Portside

As Trump faces down North Korea, it’s alarming to think that most of the world’s nuclear warheads are now in the hands of men who are prepared to use them. We do know that Donald Trump has been obsessed since the 80s with nuclear weapons, that he refuses to take advice from military professionals and that he seems not to understand the core NATO concept of nukes as a political deterrent, as opposed to a military super weapon.

Attacking North Korea now would undermine the very reason U.S. troops have been stationed on the peninsula for seven decades: to protect the South Korean people.

U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis recently made the Trump administration’s first overseas trip. His destination: South Korea and Japan. In South Korea, Mattis’ first stop, women demanding genuine human security are at the forefront of the resistance.

With the American public's limited attention span for international affairs tied up by fears of ISIS (also known as Daesh), intractable wars in the Middle East and unease about Putin's Russia, Obama's much-touted Asia-Pacific pivot frequently gets third or fourth billing on the foreign policy marquee.

As a Korean American whose parents were born in an undivided Korea, I care deeply about whether my adopted country - which drew the line in Korea, led the Korean War and signed the Armistice Agreement, and to this day militarily enforces the division - takes the just course of action to bring the Korean War to a final resolution.

Speech delivered as a part of Women Cross the DMZ events at the Women's Peace Symposium on May 26, 2015, in Seoul, Korea.

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Gloria Steinem was one of 30 women activists, including Nobel laureates Mairead Maguire and Leymah Gbowee, who crossed the demilitarized zone between the North and South on Sunday. Protesters say their campaign was naive. From May 19 to 25, a delegation of 30 women from 15 countries around the world will meet and walk with Korean women, north and south, to call for an end to the Korean War.

Not only has Japan failed to compensate the surviving comfort women, but Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has led a nationalist campaign to adamantly deny Japan’s shameful criminal past, has revised history textbooks that previously contained information about Japan’s military sex slaves and is also threatening to revise the Kono Statement.

Since 2007, activists have risked arrests, imprisonment, heavy fines and massive police force to resist the desecration caused as mega-corporations like Samsung and Daelim to build a base to accommodate U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines for their missions throughout Asia. The base fits the regional needs of the U.S. for a maritime military outpost that would enable it to continue developing its Asia Pivot strategy.