JINHA

NEWS CENTER –Women peace activists held a historic march across the world's most highly militarized zone, the Korean DMZ, to call for an end to the 70-year state of war between the Koreas.

The women, among them Nobel laureates Leymah Gbowee and Mairead Maguire, crossed the 4-kilometer strip of land that divides the Korean peninsula in a march calling for a just peace for women, the reunion of divided families and the resolution of the state of war between the two Koreas. The women chose yesterday, Women's Day for Peace and Disarmament, for their march.

Although the women have struggled for over two years to get permission for the march from the governments of both North and South Korea, the governments' last-minute intransigence forced them to make charges to the march route. The Koreas refused to let the women march through Panmunjom, the village where in 1953, the two sides (and the U.S., one of the main forces in the war) signed an agreement that created the Demilitarized Zone and condemned the two countries to a state of constant low-level war. The women had to use buses for parts of the march.

A group of North Korean women managed to gain government approval for a peace march in Pyongyang, where they carried a banner reading "for the leadership of women in the Korean peace process." Meanwhile, at the entrance to South Korea, the group waiting to greet the women was faced with the verbal harassment of fascist groups who chanted at the women to go back to North Korea and said that "dialogue would not solve anything."

The women held a women's peace symposium in North Korea on Saturday. Today, they will do the same in South Korea.

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