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Military Base
The United States and South Korean governments came to an agreement to enlarge Camp Humphreys in 2001 — a US Army installation outside Anjeong-ri, a community in Pyeongtaek — and move the majority of US forces stationed in and north of Seoul to the Camp Humphreys area. Invoking eminent domain, the government obtained the surrounding land for the base expansion. The expansion would force thousands of Korean farmers to evacuate. This would result in the community's third displacement from their own land since the Japanese occupation during World War II.

The move originally included the headquarters of the Combined Forces Command, which has operational control of ROK (Republic of Korea), US, and UN combined forces during wartime. In March 2007, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and ROK Minister of Defense Kim Jang-soo agreed to dissolve the ROK-US Combined Forces Command on April 17, 2012.[1] This would allow ROK forces to have wartime control of its military during a military confrontation with the North. The US/ROK agreement allows USFK to move to one centralized location away from the congestion of Seoul and its surrounding areas. This relocation agreement results in returning two-thirds of the land currently used by the United States Military back to the Korean government. By 2008, the US military was to have consolidated 41 installations down to 10 due to the relocation agreement. USFK's only jail facility in South Korea is at Camp Humphreys.

Osan Air Base is in Songtan, a district in Pyeongtaek City.

Nonviolent Resistance
Korean peace organizations and 200 residents of Pyeongtaek strongly oppose the expansion. They attempted to take legal action to fight the proposed expansion but had no success in changing the Korean government's decision. On August 23, 2004, the Korean government offered $13,000 (USD) to each resident for their land. The residents declined the compensation because the offer was not sufficient enough to justify relocation. In December, 2004, the Korean government included an additional 2500 to 3000 acres of land. February, 2005, an activist group called Peace Wind joined with the protesters of Daechuri village in forming a resistance campaign. The group coordinated help from religious groups, artists, and other activist groups to turn the village into a "peace village". Daechuri displayed murals, posters, paintings, and inspirational phrases around the town. Residents and activist held a peaceful protest through a candlelight vigil in the evening. In December 2005, the Korean Land Expropriation Committee confirmed the base expansion. Residents whom continued to live in Doduri and Daechuri were considered trespassing. The local farmers showed their disdain by burning their Korean residence cards, renounce their citizenship, and turned the town of Daechuri into a sovereign land. The protestors base of operations was set up inside an elementary school in town.

There have been heightened protests against the base expansion. Moreover, authorities evicted protestors from occupying the elementary school and working the fields where the base will be built by placing barbed wire at the boundary of the future base.[1]

Protesters Main Goals
The protesters came up with four goals for the government to address:
 * First, they want the government to end violent oppression against the farmers in Daechuri.
 * Second, a legal pathway to discuss the military base expansion proposal with the government and local farmers.
 * Third, revisions to the Republic of Korea-United States Status of Forces Agreement must be made.
 * Finally, the government has to recognize the rights of the farmers to live and work on their land and forgo further actions to continue the military base expansion.

Government Retaliation
In March 2006, the Ministry of Defence and police took action in taking over Daechuri. 4,000 officers entered the village with intentions to destroy the farmers rice paddies. Protesters used roadblocks and themselves to prevent the police from disrupting their crops for the year. Forty protesters were taken into custody while many others received injuries during the clash. The government made another attempt to put pressure on the protesters on April 6th. 5,000 riot police were sent to Daechuri to create more difficulties for the farmers to use the land. The riot police used cement on the land and disabled the irrigation system. Twenty households withdrew their efforts and left Daechuri with monetary compensation. 190 household continued to resist. In May, the government gave the residents until June to leave the land. A ban was put in place to prevent farming on the land; however, the farmers defied the government by growing rice crops for Spring. Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook met with cabinet ministers to come up with ways to end the standoff.

Protests erupted on May 4, 2006, when some 13,000 South Korean military soldiers and riot police arrived to guard the land where the new Camp Humphreys was to be built. The Korean military build a 29 kilometre fence and blocked all roads to the village in order to cut off all support to the protesters. 8,000 police guarded the outside perimeter at all hours of the day along with 3,000 additional police inside the fence. When the protesters tried to push through the barrier, they were met with violence by the police. Defence Ministry forces managed to destroy the elementary school which resulted in the injury of 200 protesters and the apprehension of 500 others. Both Amnesty International and the Human Rights Commission of the Republic of Korea condemned the actions taken by the government.

Actions by Other Activist Groups
After the violent conflict the protesters created a group called the Pan-national Committee to Deter the Expansion of US Bases which was lead by a Catholic priest named Moon Jung-Hyun. This group consisted of 138 other civic groups. The actions from the resistance movement brought attention to other supporters from around the country. 6,000 protesters took part in a candlelight vigil in Seoul in support for cancelling the expansion to the military base as well as for the police to free 16 activist from jail. 3,500 protesters from labor groups and college students organized demonstrations in Pyeongtaek. 18,000 police officers were dispatched to put up roadblocks in Daechuri and outlaw the students' protest. Students attempted to go through the roadblocks with little success. They decided to sit down right on the police line. Some of the residents from Daechuri joined the students from the other side of the roadblock.

May 16, 70 households remained resistant to the US military base expansion. In June, the head farmer of Daechuri village Kim Jae Ti was arrested while heading to a village meeting between Daechuri and Doduri. Father Moon Jung-hyun and other protesters in Daechuri held a hunger strike for the release of Kim. On July 4, 50 individual from the Pan-national Committee to Deter the Expansion spent five days walking 91 miles from Presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul all the way to Daechuri. While the marchers continued to Daechuri, demonstration were forming around the office of the Defence Ministery and detention houses in Pyeongtaek with the hopes of the release imprisoned protesters.

Conclusion to the Conflict
Pro-expansion protests were also witnessed during this time but at a much smaller scale. The main arguments of the pro-expansion protests were that the protestors that were occupying the Daechu-ri Elementary School were not local farmers but were from an organized anti-US civic group from outside of Pyeongtaek. They estimated that fewer than 10% of the individuals that were protesting the expansion of Camp Humphreys were farmers that were being evicted.[4]

In September, demolish crews, private security forces, and 22,000 riot police prepared to knock down all the buildings in Daechuri. Protesters took action by putting theirselves in between the houses and the bulldozers. Some individuals stood on top of their roofs to save their homes. 60 homes were reduced to rubble while the protesters managed to save 13 homes. In October, half of the 92 remaining households in Doduri agreed to money every month for ten year, and farmland away from the expansion zone. The last 50 households in Daechuri were evacuated from the area. The remaining 61 households began to discuss with the government about specific compensation in early January, 2007. In February, the final households agreed to compensation and resettlement by the end of March.

The number of individual whom took part in the resistance amounted to about 74,200 protesters and resisters during the campaign. Police involved in the conflict with protesters were as many as 187,800 during the eviction process. The expected completion date for the expansion process was said to finish by 2017. As planned, Yongsan Garrison, in Seoul, and the Second Infantry Division will be moved to Camp Humphreys by 2019.