hankyoreh

Moon Chung-in, chairman of the Hankyoreh Foundation for Reunification and Culture, speaks during the opening session of the Hankyoreh-Bustan International Symposium held at the Nurimaru APEC House in Busan on Oct. 26. (Kim Jung-hyo/The Hankyoreh)

The 18th Hankyoreh-Busan International Symposium, which was hosted by the city of Busan and the Hankyoreh Foundation for Reunification and Culture, kicked off at Nurimaru APEC House in Busan on Wednesday. The two-day symposium is organized around the theme of “Peace and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula beyond the new Cold War and hegemonic struggle.”

Speakers at the symposium shared ideas for defending peace and preventing the outbreak of a new Cold War, while expressing concern about the war in Ukraine, the strategic competition between the US and China, and the rising tensions in inter-Korean relations.

Stein Tønnesson, a research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, delivered the keynote presentation via video call on Wednesday. According to Tønnesson, the Taiwan Strait is the area of greatest risk for a clash between the US and China.

Tønnesson counseled the countries of East Asia to bring the US and China back from the brink of war in their rivalry. South Korea and Japan, he said, need to persuade the US to respect its past promises by holding to the “One China” principle and calling for the status quo to be maintained until change can be achieved through peaceful means.

“Middle-sized countries such as South Korea need to step forward if we are to mitigate the US and China’s strategic competition and geopolitical conflict. It’s important to have security through peaceful discourse, rather than security through strength,” said Moon Chung-in, who is chairman of the Hankyoreh Foundation for Reunification and Culture.

The participants in the symposium’s opening ceremony stressed that peace is an indispensable prerequisite for moving into a future of prosperity.

“I hope this symposium will serve as an opportunity to reconfirm that our city of Busan is a hub of global peace and common prosperity and also to draw more attention to Busan’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo,” wrote Busan Mayor Park Heong-joon in a welcome address that was read on his behalf by Lee Byung-jin, the city’s deputy mayor for administrative affairs.

Ahn Sung-min, speaker of the Busan Metropolitan Council, also sent in a written message of congratulations. “Given Busan’s deep-felt and ambitious dream of moving toward a global transformation and a better future by hosting the 2030 World Expo, peace is inevitably a fateful task that’s directly connected to the destiny of the city,” Ahn wrote in the message.

“Our best future is one we must make ourselves,” said Kim Hyun-dae, president of the Hankyoreh newspaper, while addressing the deteriorating situation on the Korean Peninsula in his congratulatory message.

“We need to work even harder as we keep moving down the path toward peace,” Kim stressed

By Kwon Hyuk-chul, staff reporter

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