arari:bbalgangyi-appa:tw-koreanhistory:Pattern of illness in S. Korean village children (Camp Caroll
arari:bbalgangyi-appa:tw-koreanhistory:Pattern of illness in S. Korean village children (Camp Caroll).Posted by Steve Stout.Twelve-year-old Da-Hee Bang writes poetry about flowers and trees. And hope.She hopes to go back to school, and she hopes to play with her friends. But most of all, she hopes she won’t have to go back to the hospital.“She would cry and just say she wants to live,” says Pan-Sook Kim, who takes her daughter to the hospital every other week to be treated for leukemia.“I don’t know what to do,” Kim said through tears.Kim’s daughter got sick in 2006, when the family lived in an apartment complex, just down the road from Camp Carroll, a U.S. Army installation where barrels full of toxic waste are alleged to have been buried more than 30 years ago.“When my daughter got sick, I had no idea,” says Kim. “Now that the defoliant issue is here, I feel like it may be the reason my daughter is sick.”Since allegations surfaced that American soldiers buried Agent Orange on this military base, the small village of Waegwan has been thrust into the middle of an international controversy. And residents worry they might have been exposed for years.“I am concerned for the people of our country,” says Kyun-Ho Kwak, chairman of Chilgok County. He tells CBS 5 Investigates he has seen a high number of unexplained illnesses in his county.“The stream near the base leads to the Nak-Dong River,” says Kwak. “So, I believe that if the Agent Orange is buried there, it could have caused illnesses.”He says the county is conducting its own investigation, because he believes the U.S. military has not been forthcoming.“As the investigation proceeded, we were suspicious because there was not transparency,” says Kwak.But a father in the village named Sang-Chul Park says he doesn’t need test results to tell him what he already knows. Both his sons are sick.“I wish this tragedy had never happened,” says Park.Park’s oldest son, Yun-Bum, has autism. And his 13-year-old son, Yun-Uk, has leukemia.“Sometimes I don’t want to go to the hospital,” says Yun-Uk. “I just want to play with my friends without any worries.”Yun-Uk spends his days in front of the television or on the computer. He does not have many visitors because of the risk of germs.Sang-Chul Park takes CBS 5 Investigates to a little house, the place where he once lived with his sons. It’s now nothing more than an overgrown field, next to some abandoned apartments. He points out the dormant well where they got their water.“I drank this water,” he says. “Everybody drank it. I cooked rice with it. It was part of our daily life.”Just over the fence, about a hundred yards away, is Camp Carroll. And a stream where Park would fish with his sons.Locals say that in the past they’ve seen oil floating from the base in the stream. The obvious problem is that there are crops growing right on the bank.When I went to a protest for this when the allegations of agent orange being buried first came out the US soldiers pointed loaded and off-safety assault rifles at unarmed, peacefully protesting civilians.I grew up with my grandparents who lived in Maehyang-ri where there was a U.S. air base which contaminated the ground water which we used to drink and wash and grow our rice crops.I now have a brain tumor. -- source link
#us military