see their sacred sites and land annihilated. For five years, they have been squatting on seized farmland, lying down in front of cement trucks, staging fasts, appealing to the world. But the South Korean government is controlling the story and not allowing the facts to be heard.

We hope that members of our Hawaii delegation will be sensitive to the voices of the indigenous people of Jeju and show respect for their host by taking the time, while there, to travel to the village of Gangjeong, only about 10 minutes away.

Gangjeong has an open invitation to the conventioneers with sacred sites and biosphere tours. Listen to the people.