Glenn Paige

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G:        I, uh, my name is Glenn Paige.  I was born in Brompton, Massachusetts. I’m 82 years old. I, uh, went to Rochester High School in New Hampshire and Phillips Exeter Academy and to Princeton University, Harvard and later Northwestern for a PhD.

I:          Um hm.

G:        And, uh, as far as family goes,

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my father was a YMCA social secretary and, uh, uh, and, uh, also I’m, uh, part of my family are, uh, Portuguese immigrants from the Azores who came to Massachusetts.

I:          Um hm.

G:        So I have, uh, whaling, uh, sea men, uh, uh, Coast Guard, Lifeguard workers [INAUDIBLE] on my side

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and, uh, I, I that’s on my mom’s side.  My father’s side have, uh, teachers.

I:          Um hm.

G:        and high school teachers and, and, uh, uh grammar school teachers.  My grandmother taught the first and second grade in the same room for 44 years in northeastern Massachusetts.

I:          Massachusetts.

G:        Yeah.

I:          So you’re coming from the,

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um, the education family, family of education.

G:        Well, yeah, I. It’s, it’s, it’s, uh, yes.  T, two, two sides let me think.  One is, uh, actually three sides.  One is, uh, Social Service, the YMCA secretary is working for, uh, young men and young women sports clubs

I:          Um hm.

G:        and summer camps and, uh, Thanksgiving, uh, baskets and things like that, and on the teacher’s side,

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they were reading books to me as a child and so forth and the third side is, is, uh, to, to be, um, having a sense of not, in terms of ethnicity is being part Portuguese. The origin of, I entered, uh, Princeton University as a freshman in 1947.

I:          Um hm.

G:        In 1948, I was there one year

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dropped out, and I joined the Army, and I spent four years in the Army.  During that time, it took me to Korea in 1950 to ’52, and, uh, in 1952 I went back to Korea.  I wrote the Dean of Students from a pup tent in Korea and said, uh, I’m ready to come back. He says alright, come back, and I graduate d in 1955.  So, uh,

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I’ve been inspired by a, uh, a very, uh, creative, uh, pol, politics professor at Princeton, Richard C. Snyder.  He was the pioneer in decision making policies,

I:          Making, yes.

G:        how to introduce, uh, decision, analysis of decisions, uh, to understand international politics.

I:          Um hm.

G:        For him it wasn’t just economics or history or geography or

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balance of power and so forth.  The idea was if you want to understand why nations, uh, go to war, don’t go to war, or make various policies, you want to know who’s making those decisions.  So it’s usually 10 – 15 people and the, uh, so, as an undergraduate since I’d been in a war, he was my teacher.  So in 1952 and ’55, I wrote my Princeton, uh, thesis.

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Princeton requires, uh, every student to write a graduation thesis.  So I wrote it on the United States decision to resist aggression in the Korean War.

I:          Um.

G:        I used, uh, Professor Snyder’s decision making framework to guide me.

I:          When was it, 1950?

G:        1955.

I:          Five.

G:        Then I went to Harvard for two years, and I wanted to study the Korean language and, uh, I wanted to learn everything

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about Korea, and I, I studied Russian and Chinese at Princeton.

I:          Ah.

G:        They didn’t offer any Korea. Harvard didn’t, either.  So I went to Harvard for two years to study East Asian, uh, their Master’s program in East Asian.  So I studied Chinese, Japanese and, and, uh, and Korean at Harvard for two years.  Then I went to Northwestern for interdisciplinaryuh, degree in Political Science.

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Professor Snyder had moved from Princeton to Northwestern, was a Chair.  So I was very much interested in that.  He was the one that advised me.  You could combine your area interest in Korea and East Asia with, uh, interdisciplinary approach to Political Science and, uh, that department was, was very interdisciplinary with short appointments, Psychology, Social Psychology, Anthropology,

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and Professor Snyder, uh, encouraged us as graduates to look at all sources of knowledge, not just to  narrow political, legal, institutional matter.

I:          Um hm.

G:        So I, I completed that degree in 19, uh, uh, 59.

I:          PhD degree.

G:        Yes.

I:          Yes.

G:        And then I was invited by the University of Minnesota to go to Korea

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to the, uh, uh, the, the University of Minnesota Advisory Group to Seoul National University to be a research advisor to the graduate school of Public Administration and, uh, Minnesota had a program in, uh, Engineering, Agriculture, Public Administration and Pediatrics, and I was a member of that group for, for two years. Then I returned back.

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Princeton then invited me back to join the faculty.  So from 1961 to ’60, uh, 7, I was on the faculty of Princeton University.

I:          Um hm.

G:        Then I resigned and came to Hawaii to, I wanted to build a career in the United States, and Princeton, uh, would be interested, but there weren’t enough students or, uh, to, to really support that.

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So, so Hawaii was very receptive to it.  I also wanted to study Political Leadership Studies and each course about that. Princeton wasn’t interested in that

I:          Um hm.

G:        either because Princeton said we all teach, uh, all our students are leaders.  We don’t need a course on Political Leadership.  So, to go back to your, to your question.  Without, uh, the Korean War experience most, the origin and my

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interest in Korea as a people, I saw the, uh, I saw the Japanese enroute to Korea when a ship stops over.  I saw the Russians influence in Pyeongyang when we got to them.  And I saw the Chinese.  I saw them killed in our Division, and we killed them.  So I saw them all.  So I became much interested, mainly from the Korean people’s point of view. But I experienced the

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other, uh, the other four cultures at the same time.  So this carried over into my academic works.  So I wanted to know, uh, study Political Science how the decision was made.  So my study involved, uh, eventually interviewing President Harry Truman. That was about 1957.

I:          Um hm.

G:        former President, and Secretary of State Defense. That’s well

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known in the book, The Korea Decision, and every chapter is what the top decision makers did every day

I:          Um hm.

G:        from June 24 to June 30 at that time.  So that’s, that’s the origin of what I did and, uh, that’s, that’s where it starts.

I:          Um hm.

G:        The war was the start.

I:          Um hm.

G:        If I hadn’t been in that war, I would have done

I:          Um hm.

G:        any of that.  Um, it, it’s, it encompasses

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several reasons, um. One thing I wanted to get married, and you couldn’t be married and be a, a student at Princeton at that time.  All males so thatwas one thing.  Uh, secondly I, I was a product of World War II and war propaganda, you know, a patriotic war

I:          Um hm.

G:        in about 1948 [INAUDIBLE] it was expected we were going to fight Russia and take part, the, uh, Eastern European, uh, Iron Curtain era and so forth.

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So I thought well, I was gonna to, uh, be part of that and so forth.

I:          American patriotism.

G:        Then I needed money.  I had no money.

I:          Um.

G:        You know, I had to have a job and, you know, it was a com, com, combination of this, uh, socialization and, uh, personal interest and, uh, I guess, uh, a kind of patriotism, but it, it’s, it’s, it’s very complex

I:          Um hm.

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G:        from that end because, uh, I was a musician at the time and, uh,

I:          Musician?

G:        A musician, yeah.  And I, I was, I played the saxophone, and I was in the Princeton marching band and, uh, and in uh, uh, other bands and so forth.  So, I, I was, I was interested first to, uh, uh, join the Navy and get into the School of Music where they had a course teaching in Composition.  And it was a.

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a very good school. When I went to the Navy, but I had to wait for like two years.  They had too many, so I

I:          Oh.

G:        went in the Army recruiters and they said oh, you will, if you sign up, we’ll send you to the, uh, uh, Army band in Fort Monroe, Vir, Virginia.  You won’t have to go to basic training because you’re already in ROTC.

I:          Oh, you were in the ROTC?

G:        Yes, yes, I was,

I:          Okay.

G:        for one year, and so they said we will, we’ll send you right to the band.

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You can go right there, take care of anything and, uh, so I signed up, but they never sent me. They just sent me to basic training for eight weeks and so

I:          Eight weeks?

G:        Oh yeah.  For basic training at the time at Fort Dix, and then I went to Sergeant school, and I said no more of this, and I applied for Officer Candidate school, and I went through and, uh, went to Officer Candidate school for six, then they sent me to the Artillery school

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in Fort, uh, uh, in, uh, El Paso, uh, uh, Texas, Fort Bliss and I, uh, I, uh, uh, graduated about in the Spring of 1950 assigned to the, uh, for the 2^ndInfantry Division in, uh, in Fort Lewis, assigned to the

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10^thAnti-Aircraft Artillery Group as a Second Lieutenant

I:          Um hm.

G:        and got there about May, June and then the Korean War broke out, and then they assigned, they sent our unit, the Second Division was sent to Korea, and I arrived there with the 10^thAnti-Aircraft Artillery Group

on, uh, September 4, 1950 in Pusan.

I:          1950, Pusan?

G:        That’s, that’s, that’s kind of,

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that’s the story of dropping out from Princeton

I:          Ah.

G:        getting in the Army to trying to follow, uh, try, trying to combine a lot of different things, music interest, personal interests, patriotism.

I:          Um hm.

G:        It’s, it’s not a simple story about any, any person’s life is very complicated.

I:          Um hm.

G:        It’s, uh, not easy to sum up in, uh, two or three sentences.  So, I say it’s a complex job to, uh,

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at 82, I have a much clearer idea of, of what is important.

I:          Uh huh.

G:        And I have a much, uh, a better grasp of this.

I:          What was the kind of, uh, social mood in America in late 1940’s, and how that was related to the Korean War?  What was people’s reaction to that, when you first heard about it?

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G:        You know, I, I, I think, uh, after 1945, of course there was a, a big demobilization in the United States, demobilize the Army and then all the things have been rationed and, uh, to build tanks and airplanes and stuff like that that we convert today building washing machines, refrigerators and automobiles and things.  So that was going on.

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And, but after 1948, the, in, in the, uh, the, uh, iron curtain and the, uh, Soviet, uh, tension between, uh, uh, in, uh, Eastern Europe, Soviet occupation and, uh, the tension between the United States and, and Russia, Stalin, Truman, Churchill, there was a, there was a real sense of, uh, Cold War, the Communism is, is coming. So it wasn’t

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a relaxed time of, uh, it was a real sense of tension and calculations what’s going on, and the Chinese, uh, Civil War.  You, you gotta put the Chinese Civil War into this

I:          Yes.

G:        in 1949

I:          9.

G:        was a triumph of Communism the Chinese have stood up.

I:          Um hm.

G:        They stood up, you know.  And so at, at the tension, uh, in the United States, you’re gonna have a struggle with Communism.  It’s dangerous.  That’s the atmosphere.

I:          Um hm, um hm.

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G:        And, uh, so when the Korean, uh, War breaks out, of course, well, little things happen with a Communist country attacking a, uh, one of our friends.  We don’t know much about our friends, but, uh, it was supposed to be democratic. America didn’t know it was not all that democratic, and they didn’t know there’d been a lot of killing inside of Korea, uh, North and South.  They didn’t know everything that had happened since 1945 to ’48.

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And when I think about the butchering on Chejudo Island over there

I:          Right.

G:        I don’t know anything about this.  And, but it’s just a good, god guys being attacked by the bad guys and, uh, uh, but even then, you, you know, was I found out in my book, even the Washington pundits in the newspapers didn’t expect Truman was going to do anything.

I:          Um hm.

G:        They didn’t think that the U.S. was so, made a decision right away, uh, sometime around, I mean, uh, June 24, 25^thwas, was quite a surprise.

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But then when the United States gets into a war and whether people like it or not, it’s only a small minority that really object, uh, [INAUDIBLE] at first.  So most people accepted that, and then, then there was a big military build-up.

I:          Um hm.

G:        Bu, budget went up and the developed NATO and start attacking North Korea really militarized the United States.

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It might have been on a less trajectory turn a more peaceful mobilization if the United States had got along with Mao Tse Tung.  Mao Tse Tung wanted to, uh, uh, somehow make peace with the United States but, uh, Truman rejected that, and the, we, we could have been on a more friendly feeling with them in 1950, 19, along that area.

I:          Um hm.

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But that attack in Korea just made it bad for everybody.  It made them militarize the Chinese.  It, uh, it, uh, made a miracle of Japanese eco, economic recovery because they benefitted from all the, uh, American build-up, back up the, the, the [INAUDIBLE], and it did make a ter, terrible influence on the people of South Korea, militarized the North Koreans.

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It’s just a disaster.

I:          Um hm.

G:        All the way around.

I:          Um hm.

G:        So those of us [INAUDIBLE] We’ll have six million of us and plus all the other 21 countries, I think we were most of us young people.  We weren’t, uh, political strategists or anything.  We were all just human beings caught up in our, uh, personal, uh, you know, lives and, uh, uh, soldiers doing what they’re ordered to do and, you know,

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and, they all participated

I:          Um hm.

G:        and everyone’s a victim of it

I:          Um hm.

G:        and, u h, the people suffered.  The people that suffered the most were the Korean people from all this, and Chinese who remember, too.

I:          Yeah.

G:        And I think uh, well maybe, the figures are, figures about the dead and casualties of war are still not clear, uh.  So, uh, I, I know, I won’t get into it.  But if you go to Google and you look

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at it

I:          Um hm.

G:        Do some research and see it’s really complicated.

I:          You just pointed

G:        Let me, let me add one more.

I:          Sure, sure, sure.

G:        You can edit this out.

I:          Yeah.

G:        I, uh, I went to, uh, check, uh, how, how many, uh, served in the Korean War and how many casualties,

I:          Um hm.

G:        how many dead.  I did it last night just to refresh my memory.  So 5.7 served and 1.7

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served in the Korean Theater, 33,641 dead, and 103,000 something, uh, injured, more than that.  So I, I looked up, uh, how many, uh, how many dead were killed in all American wars

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since the American Revolution.

I:          Um hm.

G:        All the way down to, to 2011.  It’s about 650,000 were killed in all American history

I:          Um hm.

G:        including World War II.

I:          Um hm.

G:        The American Civil War, North and South dead, about 600,

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almost 632,000, almost 600, 600, almost 650,000.  If you add them up, uh, something like 1.2 million Americans have been killed in combat. I’m, not mentioning the, the casualties of, of civilians.  1.2. So then I thought well,

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you know, that’s, that’s really not so many.  It’s not as many as were killed in Korea.

I:          Um hm.

G:        In, in, uh, Korea’s lost more.  So I said go look at them Russians.

I:          During the war.

G:        World War II.  8.8 million soldiers were killed from 1939 to 1945.

I:          Um hm.

G:        And I forget how many, uh,

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wounded.  What was it, 14 million or something.

I:          Yeah.

G:        So, uh, it gave me a, a nice perspective on, uh, the, the American, uh, attitude toward war.  The American understanding of war.  For us, it seems very terrible that we’ve been very, we’ve been victimized for, you know, for, for, we’re under attack,

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and we’ve suffered a lot.  So we have to be terribly strong to do that.  So I just thinking about, uh, trying to look at it from other people’s perspective what kind of suffering they,

I:          Yes.

G:        they did.  The place to start was in 1945 when the American troops occupied South Korea, and the Russian troops occupied North Korea,

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and the Americans, uh, and the Russians, for various reasons, and the Koreans themselves, uh, didn’t unify themselves, and the Korea, the South Koreans, the North Koreans as I understand, they went in, and they just attacked all the Japanese police and their military and everything and got out, uh.  The, uh, Americans maintained the American, the Japanese system

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in South Korea.

I:          Um hm.

G:        And, uh, the, the judiciary more the police and of course the civil, civilians left.  And so, so the Amer, the Russians treated North Korea like a liberated country, and the Americans treated it like uh, occupied Japan.  It was an occupied country.

I:          Um hm.

G:        So we occupied it.  So.  Now if, if in the same [INAUDIBLE] and the south hadn’t objected to, you know, the trusteeship idea could have been under

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U.N. trusteeship which has worked out to unify countries is what we’re about.  That was objective to mainly by South Korea.  I think Stalin agreed to a 40-year trusteeship

I:          Um hm.

G:        with the United States.  That was 1947 so, there’s all kind of reasons for that, uh, uh, leading to a, a, a, an, an, an antagonism and, and, uh, the butcheries

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that went on in South Korea, they were rifling people and attacking the, uh, so-called Communists in, in the south, butchering people in, uh, revenge and things in the north were done by Koreans against, uh, Christians and pastors and so on. Koreans, they made their own law. So the, the fact that the United States and Atchison and the United States was trying to avoid war with the Soviet Union.

I:          Um hm.

G:        They were trying to avoid war with China and, uh,

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they, they had good reports from their military attaches and their military advisory group. The South Korean Army was far superior to the North Korean Army.  I was the Intelligence expert at that time.  That was the estimate.  Turned out to be wrong.

I:          Um hm.

G:        But it was all all I could

I:          Um hm.

G:        I’m not gonna give you a, a neat answer to this business.  I think everybody’s involved in this.  It’s not only Atchinson.

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It’s Stalin. It’s Mao.

I:          Um hm.  Um hm.

G:        It’s Truman

I:          Um hm.  Um hm.

G:        It’s the Japanese.  It’s, uh, Syngman Rhee.  It’s Kim Yo Sung.  It’s their advisers.  It’s, uh, American intelligence officers in the Army and diplomats.  It’s Russian generals and people there and so forth. It’s a very complex matter.

I:          Hm.

G:        The only answer I would give to this, not to avoid this

I:          Um hm.

G:        huge

I:          Um hm.

G:        is that all six parties,

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North Korea, South Korea, America, Russia, China, Japan, the leaders of that, those societies, all have one clear, ethical commandment.  Thou shalt not kill,

I:          Um hm.

G:        and we will not kill in Korea.

I:          Um hm.

G:        That’s it.

I:          Um hm.

G:        And we will settle all our problems, our economic security, political, cultural,

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economic in a peaceful way.  We won’t arm to kill.  We won’t threaten to kill.  We won’t assassinate to kill.

I:          Um.

G:        We won’t torture.  We won’t execute.  That’s it. So my answer to the Korean War is three words:  No more killing.

I:          No more killing.

G:        Now, I don’t think conventional political science can get to that answer, and I don’t think a conventional policy maker’s

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in Beijing, Moscow, Washington especially, Tokyo, Seoul, uh, Pyongyang

I:          Um hm.

G:        can get to that answer, either.  It’s gonna take new research, into this by research, into culture research, new education and policy development and a careful transformation of the world. It’s deliberate.

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First it’s, it, it’s like going to the moon.  Can you go to the moon, everyone says no way possible. And to have a non-killing Korea, no, impossible.  But we got to the moon, and we could get to the, we could get to a Korea that, that in which Koreans don’t kill each other and the, the Russians, the Chinese, Japanese, Americans aren’t going to kill any Koreans and are not really armed to do that.  So that’s what I’ve

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come to from the War. I mean, that’s the bottom line.

I:          Um hm.

G:        You can talk to me for hours, and I would just come out to that.  The other things I’m seeing, uh, would be, they’re very minor.  Very minor, and the reasons behind why I think that it’s possible is in the published book, Goal of a Non-Killing Global Political Science. It’s on, it’s free on a website, Notkilling.org.  Anybody in the world can read it.

I:          Um hm.

G:        It’s now being trans, it’s been translated into

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23 languages in nine years

I:          Um hm.

G:        and in total, uh, many more are coming.

I:          and what is your non-conventional approach?

G:        Well, I, I think the origin of it, uh, starts with those three words, no more killing, and that, those words came to me about 1974. At that time, I was a professor of Political

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Science at the University of Hawaii, and on behalf of the University of Hawaii, I was trying to make contact with the Academy of Science of, uh, uh, the, uh, DPRK, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from Hawaii, and we would, our President here, President Harlan Cleveland, a former Ambassador to NATO, uh, was, uh, President of our University, and he was receptive to this.  So I was, I was, uh,

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just a faculty member, and I was trying to make contact with the, uh, uh, North Korean, uh, scholars to bring them to the United States.  And, of course, in ni, this is ’74, 1974, and, uh, I’ve seen, uh, Dr. Henry Kissinger do some ping pong diplomacy with, uh, China, uh, on military and on different matter, you know, prior to Seoul.  I, someone might think I was, you know,

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sort of following along bad things just an individual scholar.  Well, I, I made some contact in various international conferences with North Korean scholars and, and in, uh, Paris and, uh, uh, International Commerce and Orientalists and other places, and they were, they were very receptive.  They would send flyers, scholars and, uh, the rest of some, uh, uh, historian, uh,

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and sociologists and so forth.  But the, to sum it all up, I found that, uh, the, the main objective to that initiative, even though I carried our, uh, our President’s letter to the delegates mouthsat the United Nations and handed it to the observer mission of the DPRK in 1974, ’73, in that area, um,

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and, uh, the U.S. government’s completely against that, the, and the, State Department. And also the American Embassy, and the Korean Embassy in Washington was absolutely against it.  These are Communists.  They can’t come to the United States.  We’re against it, and we won’t do it.  So at that time, it wasn’t very calculated, but I’ve written this book on the Korean War

I:          Um.

G:        The Korean Decision.  Basically, I, that, that decision has,

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uh, this is a good, you know, it was a good decision.  People would ask me is this a good decision?  Was it right they did that?  So nine chapters in my book, uh, I said well, I looked at all the other answers and said well, it’s right.  Let’s say South Korea is more democratic than North Korea and so, so I’d already been on, uh, on record as describing how war decision and also not,

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not cheering for it completely, but being pretty, you know, favorable.  I agreed with, with Truman and the people who made that decision. So here I am in ’74.  I’m trying to make, we, we fought a war for peace and freedom in Korea, and I’m trying to make peace with a former enemy.

I:          Um hm.

G:        I had to add one more thing.  I have to back up a little bit.  I have to add one more element.

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In 1959 and ’60, I was in Seoul.  I was, at the time of the April 19 Student Revolution

I:          Um.

G:        Sa-il-gu

I:          Yeah.

G:        in Seoul, I was there.  I marched with the students.  I, I was an observer.  I wasn’t one in the front of a rank.But I marched with them from the SNU Campus right up to [INAUDIBLE].  I saw the police shoot him, and they killed them and wounded them.

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I was part of that. Now, that was a student, non-violent student demonstration for democracy.  And for nine months, there was freedom in South Korea.  There was an election in August, and I did some, uh, various, uh, administration work in vige, in villages in Pojuko and interviewed Rejinonjon and, uh, various people, there was a big, uh, everyone was free for the first time in a thou, a thousand years, and then nine months later coup d’état

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I:          Um hm.

G:        [INAUDIBLE] took over.  And, uh, so I’ve been through that springtime of freedom, then military dictatorship and in part maintained his dictatorship till 1979, 18 years until he was killed by his own CIA Chief at a caisson party.  So here I am.

I:          Um hm.

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G:        I’m a former soldier involved in a war, killing people, become a scholar, write a book justifying the war and fighting for freedom and peace, and I see in our friends in the south become the military dictatorship.

I:          Uh huh.

G:        And, and, uh, trying to make peace I find that our friends and home government are against even a, a, uh, private

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citizen’s attack at peaceful, it’s called citizen diplomacy.

I:          Um hm.

G:        Not one done calculated in a calculated way.  I didn’t sit down and calculate all this down. I just got one, one day the words came to me from my, not in words.  It was electric current I was standing on from the tips of my toes right up to the top of my head.

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I:          Um hm.

G:        [NOISE] And three silent words came.

I:          Um hm.

G:        No more killing.

I:          Hm.

G:        Now, uh, later, you know, I studied some social psychology so

uh, one, one psychological, uh, ex, uh, explanation that is called cognitive dissidents

I:          Um hm.

G:        That is when your values and reality conflict.

0:34:30

Then what do you do? You can change your values, or you can change to reality or you can withdraw.  You can become a alcoholic,

I:          Um hm.

G:        promiscuous, drug addict or something.  So there, I could change my values and say okay, I don’t care about freedom, and, uh, dictatorship is good for economic development and, uh, the, the enemy are nasty so we don’t need to deal with them at all.

0:35:00

So the way to have freedom is to kill them, and we’ll make peace.  So I could change my peace value, and I, I, and, uh, and I could just deny the reality and say okay, we just let the status quo go.

I:          Um hm.

G:        and keep up my job and everything is all right. But what happened to me was the value changed.  Instead of, instead of Political Science is the science of power,

0:35:30

power is based on violence.  So I studied violence.  I once asked the very senior, uh, professor, uh, of, uh, uh, back in 1950’s, uh, at, uh, Professor at the University of Chicago.  I was the young fellow from Princeton, and I asked him, uh, tell me, what, what is it you study?  You’re, you studied Political Science all your life.  What is, what is the Political Science?

0:36:00

And he said I studied the death dealing power of the State

I:          Um hm.

G:        So anyway, alright.  So here I am in ’74, suddenly no more killing.  And then I said okay.  So now what do I do?  I’m a professor.  I’ve written a book about this, and what do I do?  So the first thing

0:36:30

I did, it took me almost three years, I wrote a book review about my own book, the Korean Decision.

I:          Your own book?

G:        Yes.  It was published in The American Political Science Review in December 1977, issue, uh, December, it’s in my bibliography.

I:          Okay.  Um hm.

G:        December. It’s called on values and science, The Korean Decision Reconsidered.

I:          Yeah.  I think I’ve heard, yeah.

0:37:00

G:        And, uh, it took about two years, three anonymous readers who brokered two or three book review editors.  It’s the first time in the history of the American Political Science Review since 196, uh, 71 years, that an author was ever allowed to review their own book.

I:          Um hm.

G:        And the anonymous reviewers said, they said 95% of

0:37:30

Political Science will not agree with this, this criticism of

I:          His own book.

G:        My own book.

I:          Um hm.

G:        But since the book was used so widely in training, uh, in political science in graduate school and strategic studies in Germany and West Point and academies in Korea and Japan, it was, it was all used by the military strategists.  Since it was used so widely, we should publish it

0:38:00

I:          Um hm.

G:        even though we won’t agree with it.  But since the book was a no.  So then, the next thing I did was to raise the same question to the entire discipline of political science.  It took 28 years of studying the history of polit, political law speak and psychology and anthropology and societies and histories and

0:38:30

non-violence and action.  I visited many countries.  I went to India to study Gandhi, the south to study Martin Luther King, and I, I, I went all over the place

I:          Um hm.

G:        and, uh, the, it took me 28 years, published the book in 2002.  In that, in the, in the process of this, I retired in 1992.  In 1994, I founded The Center for Global Non-Violence.  I Bused the word non-violence as they come.  And it was non-profit, but it was, there was an incubator inside the University of Hawaii, in the Matsunaga Peace Institute.

I:          Um hm.

G:        It was a kind of planning project.  In ’94 I took it out of there as an independent, uh, outside the University system, non-governmental, non-university.

0:39:00

It’s a real innovation.

I:          Um hm.

G:        At that time, non-violence, at that time, there wasn’t one peace course in the University of [STAMMERS] Hawaii. I think right now, the American political science, there’s no peace section.  There’s 90 specialties in the, in the political science, uh, profession.  But I don’t think there’s any peace.  American psychological one has one.

I:          Um hm.

G:        Peace and conflict.

I:          Um hm.

0:39:30

G:        But, uh, so it was, so,

0:40:00

I took it out of there, and then I placed that non-killing global political science book, uh, when I finally published it in 2002, some published, put it on the website, period.

I:          Um hm.

G:        So anybody in the world could get it, and that led by 2007, five years later, I was able to bring 40 leaders and scholars, uh,

0:40:30

to, from 20 countries here to the, uh, actually I’m going out and saw temple, Buddhist temple here in Hawaii for three days. That was just a sight.  We organized it to our center on, uh, uh, Global Non-Killing, uh, Leadership Forum, and that, uh, we had, uh, scholars, uh, and, uh, leaders from Russia, China, Africa, Latin America,

0:41:00

Europe, had all, the whole world was represented there, and they’ve all read the book, and some were translators of the book and so, so that, that, that showed, that demonstrated the, capa, the, the, the, interest in the world in the concept of non-killing because they’ve read that non-killing book,

I:          Um hm.

G:        and the non-killing book gives you some reasons why to do this.  So in, uh,

0:41:30

we then got some support in 19, and 2000, 9, 10, 11 you had support.  The Center for Gl, we changed the name to Center for Global Non-Killing.  The mission of the Center for Global Non-Killing is to promote change for the measurable goal of a killing-free world

I:          Um hm.

G:        by means open to infinite

0:42:00

creativity in reverence for life.  That’s the mission.

I:          Um hm.

G:        Uh, two parts of that mission statement are, are interesting.  First it’s measurable.  You can count the bodies.  You can count the dead.  You can count the murders, all the suicides.  It is accountable.  It’s measurable, strictly measure, you can’t measure peace.  You can’t measure democracy, goodness, justice.  Those things people

0:42:30

have fought and killed over for, for centuries.  They’re quite abstract, they’re really abstractions in a way.  So it’s measurable, and it’s open ended.  That is no totalitarian.  It isn’t that, it has to be a certain kind of economy, politics, religion, culture, language, sports, whatever.  It’s open.  So the question is what kind of society

0:43:00

is it where people don’t kill

I:          Um hm.

G:        each other or appear to kill each other or use their resources to do it, arm themselves to do it, and create cultures of killing that, that’s celebrated and suffer from it.  What kind of society is that?  So what would a non-killing Hawaii be like?  What would a non-killing America be like?  What would a non-killing Syracuse University be like? Or, or, or, or

0:43:30

a non-killing Russia, non-killing China, non-killing North Korea, non-killing South Korea? What would they be like?  And, uh, so it’s, the, the, the, uh, the mission is very clear and very open to creativity.  So what I’ve, what we found happens is when people do read the book and takes the book and, and it, the

0:44:00

way it’s, it persuades you, it persuades reader to go from pessimism, it’s absolutely unthinkable to, it, we ought to take it seriously.  That’s what it does.

I:          Um hm.

G:        And then beyond that, it’s up to all of us what we’re going to do about it.

I:          Um hm.

G:        That’s the idea.  And the notion is there’s not one center for global non-killing.  There are seven billion of us on the planet. Every, every person is a center for global non-killing.

0:44:30

I:          Um hm.

G:        Everyone has to because when you take a non-killing, uh, approach, uh, to life, every single person becomes very important. Obviously, you don’t want them to kill. You don’t want them to be a pathological killer.

I:          Um hm.

G:        You don’t want them to be armed with a massive killing capacity.  Even one person can non-kill millions with appropriate technology.  So every person is, is, it’s poor, rich, middle, whatever it is.

0:45:00

When you maintain the notion that I’ll kill to protect my stuff.  I’ll kill to protect my, uh, family and myself and so forth, you don’t need to be so careful about every human, the well-being of every human being. What is their economic status?

I:          Um hm, um hm.

G:        What is their happiness status?  What is their family or what is their, how, how are they, how are they, uh.  You don’t have to care so much because if they, if they

0:45:30

do something bad, you can arrest them or you can execute them or you can exterminate them, uh, by some way, a drone or, uh, atomic bombs or whatever.  Or with your gun or your machine guns or whatever you were going to do, a knife or you just kill them.

I:          Um.

G:        But if you don’t want to do that, you have to, have to see how can we all live on this planet, and if, if it relates to,

0:46:00

uh, decreasing the violence of the planet and the demilitarization of the planet, and closing the rich/poor gap so there’s much more sharing of resources

I:          Um hm.

G:        so there’s much more respect for human lives,

I:          Um.

G:        and everyone has to be respected and has to be much more care for the environment because if we don’t take care of the planet, the planet’s going to kill us, and it’s, uh, Barry Commoner wrote a book called War on the Planet.

0:46:30

If you make war on the planet, you’re gonna lose, and it’s a war on global warming and all the other matters.  And then we have to learn how to get together, uh.  All of us on the planet together have to work at how to make decisions and do solve the problem of violence, economics, human rights and the environment and getting along together.  We have to figure out how to do that.

0:47:00

And to me, if we go back to Korean culture, I think it, it could be that time wouldn’t [INAUDIBLE]

I:          [INAUDIBLE]

G:        I think Koreans understand this instinctively.

I:          Um hm.

G:        Doesn’t take any foreigner to, to tell them, to Koreans especially.  So I don’t, I don’t, I’m very optimistic about Korea and Korean culture.

I:          Um hm.

G:        And I think it’s and, um, the dynamism of it has its own basic values.  It’s really deep

0:47:30

in that, in that Peninsula, and it’s really distinct, distinctive and, uh, has a tremendous potential if, uh, if, uh, uh, just allow it, allow it to flourish, you know, make it more gently.  Let it come out and, and nurture it by, uh, Korean leaderships and, and I think Korean scholars have a, a good role to play because Korean scholars, uh, traditionally were

0:48:00

respected, and they’re responsible for the (KOREAN PHRASE)and culture intervention and, and, inventions and values and, and, uh, uh.  So I, I am quite, I’m quite, uh, I’m very hopeful about this.  That’s why this book that we’re going to publish in a couple weeks, uh, non, uh, Non-killing Korea, Six Culture Exploration is

0:48:30

an attempt to look at non-killing culture, uh, capabilities in Russia, China, Japan, the U.S. and, and North Korea and South Korea.  It’s the first time such a book has ever been

I:          Um hm.

G:        ever been, uh, attempted, and I think, uh, it’d be co-published by the Seoul National University Press.

I:          Um hm.

G:        The Asian Center.  I think it’s number 2 in their new series.  I’m hoping it will find a way somewhere

0:49:00

through it to, uh, into scholars hands in North Korea or abroad in, in the various embassies and so forth that will get me through, through, into the north, and, uh, I’m hoping, uh, in the future that there will be a conference to bring, uh, bunch of Chinese, Japanese, Americans, North and South Korea to, together and discuss that

I:          Um hm, um hm.

G:        book, that book itself crit, criticize it and then decide

0:49:30

what, what would happen.

I:          Um hm.

G:        This is just a very minor step.  But without this, uh, getting back to your research on veterans served in the Korean War,

I:          Um hm.

G:        this would not, not have happened

I:          Um hm.

G:        without that experience.

I:          You’re right.

G:        It’s just one person’s, just one, one, one veteran’s person, and I, it, it, it, it, I would say it just, it just happened, it happened.

0:50:00

I think, I think the basic, I, I’m, I’m not thought too clearly about this till now, till I’m talking to you right now.  Let’s say what was the reason for that?  I think it’s one word.  I think it’s love.

I:          Um hm.

G:        (Saranghae).

I:          Saranghe.

G:        Somehow saranghae.

0:50:30

Somehow.  I, I, and it, it’s, uh, I, I, I lived in a Buddhist temple for one month in 1972 in [KOREAN NAMES] for one month.  And, uh, I didn’t know anything about Buddhism.  I was writing, um, a, a, an article about, uh, a pol, a future political leadership and a information society be, to be published in Japan.  This is 1972, [INAUDIBLE], and I lived

0:51:00

in a temple just followed what the monks did and ate what they did and write in the morning and go in the afternoon.  So I, I, we participated in all the, uh, morning and the bells and the prayers and I, they, they just said well just do what we do, you know.  I wasn’t studying Buddhism at the time.  I just was living with them.  And one of the monks said to me, he said I think you must have, you must have been a Korean

I:          Hm.

G:        and you were, you know,

0:51:30

and in a sense you must have some Korean in you.

I:          DNA.

G:        Yeah, something there, you know.  So it was a kind of, a, a kind of Buddah culture with the culture, and so much involves the culture.

I:          Um hm.

G:        The architecture the roof even if the, uh, even in a war time, even in parts of North Korea I never felt afraid among Koreans.

I:          Um hm. Um hm.

[End of Recorded Material]