The extraordinary threat issued by Donald Trump to bring fire and fury on North Korea has been pushed into the background by the events of Charlottesville and the flooding of Houston. But the firing of Steve Bannon brought Korea back into focus. Blankfort and Ahn say that Bannon was not fired for his right- wing nationalism but because he objected to any use of force to resolve Washingtonâs conflict with North Korea and supported the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea as part of a deal to defuse the current crisis.
The great late folk singer and story teller Utah Phillips said that being drafted and stationed in Korea changed his life. He saw a country that had been utterly devastated - worse than any before or after. He told us how he became an activist at a meeting in the Unitarian Fellowship Hall in Berkeley in May of 2004.
Jeff Blankfort is a veteran, much traveled journalist and photographer. Since 2001, he has hosted Takes on the World, a twice monthly program on international affairs for KZYX public radio for Mendocino County in Northern California.
Blankfort studied history at UCLA in the 1950s, and was one of 14 students out of 14,000, who protested the Korean War. He recently did an in depth research on the origin of the war and invited Christine Ahn to be the guest on his program on August 23, 2017.
Christine Ahn is co-founder of the Korea Policy Institute (KPI), the National Campaign to End the Korean War and a columnist with the Institute for Policy Studies. She has appeared on Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Democracy Now!, NBCâs Today Show, NPR, and The Takeaway.
Thanks to Jeff Blankfort and KZYX for sharing part of the one hour program that can be found unedited on radio4all under Jeff Blankfort.
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