PEACE-MAKER
Tensions have escalated once again in the Korean Peninsula following the series of missile tests conducted by North Korea since the start of the year.
The Korean Peninsula is one of the lingering flashpoints in Asia and the global community with possible wide-ranging catastrophic consequences.
In 1990, as congressman and acting chairman of the foreign relations committee of the House of Representatives, we had the privilege of conferring with the legendary North Korean leader, President Kim Il-sung, at his mountain villa north of Pyongyang. We were accompanied by Congressman Miguel Romero, business leader Len Oreta, husband of then Congresswoman Tessie Aquino-Oreta, and civic and education leader Nestor Kalaw.
Our visit and talks with North Korea’s founding President Kim Il-sung resulted in a return visit to Manila by then North Korean Vice Premier Kim Dahl Hyun, and the rapid establishment of diplomatic relations between the Philippines and North Korea (DPRK), with the active support of then President Corazon Aquino and the Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus.
Despite his forbidding reputation, we found the legendary Kim Il-sung widely and keenly interested in the outside world. Our appointment stretched to more than one hour as we exchanged views on many issues.
When we inquired into the possibility of another war on the Korean Peninsula, he dismissed the liability outright. Conflict would be foolish, he said emphatically, it would only cause mutual destruction in both North and South Korea that neither side could afford to suffer. He told us: “If we attack the South, the South will be destroyed. But we in the North will also be destroyed.” As chairman of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), we have been mobilizing the Asian political parties in hopes that we can help bridge the gap between the two Koreas by helping promote the feasibility of establishing the Korean Confederation for the two Koreas, until at some point in the future, they can become a united Republic, with alternating presidency. It is a difficult but not an impossible dream because the two Vietnams and the two Germanys eventually reunited after many years of division and conflict.
We envisioned that South and North would keep their independent countries separate but in peace and join in a loose confederation, normally trading and doing business, engaging in cross-trade and tourism, developing their agriculture, industries, fisheries, highways, airways, and railways system, and connecting from Pusan in the deep south (gateway to Japan), all the way to the north, in a Trans-Siberia Railway leading to Russia and to Europe.
This is possible and probable if there is common will, with the support of the US, China, Russia, and Japan, with ASEAN, the European Union, and UN providing guidance and active support.
It is not fair to ask North Korea now to give up its nuclear weapons and it will not, but the relations between the two Koreas can and should develop normally, if they start preparing for it now.
In earlier days, atomic powers like Kazakhstan, which is almost as large as Western Europe, also voluntarily demilitarized and gave up its nuclear weapons and today leads in Eurasia.
Indeed, North Korea could leverage and give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for large-scale cash and economic assistance and rapidly build up its economy and be equal in status as sovereigns with South Korea.
We in Asia and the global community must build on the historic direct talks between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and between Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, which we hope will eventually lead to a roadmap to an eventual unification and a lasting peace in the Korean Peninsula.
Earlier in 2006, as our humble contribution in helping encourage direct talks between Seoul and Pyongyang, we transferred from Manila to Seoul the Secretariat of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), which we founded and established in Manila in September 2000, and of which we are privileged to serve as founding chairman and chairman of the standing committee up to now. The ICAPP Secretariat is now most active in Seoul. The political parties of South Korea are members of ICAPP as well as North Korea’s Korean Workers Party.
Students of realpolitik will say that maybe our hopes represent wishful thinking but that is how all impossible initiatives begin.