Speeches and Transcripts
“Promoting Women’s Participation in Grassroots Advocacy”
Ambassador Kathleen Stephens
International Republican Institute (IRI) Seminar at Sungshin Women’s University
December 9, 2008, 9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.
Introductory Remarks
Good morning everyone.
It is a pleasure to be here this morning. I want to thank Sungshin Women’s University. This is my first visit here, but we have a long association at the American Embassy with this wonderful university, which has done so much for education, for women’s education in the Republic of Korea and indeed throughout the world. It was an honor to meet President Shim Hwa-jin this morning.
I just had a tour of this campus, and I think some of you have already seen a bit of it also. I hope you will see more while you’re here, and indeed more of this amazing place called Seoul and the Republic of Korea. Some of you are here for the first time in Korea, and you’re only here for a couple of days. It’s wonderful to join you. I wanted to thank Barbara Broomell for all that you do with IRI, and for your kind words about the Peace Corps.
Political Progress of Korea
I was lucky enough to be a Peace Corps member in Korea 33 years ago. I’ve had the privilege of seeing this place as it has journeyed on an incredible path to what you see today. Not only is it the world’s 13th largest economy, but also a thriving democracy, and a place where opportunity for women and for men, for young and old, expands every day. I will talk a little bit more about that in a moment. It is a great story.
I was also here in Korea in the 1980s. It was then that I first heard about the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). They were both established during President Reagan’s Administration to promote democracy-building throughout the world.
My time here in Korea during the 1980s was as a political officer. This was a time of great political tension and change in the Republic of Korea.
As a young officer at the Embassy during that time, I remember one day I was assigned to host the visit of someone from NDI, IRI’s sister institute. A professor from Georgetown University was coming, and she wanted to learn more about the democracy movement in Korea. Her name was Madeleine Albright. Frankly, I never dreamed that she would be my boss someday, as Secretary of State, but she spent several productive days here. We met opposition leaders -- Kim Dae-jung, Kim Young-sam, church leaders, Lee Tae-young -- and talked about democracy in Korea.
Common Interests/North Korean Human Rights
So it is special for me to be back here now with IRI, as we move from a Republican to a Democratic Administration. We are continuing to discuss “unfinished business,” not only on the Korean peninsula, but in all of our countries, including the United States, as we work toward greater opportunities and democracy for all our citizens. I know this is an audience that represents those efforts.
I am so impressed by reading your bios, your backgrounds, and the work that you are doing, and I am so glad that you are here today to share those experiences and build on each others’ work.
I did want to mention the work that IRI has done here in Korea, in particular with the Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. When we speak of unfinished business, we of course are speaking of the opportunities still denied to Koreans north of the DMZ. That is the kind of work that is going on here at Sungshin Women’s University, and the work that IRI is doing. This includes capacity-building for leaders, female North Korean defectors, and for others who are working on these issues. This work is extremely important, and will be key to our ability to move forward.
The U.S. and Korea are working together on so many areas. Just last month, Korea hosted something called the Asia Pacific Democracy Partnership. Otherwise known as APDP, it is a multilateral initiative involving many of your countries, aiming to promote democracy in the East Asia area. The Republic of Korea is taking a leadership role. I really like what Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan had to say at APDP: “Having come a long and hard way, Korea now strives to do its part in the global effort to spread and promote democracy.” The U.S., who certainly is Korea’s partner and friend, wants to work on this global effort together.
I think there will be some interesting work ahead in which many of you might be involved. I know that the first election observation mission from this APDP was dispatched to Mongolia this past June. I served in Europe, both before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and this idea of election observation and participation was something very important in Europe. To date, we have not really found a way to do it in Asia. But I think the APDP effort is one such example, and I hope that you will be able to give us some good ideas and participate yourselves as we seek to build on that.
Human Rights are Women’s Rights
Of course, as we look to our own democratic transition in the United States, I am pleased to know that my next boss is going to be a woman who, like Condoleezza Rica, has stood for the empowerment of women throughout her long and varied career in public service.
I wanted to remind you, because I still find it very inspiring, of some things that Hillary Clinton said in 1995. She talks about that year as a real turning point in her thinking about women in international affairs, and about the U.S. role in the world. That was the year she spoke to the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. We’ve been reminded of what she said—and it’s still something we need to keep in mind: “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”
I think that’s going to be our watchword as we go forward. But as a columnist recently noted in The New York Times, these words I just mentioned are still radical in parts of the world. We’ve learned from the Taliban and from others that the enemies of democratic values do take their first shots at the freedom of women. It was this Beijing conference—and kudos to China for hosting this conference—that really jumpstarted some change.
Now we see the United Nations—under the leadership of another great Korean statesman, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, our great friend—defining the violation of women’s rights as an international security issue. That’s a big change. When I joined the Foreign Service 33 years ago, women’s issues were scarcely considered a national issue. But the United Nations now calls it an international security issue, and nearly ninety countries, thanks to the work of people like you, have passed laws against domestic violence.
But all of us are still operating in a world in which three-fifths of poorest people are women and girls, seventy percent of the children not in school are girls—and that’s why women’s education is so important. I have seen firsthand how women’s education changed Korea and changed many of your countries and mine. Half a million women die every year in childbirth. At the same time, only 16 percent of legislators are women. And this is one I always note—because I have sat around a lot of tables negotiating a lot of things— less than three percent of the people at a table when peace treaties are signed are women. No wonder we don’t have more peace treaties.
Addressing Challenges Facing Women
So how are we to address all these challenges? I know that is part of what you are here to do today. And I just thought I would speak very briefly from my own experience. One, I want to talk a little bit about Korea because it is so close to my heart. For those of you, like me, who are visiting from elsewhere, I do think there is so much we can learn from the Korean example.
Two, I thought I would talk about someplace not represented in this room, which is Northern Ireland, where I spent quite a bit of time through the 1990s. There are many other places we could talk about as well. I have worked in a number of places where there has been some form of conflict, and I guess that describes the world today, whether we are speaking of the Balkans, or Northern Ireland, or here in Korea during times of political change. Women have been key to the progress that societies have been able to make, and I think we can learn from others’ experiences.
U.S. Efforts to Promote Women’s Rights/Human Rights
First of all, where is the U.S. in this? There is a lot about which we can be proud, although frankly I believe that there is much more we could do and that we should have done sooner. But I do think that we have to recognize Eleanor Roosevelt, America’s First Lady during World War II, today because it was 60 years ago this December that her advocacy efforts came to fruition and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed. Even as we stand here today and talk about North Korea, we stand on the shoulders of those who went before, and who sixty years ago worked to pass the Declaration. The countries of the world at least pay lip service to that, and it is our job to make it real. It is successive American administrations, when I talk about our own experience in this era since the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has made human rights and increasingly women’s rights as a much more explicit part of U.S. foreign policy.
Again going back to the 1970s, I can remember when President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, emphasized human rights. When President Reagan came to office many people thought this human rights emphasis would go away. It didn’t. Instead, we have seen each successive administration in the United States, whether Democratic or Republican, make it the heart of our security and foreign policy agenda and not a partisan issue. Again, the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy and the funding of the IRI and NDI are great examples of this bipartisan consensus.
U.S. Efforts in Iraq
We have seen this bipartisan consensus in a place like Iraq, which in U.S. foreign policy terms has been nothing if not controversial. But all sides have agreed that whatever happens in Iraq, we need to address the question of human rights and the question of women’s status. Some of the most successful work that has been done in Iraq has been done by the Office of International Women’s Issues, which has sponsored an Iraqi women’s democracy initiative that has really helped Iraqi women participate more fully as political and economic leaders. If we are going to have a safe, secure and democratic Iraq, it’s going to be because of the efforts of women leaders like them. We’ve trained over 7,000 Iraqi women, and they are rebuilding their communities on the ground right now.
U.S./Korean Progress in Women’s Rights
Of course, the United States through this process has undergone its own changes. I have certainly seen that change within my lifetime. I am not going to give you a long précis on that, but I would mention in terms of women in leadership positions, however defined, when I first took the exam for the Foreign Service, it had only been a year since the rule had changed so that American women who wanted to be diplomats did not have to resign once they married. That was a pretty effective way, within my lifetime, of keeping women out of leadership positions in foreign policy.
So while we started from a pretty low base, we have moved forward. Obviously we have moved forward, as we have seen women as Secretaries of State, and also in leadership positions around the world. Again, I think we will see Secretary of State-designate Clinton, once she moves into her new job, carrying forward some of the initiatives that some of you may already be familiar. For example, there is one called Vital Voices, which is an initiative she started as First Lady. After she left the White House, Vital Voices become a non-profit organization. I participated in a few Vital Voices conferences over the years in Northern Ireland, Eastern Europe and elsewhere, and they are still active. I offer this to you: If you are not familiar with Vital Voices, it is a good source of networking and ideas. Vital Voices has done good work in Korea as well.
Democracy and Human Rights in Korea
Now I will get to my favorite example, because I am back in Korea, for the third time now. I lived here for the first time in the 1970s. I was here at a time when, however you measure it, the GDP per capita in South Korea was about the same or maybe even less than that of North Korea. It really is hard to imagine, maybe even unimaginable for anyone coming to Korea today, to know what Korea was like 30 years ago. It was a very different place, but the economic miracle was already beginning, and you could see it day to day in people’s lives, as people had more opportunities for education, more opportunities for better jobs, and more to eat. There wasn’t really enough to eat for many people 33 years ago -- what a change.
So first I saw that economic transformation. Next, I came back in the 1980s at a time when the Korean people were beginning to say, “You know it is great to have economic development. We have done so well. We are ready for democracy. If we’re going to host the Olympics in 1988 in Seoul, we want to do it with our heads held high, having had an election and chosen our own president.” This did not come easily. I will not give you a history of all that happened, but we began the 1980s with a military coup at the beginning of the decade that had violently wrested power from an interim civil authority. Many people were jailed or exiled or banned from politics. By 1987 and 1988, Korea had elected a new President through a direct, democratic vote, and hosted the Olympics. What a transformation.
I want to make two points here to this group about the effort to bring human rights and democracy to Korea. One: It involved students, politicians, bureaucrats and academic leaders taking up issues like human rights, issues like torture saying it’s not acceptable, like the right of each person to vote, for free and fair elections. Two: It involved women. Women’s roles, and this will not surprise you, do not get first mention in too many accounts. But I was here, and I saw it, and I want to talk about two ways in which I saw it.
Lee Tae-young
One, I want to tell you about one person -- her name was Dr. Lee Tae-young. In a way, her story exemplifies both the grassroots spirit of the Korean democratization movement and the change in women’s status, as many stories do here in Korea.
Dr. Lee was born in North Korea around 1914. She was the first woman lawyer in Korea, and I knew her in the 1980s. By that time she was already a grandmother and thinking about retirement. She was running something called the Women’s Legal Aid Center in Korea, which I used to visit. It was focused on basic things like women not getting thrown out of their house[s] after they divorced or when their husband[s] died, or even being able to divorce. Even though the constitution of the Republic of Korea guaranteed rights for women, in practice they were not observed, because of many traditional Confucian practices. Dr. Lee’s work was very much focused on getting the laws amended and getting women in a family recognized as official family members so they could inherit property. I am sure these issues will sound very familiar to all of us; I think we have all seen them. My point is that even in the 1980s these were major issues in Korea, and Dr. Lee worked very hard to address them.
Another thing she realized, as her biography Where There Is No Path makes plain, is that she was not going to succeed in these efforts to help women or support women unless she also turned to the issues of democratization and government. Therefore, she joined in that effort as well.
Dr. Lee was already a grandmother, she was tiny in stature, but she was such a powerful figure not only for women all over Korea, but also for the democracy movement. She was disbarred at one point because of her efforts. Even so, she continued to work, recruiting other attorneys to volunteer at a legal aid center that I will never forget visiting—seeing women with all kinds of problems coming in, whether it was inheritance or divorce or domestic violence. But while other people focused on the high theory of democracy, Dr. Lee was still at the grassroots, practicing democracy to all comers regardless of their political views.
Korean Democracy: Then and Now
What we began to see in Korea in the late 1980s was more and more people, not just the students, and not just the politicians, saying, “We want stability, we want opportunity for our families, but we can have that even more if we are allowed to vote.” And they began to come out on the street to say we would like to have a direct vote for our president. How thrilling it was to see a peaceful election with thousands of people voting, men and women alike, in 1987.
Now, it has already been twenty years and may seem like ancient history. Certainly many of your students, Dr. Shim, were not even born at that time. So this is a story that maybe we need to retell to them—but what a change, thanks to the next generation of leaders like President Shim and her colleagues.
Increasing Role of Women in Korea and the World
As in so many matters, if you go by the numbers, I think Korea has gotten ahead of the United States. The latest Korean bar exam results show that 32 percent of all successful candidates are women. And to think I knew one of Korea’s first female lawyers. Further, among those passing the Foreign Service Exam to be Korean diplomats -- 52 percent of those who pass are women. So in another decade or so the majority of Korean diplomats will be women, and almost all of these women who pass these exams are hired as judges or diplomats or prosecutors. So all of the ministries of tomorrow will be composed of many more women.
Especially when it comes to foreign policy, we can look forward to women playing an increasingly large role not only in the development and the strengthening of the U.S.-Korea relationship, but also in the essential work that needs to be done in East Asia and on the Korean peninsula.
Working Together –Joint US-Korea Efforts on North Korean Human Rights
The U.S. and Korea have worked together so closely for such a very long time, and now we have raised our sights even higher both on the peninsula and elsewhere. We have a security alliance that has kept the Republic of Korea safe and secure as it has continued on its great journey of democratization, of political and economic development. Even so, we must acknowledge that there remains the issue of North Korea.
I salute the many in this room, both Korean and other nationalities, who have not forgotten that there is this unfinished business. We as a government recognize that we need to make a joint effort, not only to achieve the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, to achieve a lasting peace, to replace the Armistice, but also, essentially, we need to address the situation of the long-suffering people of North Korea. These are people who have the same aspirations, the same talents and the same creativity that characterize the people of South Korea. These are people who need to be given the same opportunities that we expect for anyone in the 21st Century.
I know that many in this room have, in particular, addressed the population of North Koreans who have left North Korea and sought refuge elsewhere. It is significant that out of the North Koreans coming out trying to find refuge, 70 percent are women. I would invite all of you to think about that. I know this university has done a lot to try to provide these women with some of the education and training they will need to build new lives, and to take leadership roles. Many of them have endured horrific experiences before reaching safety both in North Korea and also in their effort to seek safety. I hope we can do more work on that. I thank IRI for the work it does already.
Northern Ireland – A Learning Experience
Finally, this is changing to an entirely different scene, but I was going to say a word, ten years after the achievement of something called the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, about my experience in Northern Ireland, and the experience of the U.S. in supporting a peace process there. What I want to say to this group is have a look at that, and maybe as you go to other conferences I would suggest you invite some women from Northern Ireland, because what a story that is. There is a long history there too; a long history of violence and division between two communities. The modern onset of violence was in the late 60s amidst terrible terrorist acts. There were two women, Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for founding the Community of Peace People organization. [The organization] was about very simple efforts to say – “We are all mothers, we are all parents, we want our children to be safe. We want to reach across the divide, and find a way to do that.” That was in 1976, and it took almost 20 more years before we reached a ceasefire. That is a long time—a lot of lives lost, a lot of opportunities lost.
But by 1994 to 1995, the political process had moved forward to a ceasefire situation, but the politicians were stuck. We had politicians on both sides who basically had staked their careers on the status quo, making it a very dangerous thing to have change. I am sure we all see that in our society as well. When conflict goes on for 20, 30, 40, 50 years—careers are made on this, and I do not mean just by bad people. They can be good people, but how do they get elected? They get elected by protecting their communities. I saw it in the Balkans. Politicians get elected because they have a party that represents certain values. It is very hard to step across that line. Who will help them do that?
Well, in the case of Northern Ireland there were a few women. One was a Catholic academic named Monica McWilliams and another was a Protestant community organizer named Pearl Sager, who came from the most conservative part of her community. Both women said this, the status quo, is ridiculous. We have the men of violence in the room declaring ceasefires, but we cannot get our politicians to create a lasting peace. We cannot get them to negotiate.
So they formed something called the Women’s Coalition, a political party. A lot of people said, “You should not be a political party because politics are dirty. Politics are divided,” but the Women’s Coalition said, “No, We are going to be a political party.” They never won many votes but what they did get — remember that table, the peace treaty table with 3 percent — was a seat at the table. They were a political party, and they sat at the negotiation for the Good Friday Agreement. They were the ones, when stalemate reached the table and the politicians could not agree, who would walk among the parties and forge a consensus. An amazing example of women who were small in number but who chose to go from grassroots to getting their hands dirty in politics and making a difference. In their case, making a difference came not because they received many votes, but because of their powers of persuasion and their commitment to a shared vision.
As an aside, I received an email from Monica McWilliams the other day, and she is now the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and continues to play a leadership role.
Conclusion
My own experience and observation in areas of conflict throughout the world—and without even getting to the Balkans for lack of time—is that without addressing women’s rights and without women’s participation we will not be able to address human rights. We will not be able to reach the reconciliation that we are looking for. I really think that is what Hillary Clinton was saying in Beijing 13 years ago—in fact, just as I was arriving in Belfast. And what she also said was, “What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish, and when families flourish, communities and nations do as well.”
We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, and we are going to need to do it together. But just as the U.S. and Korea have found ways to cooperate, I hope that with this conference all of you will find new ideas, new support, and new synergies. I do want you to know that I stand with you, and I know I can say with great confidence, on behalf of my current boss, Condoleezza Rice, and my future boss, Hillary Rodham Clinton, that the U.S. will stand with you as well. So again, Barbara, thank you so much for your work. President Shim, for the leadership of your university and your own leadership I thank you, and I wish you a very successful conference. Thank you.