Throughout his three-day visit to South Korea, US President Joe Biden was met with protests from civic and student activists calling for peace on the Korean Peninsula.
According to reports, a group of students from the Korean University Progressive Union held an anti-Biden rally on Sunday near the US military base in Yongsan, where the President reportedly planned to meet with staff members from the American Embassy in Seoul.
“Leave this land, Biden, who escalates a war crisis on the Korean Peninsula,” the student activists chanted, raising on their hands the signs opposing joint military exercises and South Korea-US-Japan military alliance.
“From the day Biden arrived here, university students continued to shout anti-American voices. It reflects the desire of people. Nobody wants war in this land. Everybody wants peace,” a student said during the rally.
During Biden’s tour, student activists went after him at an air base where he arrived and departed for Japan, a hotel where he stayed, and the presidential office where he met with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol.
The police surrounded the student activists, raising the security of Biden’s visiting locations to the highest level.
According to local broadcaster YTN, one student was taken to the hospital after a scuffle with police officers who were obstructing the rally near the hotel where Biden allegedly stayed on Friday night.
On the eve of Biden’s visit to Seoul, representatives from 155 civic groups held a press conference on Friday, urging the South Korean government to pursue balanced diplomacy rather than lopsided diplomacy, which could lead to a new Cold War confrontation on the Korean Peninsula.
If South Korea joins the US-centered military alliance that excludes others, it will have a negative impact on the Korean Peninsula’s peace and denuclearization, while strengthened military cooperation among South Korea, the US, and Japan will tolerate rearmament and revived militarism in Japan, civic activists said.
They urged Yoon and Biden to put an end to war and confrontation and establish a new order of peace and coexistence.
The Korean Peninsula has been technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
On Friday, the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) held a candlelight vigil near Seoul’s Gwanghwamun square, urging Yoon and Biden to choose peace over military alliance and arms race.
On Saturday, about 100 peace activists from the PSPD and seven other civic groups held similar rallies near the presidential office in Yongsan, where the South Korean President relocated his office from the Blue House after taking office on May 10.
