Amid rising threats of another war on the Korean peninsula, local activists gathered to call for peace Monday evening in San Francisco.

More than 100 people protested the escalation of hostilities in Korea, including a sizable East Bay Korean-American contingent. Protesters wanted the U.S. to engage in direct talks with North Korea and begin negotiating a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War.

Terry Park, a graduate student at University of California, Davis, said all the parties – the U.S., North Korea and South Korea – need to realize they are all accountable for the current situation.

“To try to focus on who made the first attack is irrelevant because the main point is that the Korean War did not end in 1953,” Park said. “And without a formal peace treaty … tragic incidents like this will keep on happening.”

The Korean War ended via a temporary armistice signed between the United Nations and North Korea. Since then, skirmishes between the North and South have occasionally occurred. Prior to the latest Yeonpyeong Island incident, there was another controversial clash earlier in the year when a South Korean warship sunk and 46 sailors died. South Korea has blamed the North for the explosion, but the North denied any involvement.

Steph Lee, an organizer for Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans, or HOBAK, said the current South Korean president has contributed to the increased strain between the two states.

“Since Lee Myung Bak, the [South Korean] president, has come into office, he’s pretty much taken back every gain that has happened through other more progressive presidents before him,” Lee said.

This latest round of aggression caused both North and South Korea to emit heavy-handed rhetoric. Additionally, the U.S. dispatched a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to the area, and the U.S. and South Korea continue their joint military exercises in the peninsula, further angering the North. China has called for resumption of the six-party talks over this incident, which has been soundly rejected by the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

Lee said past tactics, including the six-party talks, have not worked and the U.S. needs to engage North Korea directly.

“It’s been the U.S. position to not 'reward' bad behavior, so they don’t want to actually legitimize the [North Korean] government by sitting down,” Lee said. “[North Korea] has been … saying over and over again, ‘We want to sit at the table. We will give up our nuclear warhead capabilities to have direct negotiations.’ So all it takes is for Washington to say, ‘We want to talk with you.’”

Bill Hackwell, a Vietnam War veteran and an organizer with the ANSWER Coalition, said the U.S. has been the true aggressor in the Korean peninsula ever since the war in 1950.

“North Korea is demonized day in and day out,” Hackwell said. “And we know the Korean people would love to have normal relations with the U.S. and that just because they’ve taken an independent stance … that makes them a so-called a terrorist country.”