PEACE-MAKER
Jose de Venecia Jr.
Former Speaker of the House
Tensions have escalated once again in the Korean Peninsula following the reported 23 missile tests conducted by North Korea in a single day.
South Korea responded with warplanes firing three air-to-ground missiles over the disputed maritime demarcation line.
Pyongyang accused the South and the US of “aggressive and provocative” action when the two countries conducted large-scale joint military exercises.
The Korean Peninsula is one of the lingering flashpoints in Asia and the global community with wide-ranging catastrophic consequences.
The Philippines and the global community must continue to encourage, support, and contribute to a peaceful resolution of the crisis in the Korean Peninsula. As we always say, we cannot give up on peace as the alternative, which is war, is immeasurably more costly and makes all of us losers.
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 joined 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 assistance to 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. 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 bold initiatives begin.