THE KOREAN PENINSULA: A TRANSCEND PERSPECTIVE

German poet Goethe once said: \'\'People behave the way you treat them.\'\' To a large extent, this applies also in international relations, write Johan Galtung, Professor of Peace Studies and Director of TRANSCEND, a peace and development network, and Dietrich Fischer, Professor at Pace University and Co-director of TRANSCEND. In this article for IPS, the authors write that Bush\'s inclusion of North Korea with Iraq and Iran in the \'\'axis of evil\'\' made North Korea more belligerent, as even the US government now seems to recognise. The hawk/dove balance in North Korea can be tilted by the hawk/dove balance exerted by the US, South Korea, Japan and China, and to some extent by Russia. Fischer and Galtung recommend five steps to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula: Continuation of Sunshine Policy; Regime change in North Korea, like in China, heading for more democracy and human rights; a One nation/two states Confederation on the Korean Peninsula; a Conference for Security and Cooperation in Northeast Asia; foreign troop withdrawl from the Korean Peninsula. What helped end the cold war in Europe was a gradual mutual opening to the flow of ideas, goods and people. The same policy can work in Korea.

BUILDING UTOPIA

The World Social Forum grew directly out of the economic, social, and political conditions of the opening of the 21st century, writes Candido Grzybowski a sociologist, director of IBASE (Brazilian Institute for Socio-economic Analysis) and member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum. Vast numbers of people remain trapped in profound desperation, in the deep crisis of a global capitalism that in its neo-liberal form is even more savage and destructive. Others face the even worse prospect of bombs and death, the fruits of a logic of terror and war. While it isn\'t yet clear how we can exit this crisis, what is clear is that it is time to act, the author writes in this article for IPS. The WSF is an initiative designed to overcome neoliberal globalisation and bring about a globalisation based on solidarity, democracy, and sustainability. It establishes that political action is the responsibility of each individual and the coalitions they form, not an attribute of the forum.

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

The World Social Forum (WSF), to be held January 23-28 for the third year in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has become the prime organisational expression of a surging movement against corporate-driven globalisation and, this year, US plans to launch a war on Iraq, writes Walden Bello, professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South. This year\'s meeting will be the culmination of an exciting year-long global process, including Porto Alegre-style social forums in a number of cities, including Buenos Aires and Caracas, and regional social forums: the European Social Forum in Florence, Italy, on November 6-9, 2002, and the recently- concluded Asian Social Forum (ASF) in Hyderabad, India. Since Seattle, the anti-corporate globalisation movement has attained critical mass globally, in the sense that its ability to mass forces at significant junctures, such as the December 1999 Seattle WTO ministerial and the July 2001 Genoa meeting of the Group of Eight, enabled it to effect international developments and acquire a high ideological and political profile globally. Not surprisingly, many of those at the WSF will be coming with one question uppermost in their mind: What can the victory of Lula and the PT teach us about coming to power in our countries? And this year\'s WSF will be, in many ways, a celebration of a movement that, by achieving a remarkable measure of political unity amidst diversity, has changed the face of Brazilian politics.

A BETTER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

There is promising evidence of a growing consensus among those of us working in international agencies, and leaders in government, business, and civil society, that we can begin to solve the world\'s problems only if we forge a new development path linking economic growth to social and environmental responsibility, writes James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank. In this article for IPS, the author writes that without social equity, economic growth cannot be sustainable. Without enlarging the real opportunities available to all citizens, the markets will work only for the elites. This means providing everyone with access to education, health care, decent work, and -- as the new Brazilian president Lula has pointed out -- with at least 3 meals a day. The events of September 11, 2001, helped drive home the message to people everywhere that there are not two worlds - rich and poor. There is only one. We are linked by finance, trade, migration, communications, environment, communicable diseases, crime, drugs, and certainly by terror. Poverty anywhere is poverty everywhere. Our collective demand is for a global system based on equity, human rights, and social justice. Our collective quest for a more equal world is also the quest for long-term peace and security.