Koreans Continue Power Line Battle

The NYT recently did an article on the transmission battle going on in Miryang, Korea between landowners and state utility, Kepco.

Kepco is all of a sudden in a very big hurry to get their project built because the truth about its real purpose is starting to leak out.

The elders have taken a stand.

On a recent day, the men stood behind ropes tied across the path leading to the outpost, smoking cigarettes and watching for construction workers they feared would come at any time. Three nooses dangled from nearby pine trees. “To hang them or be hanged,” the men said.

The women have also taken a fatalistic turn, building trenches in front of their tents they say will serve as their own grave sites if the authorities try to remove them. Ms. Sohn said she recently tried to prepare her children for the worst.

“When they called me the other day, I said, ‘I will die fighting,' ” she said. “That way, I would be less ashamed when I met my dead ancestors.”

The social injustice of forcing rural landowners to make a sacrifice to provide a benefit for distant cities and corporate profits is internationally recognized, and particularly galling when the need for sacrifice is purely manufactured based on political or financial goals.