BEIJING — A 13-year-old American boy campaigning to turn the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea into a peace park tried to get the Chinese president's attention Monday, staging a brief protest near Tiananmen Square before being led away by police.
Jonathan Lee unfurled a sign saying "peace treaty" and "nuclear free DMZ children's peace forest" as he stood outside Tiananmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, in central Beijing.
RELATED:China 'hijacks' internet for 18 minutes, US gov't saysLess than a minute later, a man presumed to be a plainclothes police officer grabbed Lee's sign and waved away watching journalists, who had been contacted by Lee's family ahead of time. Three or four uniformed police officers then hurriedly escorted Lee and his mother away without commotion.
Police held the pair and a few hours later Lee and his mother, Melissa Lee, returned to their hotel. Then, the two, as well as the boy's father and sister checked out of their rooms at the Courtyard Marriott, a hotel receptionist said.
The boy, from Ridgeland, Mississippi, is trying to persuade the leaders of North and South Korea, China and the United States to work for reunification of the two Koreas.
"Hopefully my picketing will touch them in a way, so they'll really consider peace, you know, between North and South Korea," Lee said in an interview Friday with the documentary filmmaker that was provided to The Associated Press. "I guess I'm just trying to do, you know, what God would want, making peace."
His father, Kyoung Lee, said in a written statement Monday that his son has sent letters to President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak but had not been able to give a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao. That, the father said, made the Tiananmen protest necessary.
Passionate and strong-willed Lee is the latest, and perhaps youngest, activist to try to bring peace to the heavily militarized Korean peninsula, divided since the 1950-53 Korean War in which both the US and China fought. The US is Seoul's ally, stationing troops in the well-off nation, while China is the main economic and diplomatic backer of the isolated, impoverished North.
Lee made a rare visit to North Korea in August to propose his idea of a
"children's peace forest" in the demilitarized zone and was taken on a
tour of the 2.5-mile (four-kilometer)-wide buffer zone, which is sealed
off with electric fences and studded with land mines. A hoped-for
meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il did not materialize,
although Lee said the officials forwarded to Kim a letter from him.
The Lee's treatment by Chinese authorities was relatively mild compared
with the often rough handling and swift, forced deportation given to
most foreigners who try to stage protests in China.
A US Embassy spokesman declined to comment on the case, saying Lee family members had not signed privacy waivers.