How to Prevent a Coup: Lessons from Korea

The ongoing struggle for self-governance in South Korea has seen a powerful and significantly successful nonviolent movement act quickly and strategically to prevent martial law.

In some countries, such as the United States, people often watch others in distant places like Korea, Bolivia, Tunisia, Bangladesh, or Niger nonviolently turn back coups and dictatorships, even while the U.S. government steadily advances an unaccountable police state and no appropriate movement challenges these steps.

We'll hear voices from Korea on lessons from recent experience, and on the U.S. role in Korea, and take your questions.

Speakers:

Dae-Han Song is in charge of the Contents Team for the International Strategy Center (goisc.org/home), an organization in Korea focused on building bridges between social movements in Korea and those abroad. He is also a part of the No Cold War Collective and is an associate at the Korea Policy Institute. In 2007, he participated in Nodutdol’s DPRK Education and Exposure Program (DEEP).

Cathi Choi is the Executive Director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of activists mobilizing to end the Korean War, reunite families, and ensure feminist leadership in peacebuilding. She co-coordinates the Korea Peace Now! Grassroots Network, launched in 2019 to organize communities in calling for demilitarization and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.