In Japan, the youth group donated the proceeds from their recycling to single-mother families with hospitalized children through the NPO Keep Mama Smiling. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto.

By Karuta Yamamoto
TOKYO, Japan, Mar 6 2026 (IPS)

From the beginning, this project was a collaboration between student teams in Japan and Korea. Although we live in different countries, we shared one common question: How can young people reduce waste while supporting families facing food insecurities?
Our journey began with a problem we could see clearly in our communities.

In Japan, food insecurity often hides behind quiet dignity. According to a recent survey by Save the Children Japan, over 90 percent of low-income households with children reported struggling to afford enough food, with many families forced to cut back on even basic staples such as rice due to rising prices.

The Japan and Korean team of all 11 students presented ‘The Co-creation of Youth from Waste to Hope’ at the 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 9) Thematic Event. Credit: Ticad 9

The Japanese team leader, Karuta Yamamoto, and the Korean team presented ‘What we want in Africa for the future’ at the Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, during TICAD 9.

Japan and Korea Team Leader, Karuta Yamamoto and Emma Shin, in an interview with UNFPA Seoul. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

The Korean team set up a shop at a bazaar at Arumjigi, Seoul, Korea. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

Single-parent households—most led by mothers—face especially high levels of food hardship and are often compelled to make painful decisions about how limited budgets are spent. For some families, this means choosing between symbolic moments of celebration and everyday nutrition. A ¥3,000 Christmas cake may represent joy for one household, but for another, that same amount must stretch to five kilograms of rice—enough to feed a family for several days.

At the same time, vast amounts of edible food are wasted in Japan. Official statistics show that millions of tons of food are discarded annually in Japan, much of it still edible. Seasonal items such as Christmas cakes, which cannot be sold after December 25, are frequently thrown away. This contrast—waste on one side and hunger on the other—reflects the global challenge addressed by SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.

As students in Japan and Korea, we asked ourselves, “What role can we play in closing this gap?”

We knew that awareness alone would not change habits. enough. Instead of telling people to feel guilty about food waste, we decided to take action together.

We began locally, but with shared purpose.

In Japan, students at Dalton Tokyo Senior High School noticed that mandarin oranges—one of the country’s most common fruits—often go uneaten, with peels and seeds discarded. In Korea, students identified a different issue: more than 150,000 tons of used coffee grounds are discarded each year, contributing to landfill emissions and greenhouse gas emissions.

Different materials.

One shared goal.

Rather than seeing waste as the end of a product’s life, we saw it as a beginning.

Research shows that citrus peels contain essential oils that can be used in soaps and cleaning products. Studies in Korea also demonstrate that spent coffee grounds can be processed into sustainable biomaterials suitable for eco-friendly design and 3D printing. Plantable seed paper—made from recycled paper embedded with seeds—is another example of how waste can be transformed into something regenerative.

Inspired by these ideas, our student teams turned theory into action.

Japanese students created handmade soaps using discarded citrus peels.

Handmade soaps using discarded citrus peels. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

The soaps ready for sale. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

Korean students developed 3D-printed clip-on vases incorporating recycled coffee grounds, encouraging people to reuse empty bottles and cups instead of discarding them.

The Korean students developed 3D-printed clip-on vases incorporating recycled coffee grounds. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

They also produced plantable seed paper from recycled materials, allowing waste to literally grow into flowers and herbs.

Korean students produced plantable seed paper from recycled materials. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto.

These products were not sold as charity goods. Instead, they were shared as examples of responsible consumption—showing that waste can have a second life through our design. Through this work, we directly supported SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, which calls for reducing waste through recycling and reuse, and SDG 13: Climate Action, by lowering emissions through upcycling.

At the same time, the funds raised had a clear purpose.

The profits were used to support families facing food insecurity. In Japan, we donated to single-mother families with hospitalized children through the NPO Keep Mama Smiling (see main photo for the opinion piece).

They also provided essential cooking ingredients to the Karuizawa Food Bank. By connecting environmental action with helping families in need, our project also supported SDG 2: Zero Hunger.

The group provided cooking ingredients to the Karuizawa Food Bank. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

Through this experience, we learned that caring for the planet and caring for people are not separate goals. Waste reduction and hunger relief became connected in one youth-led effort—turning environmental responsibility into community solidarity.

But our collaboration did not stop in Japan and Korea.

Through a partnership with the OneSmile Foundation—an organization that transforms digital smiles into donations—we connected our local initiatives to a global challenge. During workshops, we learned that school meal donations in Lesotho had stopped the previous year. Without reliable meals, many students were struggling to focus in class.

Together, our Japanese and Korean teams raised over 300,000 Japanese yen.

The Japanese and Korean teams celebrate their fundraising efforts. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

Working with local partners in Lesotho, we organized a community-based food support initiative at Rasetimela High School, which serves 863 students. School feeding programs play a critical role in Lesotho, and recent disruptions have left many students more vulnerable to hunger.

Students at Rasetimela High School in Lesotho receive donations of food. Courtesy: Rasetimela High School

Ninety-one of the most vulnerable students were selected through transparent criteria, including those supported by social welfare programs and those who had previously relied on international assistance. Each selected family received staple foods such as rice and corn flour to make a local staple called pap. Distribution was organized near the school to ensure safety and allow parents to collect the supplies securely.

This cross-border effort—connecting students, NGOs, local leaders, and communities—reflects the spirit of SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals.

Although we live in different countries, climates, and cultures, this experience reshaped how we understand global cooperation. The students in Lesotho were not distant beneficiaries. We became peers in a shared world.

They became peers in a shared world. Courtesy: Rasetimela High School

As young people, we often believe our impact is limited because we do not control large resources. This project challenged that belief. We learned that we can create change by designing solutions, raising awareness, and working together.

We even tried to measure what we called a “Happiness Index” by counting the smiles of students who received support. Those smiles reminded us that sustainability is not only environmental or economic—it is human.

Our experience shows that youth are not just future leaders. We are active contributors today. When creativity meets collaboration, waste can become opportunity, and local action can grow into global solidarity.

Turning waste into hope is not an abstract idea.
It is a choice—and young people are already making it.

Edited by Dr Hanna Yoon

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Kenya's high-level delegation meets the Republic of Korea's high-level delegation. Kenya will host the 11th OOC. Credit: OOC

By Joyce Chimbi
BUSAN, Korea, Apr 30 2025 (IPS)

Participants from over 100 countries will leave the 10th Our Ocean Conference in Busan, the Republic of Korea, with stark reminders that with sea levels rising dangerously, coastal regions and low-lying areas globally, particularly densely populated areas, are threatened.

Asia, Africa, island nations, as well as the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts are increasingly on the frontlines of the coastal climatic carnage. Countries and regions at high risk include Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, and Pacific Island nations like Tuvalu and Fiji. In 2024, floods caused the highest number of fatalities in Africa in countries such as Cameroon and Nigeria.

“We started this conference with the understanding that the ocean is under threat. A third of the world’s fisheries are overfished. Illegal and destructive fishing is damaging the ecosystems. It hurts the coastal communities that depend on it and undermines global economies. So, to risk the ocean risks the future security of all of our countries and the planet,” said Tony Long, CEO, Global Fishing Watch.

The Our Ocean Conference gathered approximately 1,000 global leaders from various sectors, including heads of state and high-level government officials from over 100 countries, and representatives from more than 400 international and non-profit organizations. Together, they discussed diverse and concrete actions for a sustainable ocean.

Today, experts highlighted the intersection of the ocean, climate, and biodiversity in finding solutions that transform science into political action. While the ocean is on the frontlines of the climate crisis, it is also a significant source of sustainable solutions because it absorbs nearly 25 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and 90 percent of the heat resulting from these emissions.

The 30×30 campaign supports the national and global movements to protect at least 30 percent of the blue planet’s land, waters, and ocean by 2030. While moderating a session on the importance of 30×30 and progress in national waters, Melissa Wright, a senior member of the environment team at Bloomberg Philanthropies, where she leads the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative, spoke about ongoing support for the global ambition.

“We’re supporting global ambition to achieve 30×30 in the ocean through equitable and inclusive partnerships and initiatives with civil society, governments, indigenous and community groups, and local leaders. Since 2014, the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative has invested more than USD366 million to advance ocean conservation,” she said.

The initiative works in tandem with governments, NGOs, and local leaders to accelerate the designation and enforcement of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Most recently, the initiative has pushed for the rapid ratification of the High Seas Treaty and ensured the creation of MPAs in areas beyond national jurisdiction.

“We do not have much time left until 2030 to achieve the 30×30. As such, we are presented with a unique and challenging opportunity for ambitious, robust enhancement to our national and global capacities for the protection, conservation, and sustainability of our oceans,” said Noralene Uy, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Planning, and Foreign-Assisted and Special Projects, Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Noralene Uy speaking to participants about the Philippines’ efforts and challenges towards achieving the 30×30 targets. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

The Philippines is one of the 17 megadiverse countries in the world, meaning it possesses a high level of biodiversity and a large number of endemic species. The country is home to a significant portion of the world’s plant and animal species, including many unique and endemic species.

Within this context, she said an undue burden weighs on the Philippines given limited resources and other priority development objectives. Nonetheless, the country has turned to science and is making progress. The country has established marine scientific research stations strategically located in the major marine biogeographic regions of the country to provide insights and knowledge into their ocean.

They have also formulated the national ocean environment policy, stressing that as science and policy evolve according to the priorities of our country, organizational structures and knowledge systems must change as well.

To achieve the highest ambition in marine protection, the Philippines and coastal communities around the globe now have an ever-greater need for financing and technical resources. Brian O’Donnell, Director, Campaign for Nature, explained that the only available assessment of the cost of 30×30 on a global scale is now five years old.

“According to the assessment, it would cost about USD 100 billion a year to implement 30×30 both on land and in the sea and at the time of the assessment, only about USD 20 billion was being spent, leaving an USD 80 billion annual shortfall,” he explained.

“Not only do we need to ensure we get more money into this space, but that money is delivered efficiently and effectively to the people, communities, and countries where biodiversity is and those who are safeguarding it.”

O’Donnell said that, despite ongoing challenges in mobilizing financial resources, there is some notable progress. He spoke about the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022, which includes a target for wealthy nations to provide at least USD 20 billion annually in international biodiversity finance to developing countries by 2025, increasing to USD 30 billion by 2030.

This target aims to help developing countries implement their biodiversity strategies and action plans, particularly those in Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States. But O’Donnell said there is a need to change how things are done, as, unfortunately, much of the financing to developing countries is coming in the form of loans and short-term financing.

In all, he encouraged partnerships and collaboration in raising much-needed resources, such as the Oceans 5, which is dedicated to protecting the world’s five oceans. Oceans 5 is an international funders’ collaborative dedicated to stopping overfishing, establishing marine protected areas, and constraining offshore oil and gas development, three of the highest priorities identified by marine scientists around the world. Bloomberg Philanthropies is a founding partner of Oceans 5.

Looking ahead, there is optimism that by the time delegates settle down for the 11th Our Ocean Conference in 2026 in Kenya, the global community will have moved the needle in their efforts across finance, policy, capacity building, and research towards marine protected areas, sustainable blue economy, climate change, maritime security, sustainable fisheries, and reduction of marine pollution.

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An image illustrating the ‘No-senior zone’ in a Korean café. Credit: The Nation

By Hyunsung (Julie) Lee
SEOUL, Oct 13 2023 (IPS)

Growing up in a culture that values respect for elders, I was acutely aware of the importance of caring for our aging population. However, my journey to understanding the gravity of this issue truly began with a personal anecdote. I watched my grandmother, a pillar of strength throughout my childhood, gradually withdraw from the vibrant world in which she once thrived. The cheerful twinkle in her eyes began to dim, replaced by an eerie sense of isolation.

This experience opened my eyes to a stark reality: a disturbing surge in elderly suicide rates hidden beneath the facade of cultural reverence for seniors in Korea and Japan. In 2021, these rates reached 61.3 deaths per 100,000 people in Korea, primarily driven by profound social isolation.

Suicide deaths in Korea. Credit: Statista

Some may argue that these figures are insignificant, but the persistence of a high suicide rate cannot be dismissed. Moreover, they are poised to become even more critical as we approach a world where, according to WHO, the elderly population over the age of 60 is expected to double by 2050, and those 80 years or older are projected to triple.

So how severe are the elderly suicide rates due to isolation in Korea and Japan? Well, research highlights that this is due to the significant rise in the elderly population. Such an increase has been concurrent with the rising elderly suicide rates. The Global Burden of Disease study emphasizes that the global elderly suicide rate is almost triple the suicide rates across all other age groups. For example, in South Korea alone, there has been a 300% increase in elderly suicide rates.

If the world’s elderly population has increased overall, why is it that the elderly suicide rates within Korea and Japan have been especially severe? This was particularly confusing as I believed that due to cultural and social standards of filial piety and respecting your elders, such suicide rates would be low. However, I found the answer to my own question when I visited Korea in July this year.

When I arrived in the country, one of the first things I did was to visit a cafe to meet with a friend. However, as I was about to enter the cafe, I saw a group of elderly men and women leaving the cafe while comforting each other, saying, “It’s okay; it’s not the first time we’ve been rejected.” As I later found out, this was because the cafe was a ‘no-senior zone.’

Similar to how some places are designated as ‘no-kid zones,’ this cafe, and others, did not allow people over the age of 60 to enter.  According to Lee Min-ah at Chung-Ang University, “The continuous emergence of ‘no-something zones’ in our society means that exclusion among groups is increasing, while efforts to understand each other are disappearing.”

I also discovered that age discrimination is also present in other aspects of the elderly’s life, more specifically, in the workplace. According to a survey by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, in 2018, 59 percent of the Korean elderly found it difficult to be employed due to age restrictions, and a further 44 percent experienced ageism within their workplace. The increase in discrimination against the elderly has heightened their sense of isolation, eventually leading to cases of suicide in extreme circumstances.

Jung Sook Park, the Secretary General of World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (WeGo) with the author Hyunsung (Julie) Lee.

Interview with Jung Sook Park, the Secretary General of WeGo at the Seoul Global Center

I wanted to learn more about the current action being taken to help the elderly feel more included in our society, as I believed this would be key to preventing isolation-related suicide cases. To gain further insight, I decided to interview Jung Sook Park, the Secretary General of the World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (WeGo).

WeGo is an international association of local governments, smart tech solution providers, and institutions committed to transforming cities worldwide into smart and sustainable cities through partnerships. I believe that by interviewing the Secretary General of WeGo, I would be able to learn more about the specific solutions that governments and organizations are implementing collaboratively.

Through my interview, I gained an understanding that the South Korean government and social organizations are currently focusing on addressing age discrimination, recognizing it as a key factor in isolationism.

Park mentioned that one specific approach to resolving this issue involves the use of ‘meta spaces’ and technological wristbands. She emphasized that in today’s technology-driven world, enabling the elderly to adapt to such technology could bridge the generation gap between the younger and older generations. She further explained that meta spaces, allowing for anonymous communication, and technological wristbands, which could include features like a metro card and direct access to emergency services, would facilitate the elderly’s integration into modern society. Park concluded that enabling the elderly to adapt efficiently to the current social setting could break down the generational barrier between youth and the elderly, fostering a direct connection between these two disparate groups.

During my research, I coincidentally came across a website called Meet Social Value (MSV). MSV is a publishing company that specializes in writing and publishing insightful articles about contemporary social issues. Their most recent article, titled ‘Senior,’ delves into the social challenges faced by the elderly in Korean society and explores solutions involving inclusive designs and spaces.

MSV serves as a prime example of how contemporary social organizations are taking steps to address the issue of elderly discrimination. This is especially significant because, through youthful and trendy engagement on social media, it becomes easier to raise awareness of this issue among younger generations.

Meet Social Value’s most recent article, titled ‘Senior,’ delves into the social challenges faced by the elderly in Korean society and explores solutions involving inclusive designs and spaces.

As I continued my research, I started pondering what I, as an 18-year-old, could do to contribute to resolving this issue. Even though I’m still a student, I wanted to find ways to make a difference, especially after witnessing age discrimination and its consequences firsthand.

I found the answer to my question when I learned about the initiatives undertaken by the government of Murakami City and the Murakami City Social Welfare Council to bridge the gap between the youth and senior citizens. They introduced the Murakami City Happy Volunteer Point System, which aimed to encourage more people to assist seniors through various volunteering activities such as nursing facility support, hospital transportation services, and operating dementia cafes, among others. The system rewarded volunteers with points that could be exchanged for prepaid cards, creating an incentive for more individuals to get involved in helping their senior citizens.

Taking this into consideration, I believe that the younger generation, especially students, may contribute by creating such an incentivization system. For example, students may create senior volunteering clubs within their schools and take turns volunteering and connecting with elderly citizens every weekend. By doing so, clubs may incentivize their members through points which may later be traded for a snack or lunch at the school cafeteria. Through small incentives, this may naturally encourage more students to participate and thus naturally allow for the youth to create a relationship with the elderly, hence contributing to mitigating the issue of elderly isolation.

The webpage of the Murakami City Happy Volunteer Point System contains the system’s details.

In Korea’s battle against ageism, we find ourselves at a turning point. To navigate this societal shift successfully, we must recognize that age discrimination not only undermines the dignity of our elders but also hampers our collective progress. The solution requires a comprehensive approach. Policy reforms are crucial, emphasizing stringent anti-ageism measures in the public space and the workplace. Equally significant solutions are awareness campaigns to challenge stereotypes and foster inter-generational understanding.

However, true change starts with the youth. By confronting our biases and engaging in volunteering activities, we can break down barriers and celebrate the diverse experiences each age group brings. Through such efforts, we can create a society where age is not a determinant of worth but a source of strength and wisdom. It’s a journey demanding our collective commitment, but one that will lead us towards a more inclusive and harmonious future for all.

Edited by Hanna Yoon

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Excerpt:

IPS youth thought leader trainees Minseung Kim (team leader), middle, Henry Cho, right, Dongjun Lee in the interview with Seong Hoon Kim, Senior Director, Platform Development Division of Korea Social Security Information Service.

By Dongjun Lee, Hyunjae 'Henry' Cho and Minseung Kim
Sep 28 2022 (IPS)

Have you watched Parasite? In 2021, everyone seemed to be watching it. But I wonder how many of them paid attention to the old man who found a little shelter in a hidden basement behind the kitchen of a mansion. However hidden it was, that’s where he could meet his basic needs. That was his little slum.

It may be a bit of a stretch, but I found that the movie Parasite exposed the core of South Korea’s unique slum culture. It’s hidden under the shadow of big skyscrapers and, more importantly, consists of seniors like the old man in the movie.

Korean slums are full of seniors. In 2020 alone, 388 seniors died home alone. There was a 29% increase in these deaths in 2021. Why? That’s what we will be talking about in this article.

First, South Korea is now an aging society. By 2025, over 20% of the Korean population will be seniors. Consequently, with the increase in the elderly population, the poverty rate among seniors has also increased.

Even though South Korea is famous for being the country that flourished rapidly after the Korean War in 1953, it has constantly encountered multiple financial crises. Many industries favor the younger generation to maximize the nation’s output, resulting in over 2 million elderly workers being unemployed and forcing an early retirement since the 1970s. With this trend, the elderly’s well-being diminished, and many experienced financial devastation – which threw them onto the streets and forced them to seek shelter. This explains the emergence of Korean slums made up of seniors.

There is another significant cause why older people fill Korean slums. The seniors in South Korea are a unique generation, sandwiched between the Korean war in their past and the YOLO (You Only Live Once) culture. They had to support their immediate and extended family (their elderly parents, brothers and sisters, and so on). On top of this, when they become seniors, their children, who live in YOLO culture (defined as the view that one should make the most of the present moment without worrying about the future), don’t support their parents. As a result, Korean families face a new crisis: abandoned seniors. Recently, there has been an increasing number of news reports about seniors abandoned by their children. Many of them die home alone without any family members. As of 2020, out of 1.8 million seniors living by themselves, 953 of them died home alone. Because of this social phenomenon, many proprietors refuse to rent their homes to seniors over 65.

To find a place to live, they go to the slums, which explains why Korean slums are uniquely full of seniors. Interestingly, these seniors have turned their slums into a silver town where they receive social welfare services and emotional support. Since they live together, charity organizations and social welfare services can easily locate and take care of them. Through these support systems obtained by living in slum areas, the seniors can feel a sense of belonging – they no longer feel alone.

IPS youth thought leader trainees with Executive Director of Concern Worldwide, Korea, Junmo Lee, and course founder Dr Hanna Yoon.

Concern Worldwide Executive Director Junmo Lee told IPS that they have to approach this issue with the importance of community in mind. Creating a community where these seniors are connected back to society is the key because the disconnection isolates them. Concern Worldwide is an international humanitarian organization that strives for a world free from poverty.

But how can this disconnection from their families and productive work be solved? We know that a single private organization can’t solve it. Then what is the solution?

Seong Hoon Kim, the Senior Director of the Platform Division at the Korea Social Security Information Service Team was able to give legislative views on the issue.

To create a community where seniors are reconnected to society, we need a communal contribution where all government, private humanitarian organizations, and family members work together as a team, Kim says.

There is a saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child.

Now, we want to say that it takes a whole village to care for seniors, especially those living in slums. We have to come as one family to support them.

However, our government needs to step up to bring the entire country together to form a community where these seniors are reconnected to their own families and society.

Henry Cho, Dongjun Lee, and Minseung Kim investigated why elderly people in Korea end up living in slums, and what can be done about it.

We are teenagers now. But we will grow old, too. We don’t want to live in slums because that’s the only option we may have. We hope to stay connected to our families and be productive until we die. To turn this hope into reality, we must start working on it now.

Living in slums after 65? It’s not just their story. It can be our and your story, too, if we don’t act now. We hope the Korean government will hear our voice and act upon it so we can live as happily as we can when we grow old. Is it not our right to pursue happiness even after 65?

Note: Minseung Kim was the team leader for this project.
Edited by Dr Hanna Yoon

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Korea is one of the world's top economies. Yet, behind the success, many feel alienated. Does the recent hit show Squid Game, reflect the underbelly of the society's success? Credit: Ori Song/Unsplash

By Ahn Mi Young
Seoul, Nov 16 2021 (IPS)

Immediately after its release, the Squid Game went viral, grabbing the attention of the world’s entertainment stage. The grotesque and hyper-violent thriller has reportedly become Netflix’s biggest show, the world’s most-watched and the most-talked-about streaming entertainment. Is it a case of art imitating life?

The global rise of Korean entertainment is reminiscent of South Korea’s rags-to-rich story. The once war-stricken country with per-capita GDP of 67 US dollars after the 1950-53 Korean War has become one of the world’s top economies with a per-capita GDP of 32,860 US dollars in 2020.

South Koreans enjoy high-tech conveniences, and many of their enterprises are sought after internationally, including home electronics, vehicles and ships.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, success stories abound about its business, technology or entertainment industries.

K-pop BTS is now a global star who often tops the Billboard charts. A few years ago, it was unthinkable that Korean entertainment could surpass the content produced in the United States.

Squid Game has become a global success. Is it a case of art imitating life?

“The Squid Game has become a hope for our students to go to the global stage,” Kim Sang-Hoon, a professor at Cheju Halla University who teaches future talents video-making or filmmaking or broadcasting, told IPS.

However, the storyline suggests that success is not the only parameter with which to measure Korean society. Squid Game is a story of the “losers” who dropped out from the success story.

The hero, Gi-Hoon, was in debt after losing his job and squandering his money on a horse-racing game. He got divorced and missed his ten-year-old estranged daughter. Sang-Woo was once a brilliant stockbroker but went broke after gambling away his money.

The drama director Hwang Dong-Hyeok told local media: “In fact, I used to be one of the losers.”

He elaborated that “as a boy of a single-mother at the backstreet of Seoul, I used to be a boy at the back street spending almost the whole day playing the games (all of which) appear in the Squid Game”.

Although many more South Korean people live the “most affluent life” ever in the country’s history, many people feel like they are playing the squid game, where a few winners take all at the expense of many losers.

In the Squid Game, an elderly character Ilnam said to another character, Gi-Hoon, while playing marbles: “Cheating on others is OK, but being cheated, is not OK?”

This soundbite is one that many South Koreans identified with.

“I felt thrilled when I heard this because it sounds like our reality,” said Ko June-Ho, a South Korean fan and a university student told IPS. He added he identified with so much in the story. “When the elderly character Il-Nam met Ki-Hoon after the squid game, Il-Nam said: ‘Life here (outside the game) is more hellish (than the life I spent in the squid game)’.”

In the death game, the losers are separated from their family, friends and community. Like Sae-Byok, a North Korean woman defector struggles to rebuild her lost family connections but all in vain. Or, Ali, a worker from Pakistan, is in debt because his Korean employer didn’t pay him. Even the elderly character Il-Nam, the Squid Game host, is wealthy but misses his old family ties. He tells Gi-Hoon: “I used to live with my family”.

Some experts say that the squid game losers are like South Korean losers, who feel isolated from the glory story.

Ironically, South Korea, one of the world’s most affluent countries, records one of the world’s top suicide rates. South Korea’s suicide rate in 2020 was the average of 25.7 suicides per 100,000 persons, compared with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries average of 10.9 suicides.

While technology businesses, like the online selling platform Coopang, have become successful during the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurant owners were forced to shut down because of regulations. The impact is clear.

Dr Park Chanmin, Seoul Central Mental Health Clinic, reflects this in a recent interview here.

“Since the start of the pandemic, people have become more and more worried about their jobs, they are seeing their incomes falling, and that is having an impact on their day-to-day lives.”

Asia Nikkei reported that a study by the Korea Economic Research Institute found that sales by independent merchants were down 78.5% in the first half of the year from the same period in 2020, with 58% of respondents attributing the decline to COVID.

Sanjog Lama, a Nepali student who studies hotel management in South Korea, believes the show was excellent.

“The cast and crews have done such an outstanding job. On top of that, the content of the series is just superb. It is thrilling, many scenes are gruesome, yet there is meaning in it.”

Another South Korean fan, Lee Ji-Hyeon, said: “The drama was like a puzzle game. I felt thrilled as I was putting the pieces of actors’ talk and each scene together so that I kept thinking about what it means and how it will be related to the next move.”

However, even in the extreme death game, the underlying warmth of the South Korean traditional culture is reflected.

The thriller’s punch line, with “Kkak-Ttu-gi” or “Kkan-Bu”, demonstrates Korean culture. The elderly Il-Nam says to Gi-Hoon: “Let’s make ‘Kkan-Bu” friendship between two of us.”

Kkan-Bu is a life-long friendship that lasts unchanged regardless of whether a person is a loser or a winner. Some characters made decisions that touched the heart of the fans.

Gi-Hoon did not give up their heart even in the live-or-die moment. Ji-Young gives up her life to let her game partner Sae-Byok can win the game. Even the hardened heart of the elderly Il-Nam softens as the senior and becomes friends with warm-hearted Gi-Hoon.

Another female character Mi-Nyo said: “They call me Kkak-Ttu-gi” In Korean children’s games.”

Kkak-Ttu-Gi shows how Korean culture values human connection. Even though the player is poor and cannot contribute, the team won’t kick them out.

There is irony in the money matters. Even though Gi-Hoon emerges as the winner of the game, grabbing $40 million, his life did not change. When he returns home after the game, he finds his mother dead. He remains a divorced, lonely man. Even though he has the prize in his bank account, he doesn’t spend it. Instead, he borrows Won10,000 from a banker and gives it to a street flower-selling woman.

“The drama makes me think about what matters in my life. People risk their lives for money, which turns out to be no solution,” said South Korean fan Lee Ji-Hyeon.

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Bandana Timalsina reaches out to touch her husband‘s face one last time before his cremation at Pashupati in August. Kedar Timalsina hung himself at a seafood factory in Busan where he worked. Photos: Ki Mindo/ The Seoul Shinmun

By Ki Mindo
SEOUL, Oct 15 2019 (IPS)

For many Nepalis, it is dream to find work in Korea where they expect to earn many times more than in Nepal. Yet, there is a dark side to the Korean Dream: between 2009 to 2018, there were 143 deaths of Nepali workers in South Korean soil, and of them 43 were suicides.

The 31% suicide rate is much higher than workers from other nationalities. Among Burmese workers, there was a total of 51 deaths and 4 involved suicide, from 2011 to August 2019. Suicides rate is relatively low among Vietnamese migrant workers with zero suicide out of the 14 deaths from 2017 to August 2019.

Most of these deaths involved E-9 non-professional employment visa holders who had been employed at farms and factories that suffer a chronic labour shortage. While these tragic deaths repeat every year, the South Korean government does not have a clue why so many migrant workers make such an extreme choice.

No matter how harsh and hostile the work environment in Korea, returning to Nepal is not an option for most. It was not easy for them to come to Korea in the first place, and they carry the weight of their family’s expectations on their shoulders.

“Nepali migrant workers who come to South Korea under the employment permit system tend to be highly educated,” notes Seo Seonyoung, a Sociology researcher at Yonsei University. “Their families have great expectation for them, but as soon in Korea they find themselves at the lowest rung of the workforce ladder. The unbearable stress could eventually force them to commit suicide.”

There are growing voices calling for a systematic improvement to end the vicious cycle. The South Korean government has been trying to improve ties as part of its ‘New Southern Policy’ to balance its need for migrant workers to address the shortfall of workers.

There are now 2.42 million migrant workers in Korea, and the number has nearly doubled in the past 10 years. Local farms and factories cannot function without migrant workforces.

Hong Sung Soo, Law professor at Sookmyung Women’s University says: “Discrimination and xenophobia towards migrants are not only inappropriate, but also not clever at all if we consider our industrial and demographic reality.”

Labour rights groups and health activists have been trying to find out why there is such a high suicide rate among Nepali migrant workers in farms and factories in South Korea.

“It is not just a single factor, there is a web of complex reasons that trap migrant workers towards the extreme choice,” explains Jeong Young-seob, Co-director of the group, Migrants Act.

A field survey in August of 141 migrant workers from Nepal by the Seoul Shinmun newspaper, Green Hospital and the Migrants Trade Union showed that there were four main factors: gap between expectation and reality of working in Korea, lack of exit, high expectations from loved ones back home, and ruined relationships in Nepal.

Great Expectations = Great Disappointments

To aspiring Nepali migrant workers, South Korea is a land of opportunity, where they hope to earn five to eight times more than in a job back home. Even highly educated young Nepalis apply for an E-9 visa to South Korea. But when they arrive, they often struggle with harsh labour conditions and discrimination.

Of the respondents in the survey, 28% cited a gap between the reality of their work and the expectations they had. Like Surendra, 28, who has been working in a mushroom farm for three years. He has a degree from Tribhuvan University.

He says: “Before I came here, I was excited about earning Rs300,000 a month, but I had no idea about working and living conditions. Back home we rarely experience working for 12 hours without any real break. I was not even learning any skills, it was simple manual labour.”

The survey showed that 45.6% of the respondents worked more than 52 hours a week, and 19% said they worked 60 hours a week, and only 26% said they had a normal 5-day work week.

No Exit

After working in South Korea for 16 months, Nepali migrant worker Shrestha, 27, jumped from the rooftop of his company dorm in June 2017. He had been suffering from insomnia as he struggled to adjust to alternate day and night shifts.

His suicide note said: ‘I have been seeing doctors for health problems and sleep disorders. It did not improve. I wanted to quit and find another job but the company did not allow it. I wanted to go back to Nepal to recover, but the company said no.’

The survey showed that 71% of respondents had tried to find a new job, and 36% of them said this was because of long working hours and dangerous conditions.

Migrant workers who come to South Korea under the employment permit system are allowed to change workplaces up to three times within a three-year period. But it requires permission from their employers.

Hard Work

No matter how harsh and hostile the work environment in Korea, returning to Nepal is not an option for most. It was not easy for them to come to Korea in the first place, and they carry the weight of their family’s expectations on their shoulders.

“If migrant workers go back, the villagers would criticise them for forsaking a great opportunity, people will laugh at their failure and brand them weak. Caught between a rock and a hard place, many Nepali migrant workers commit suicide,” explained Udaya Rai, the Nepali head of the Migrants Trade Union.

Ruined Relationships

What sustains migrant workers despite harsh working conditions in Korea is love of families back home. However, when their relationship collapses, it leads to great emotional stress. Tej Bahadur Gurung, 29, had two friends who committed suicide due to family or relationship problems.

Kham Gurung, 45, recalled: “I had to deal with a family issue while I was working non-stop in Korea, but I couldn’t afford to go back. That really tormented me.”

Naivety and lack of exposure to the outside world among Nepali youth who need better jobs to take care of their families creates a problem, says Kapil B Dahal of the Department of Anthropology at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu.

Dahal says there have been no systematic study of suicides among Nepali migrant workers in Korea, or elsewhere. The Korean Ministry of Justice keeps a record of the deaths of migrant workers by country, but does not have data on the cause of death.

“Nepali migrant workers in the Middle East and Europe also commit suicides, yet the Nepal government and politicians do not do anything. Nepali migrant workers make a great contribution to the country’s economy, but their health is overlooked and their suicides are ignored,” Dahal says.

The Nepal Embassy in Seoul offers counseling services for migrant workers, but Udaya Rai of the Migrant Trade Union questioned its effectiveness. “They are not interested in addressing these deaths and suicides, they fear the South Korean government might slash the quota for Nepalis if we start to speak up. That is why they stay silent and hurriedly send bodies back to Nepal.”

Kedar Timalsina, 28

A coffin was rolled out of the arrival area of Kathmandu airport recently. Inside was the body of Kedar Timalsina who hanged himself on 20 July in Busan inside the warehouse of the seafood processing factory where he worked.

“This paper doesn’t say anything about why Kedar killed himself,” family members at Kathmandu airport said, examining his death certificate from South Korean police.

Kedar’s family could not understand why he would kill himself. It had been only 25 days since his wife Bandana gave birth to their first son. “I even heard Kedar threw a big party in Korea to celebrate the birth of the baby. Why would such a man kill himself? It doesn’t make any sense,” said Bandana’s brother. Kedar had an aging mother who just turned 60, and would need his care more than before.

What further frustrates the grieving family is the silence and indifference from both their government and the Korean authorities. For the Nepal Embassy in Seoul its responsibility was over after shipping the coffin to Kathmandu. South Korean police never investigated surveillance camera footage at the factory, or forensics on Kedar’s phone.

According to South Korean police, Kedar’s co-worker had told them he had recently purchased some land in Nepal, which turned out to be a fraud. Kedar’s family says that is not true because the land he bought two years ago had nearly doubled in price. None of Kedar’s personal belongings were returned to his family, and Korean police said the Embassy had told them the family did not want them back. The family said the Embassy had never contacted them about his belongings.

“We are responsible for confirming the identity and death certificate in order to promptly return the body back to family in Nepal. The Embassy does not send back items unless they are important,” the Embassy of Nepal replied when asked about it.

At the cremation site in Pashupati, Bandana wept as she caressed her husband’s face for the last time. “What do I do with our baby?” she cried. It took four hours for the fire to consume Kedar’s body, and with it his ‘Korean Dream’.

Bal Bahadur Gurung, 32

“He really loved the children. These kids remind me of my husband every time I see them,” said Maiya Gurung, 28, wiping tears with a tissue under her shades.

Maiya’s husband Bal Bahadur Gurung jumped off the Wolleung Bridge in Seoul, on 12 June, and died instantly after being hit by a passing vehicle. CCTV footage showed Bal Bahadur walking nervously back-and-forth over the bridge several times, hesitating. He had become an ‘unregistered’ migrant two days ago, and feared deportation.

Bal Bahadur entered South Korea with a proper work visa in October 2017. In March, he left the company and registered himself at the Ministry of Labor to find another job. Migrant workers automatically lose their right to stay in the country if they fail to secure employment within three months. Bal Bahadur went back to Nepal to spend a short time with his family then returned to Korea, but had no luck finding a job within the three month deadline.

Maiya Gurung came to South Korea to take her husband’s remains. Her neighbours tell her that her husband looked so happy when he was visiting Pokhara two months before his suicide. Shocked by his youngest son’s tragic death, Bal Bahadur’s father, a former soldier, is suffering from amnesia.

Maiya’s seven-year-old daughter asks her: “Did Daddy die?”

“No,” she replies, “your father has gone abroad to work.” Maiya Gurung weeps as she tells us later, “I want to die, too. But when I think of these poor children, I can’t.”

Dhan Raj Ghale, 40

‘I am enocent. I have no mistake. Company cheating me. I am no crazy […]

company take my signiture […] please investigation please’

This is the note left by Dhan Raj Ghale’s hand-written suicide note in English before he hanged himself in 2011 while working at a futon factory in Daegu City. Dhan even had a plane ticket booked to go back to Nepal.

Upon seeing a Korean reporter in August in Pokhara, Dhan’s wife Man Maya Ghale, 48, and Dhan’s younger brother Bhim Raj Ghale, 36, recalled the events of eight years ago.

Bhim said his older brother was a hard-working man who loved his family more than anything else in the world. “After seeing the letters, I thought Dhan must have been bullied at work,” Bhim recalled.

Dhan also left another short letter written in Nepali: ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. I once fought with another worker from Mongolia. I don’t know what that Mongolian guy told Korean people…’

He also wrote twice to the manager of the company: ‘You don’t talk to me anymore. I don’t understand. Please tell me why.’

The company, however, denied there was bullying, and that Dhan was never asked to sign any document. Dhan may have found Korea’s alternate day and night shifts difficult, and had been working night shifts for two months before his death. “My husband told me he could not sleep when he was working night shifts,” Man Maya recalled.

Dhan’s daughter and son were ten and five at the time of their father’s death. Now they are in college and school. “I will never forgive those people who mistreated my father,” Dhan’s son vows revenge, and the siblings have made joint promises to themselves they will never go overseas to work no matter what.

Nevertheless, Man Maya and Bhim said they did not hate Koreans. “You see in South Korea, as well as in Nepal, there are good people and bad people. Sadly, my husband met bad people. I don’t want to blame all Koreans because of them. I just want those bad ones to be punished.”

Some names have been changed.

Ki Mindo is a reporter for The Seoul Shinmun key5088@seoul.or.kr 

These articles are reprinted under special arrangement with the Seoul Shinmun which published the stories in Korean on 23 September, 2019 as part of a Special Series titled ‘The 2019 Migrant Report: Betrayed Korean Dreams’.

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

By Mairead Maguire
BELFAST, Jul 13 2015 (IPS)

The year 2015 marked the 62^nd anniversary of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War. The temporary ceasefire has never been replaced with a peace treaty and the demilitarised zone (DMZ) continues to divide the country.

The DMZ with its barbed wire, armed soldiers on both sides, and littered with thousands of explosive landmines, is the most militarised border in the world.

Mairead Maguire

Seventy years ago, as the Cold War was brewing,  the United States unilaterally drew the line across the 38^th parallel – with the former Soviet Union’s agreement – dividing an ancient country that had just suffered 35 years of Japanese colonial occupation.

Koreans had no desire to be divided, or decision-making power to stop their country from being divided; now, seven decades later, the conflict on the Korean peninsula threatens peace in the Asia-Pacific region and throughout our world.

One of the greatest tragedies arising out of man-made ‘Cold War’ politics and isolation is the tearing apart of Korean families and their physical separation from each other. In Korean culture, family relations are deeply important and many families have been painfully separated for 70 years.

Although there was a period of reconciliation during the Sunshine Policy years (1998-2007) between the two Korean governments, when some families had the joy of reunion, this has stopped due to a souring of relationships between North and South Korea.

Through sanctions and isolationist policies put in place by the International community, the North Korean people and their economy have also continued to suffer.

While North Korea has come a long way from the 1990s when up to one million died from famine, many people are poor, and feel isolated and marginalised from South Korea and the outside world.“I must admit that before this visit, my first to the North, I never realised how deeply passionate North Koreans are for reunification with the South and how much they want to open the borders so they can welcome their South Korea families to visit and normalise relationships”

As members of the one human family, and in order to show human solidarity and empathise  with our North Korean family, to bring global attention to the ‘forgotten’ Korean war, and to call for an engagement with North Korea and a peace treaty,  a group of international women came together to visit North/South Korea and walk across the DMZ.

On May 22, 2015, International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament, thirty women peacemakers from 15 countries made a historic crossing of the two-mile-wide DMZ from North to South Korea.

The delegation included feminist author/activist Gloria Steinem, two Nobel peace laureates,  Leymah Gbowee and myself, coordinator Christine Ahn (whose dream it was  to cross the DMZ) and  long-time peace activists, human rights defenders, spiritual leaders and Korean experts.

During our four-day  visit to North Korea, before crossing the DMZ on May 24, we had the privilege and joy of meeting many North Korean women.

At a peace symposium in Pyongyang, we listened as North Korean women spoke of their horrific experiences of war and division, and listened as some of our delegation shared how they had mobilised to end conflict and build peace in their communities.

We also participated in huge peace walks in Pyongyang and Kaesong, with the participation of many thousands of North Korean women in beautiful traditional Korean costumes. The women carried banners calling for the reunification of families and of Korea, a peace treaty and no war.

The walks were deeply moving, especially in Kaesong where families came out onto their balconies to wave as we passed.

I must admit that before this visit, my first to the North, I never realised how deeply passionate North Koreans are for reunification with the South and how much they want to open the borders so they can welcome their South Korea families to visit and normalise relationships.

North Koreans told us that Korean people are one people. Though they have different political ideologies, they speak the same language, have the same culture, and share a painful history of war and division.

Policies of isolation have not solved any problems and our delegates believe that a new approach of engagement and a peace treaty is necessary.  

Our walk brought renewed attention to the importance of world solidarity in ending the Korean conflict, particularly since the 1953 armistice agreement was signed by North Korea, (South Korea did not sign) China and the United States on behalf of the U.N. Command that included sixteen countries.

It helped highlight the responsibility of the international community, whose governments were complicit in the division of Korea 70 years ago, to support Korea’s peaceful reconciliation and reunification.

The challenges of overcoming Korea’s division became apparent in the complex negotiations over our DMZ crossing between North and South Korea, as well as with the U.N. Command, which has formal jurisdiction over the DMZ.

Although we had hoped to cross at Panmunjom, the ‘Truce Village’ where the armistice was signed, we decided, after both South Korea and the U.N. Command had denied our crossing, that we would take the route agreed by all parties in the spirit of compromise lest our actions further strain already tense North-South relations.

In Seoul, we met with some opposition. Although we did not meet with any heads of state or endorse any political or economic system, maintaining a neutral stance throughout, it was apparent that divisions within South Korea itself were manifested in some of the ideologically divided forms of reception and reactions that we witnessed.

We recognise that our international women’s peace walk is only a beginning and we will continue our focus on increasing civilian exchanges and women’s leadership, highlighting the obligation of all parties involved to decrease militarisation and move towards a peace treaty.

We therefore urge increased engagement at every level – civil, economic, cultural, academic and governmental – and especially citizen-to-citizen diplomacy in peacebuilding, as an alternative to full military conflict, which is not an option. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (right) and Amb. Choong-hee Han. Credit UN Photo/ Mark Garten

By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 14 2015 (IPS)

In a world where high levels of social and religious intolerance, conflicts, violent extremism and environmental degradation are threatening justice and peace, the United Nations is trying to find ways to maintain world order and promote sustainable development.

This year, the drafting of the post-2015 U.N. agenda, which has set up the targets for the next 15 years of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), represents a turning point for achieving development worldwide.We need a new system that revitalises the classrooms and contributes substantially to peace and security.

Finding a solution to 21st century challenges requires the creation of a fresh, universally-based, inclusive and transformative paradigm. The key to this paradigm is Global Citizenship Education (GCED).

Great emphasis has been placed on the role of education since U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the “Global Education First Initiative”, in 2012, which put GCED as one of its main principles.

Following the 2015 resolution adopted by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on the necessity to conceptualise and implement policies concerning global citizenship education, and the adoption of the Incheon Declaration on the Future of Education adopted at the World Education Forum (May 19-22), hosted in Seoul, major steps forward have been made in relation to GCED.

Advocates say the next step is to include GCED within the education targets in the SDGs that will be ratified in September in New York.

A seminar to raise awareness and spread the concept of GCED will be held on Jun. 15, organised by the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the U.N., along with the collaboration of the Permanent Missions of the United States, Nigeria, Qatar, France, the UNESCO, international organisations and NGOs.

In an interview with IPS, the Permanent Deputy Representative of Korea, Choong-Hee Hahn, spoke about GCED and its relevance for building a more peaceful world.

Q: What is Global Citizenship Education?

A: Generally, education is defined in functional terms, such as access to schools and quality of education in preparation of a professional career. But the new framework of GCED should focus on orientation.

There are three main aspects that GCED should promote. Firstly, the “sense of being”, teaching students, since their early age, about what kind of citizens they should become. They should be sensitised about future challenges, such as climate change, intolerance and violent extremisms.

Secondly, the “sense of responsibility and privilege of being a global citizen.” GCED should include multicultural diversity and mutual respect, by understanding the real meaning of fundamental and human rights values, dignity and democracy.

Thirdly, “compassion and empathy”. The revolutionary aspect of GCED is its holistic approach to education, rather than advancing to next the level of education or job searching. This is the best approach to cope with our Century complexities.

Another important concept of GCED is inclusiveness.

Hatred and violence come from a sense of isolation, and a lack interconnectedness. Teaching inclusiveness, embracing different social, political and economic aspects. In this way, people will feel respected and will play an active role tin the society.

Q: Why is Korea leading GCED?

A: It is because of the rapid development Korea went through in the past decades. Thinking about the history of Korea, we experienced immense poverty. However, by investing in education, and through the promotion of democratic values we reached development.

Today, Korea is very multicultural, multiethnic and multi-religious, based on the respect of human rights. Christians, Muslims Confucians and Buddhists live cohesively together. We are a positive example of education, tolerance and peace. As a role model, we would like to contribute and raise awareness on GCED without bias nor prefixed prejudices.

Q: Why bringing GCED within the U.N. agenda post-2015 development agenda?

A: This is the right time to think about how and why the U.N. is pursuing the new SDGs. The U.N. first priorities are now dignity of people and the planet, along with justice and prosperity. These are value oriented goals and objectives. The U.N. agenda is based on three main pillars: peace and security, sustainable development, and human rights. I think all those issues are intertwined with education, and GCED is the solution to peace and security – by promoting tolerance and responsibility – sustainable development –  through inclusiveness and equity – human rights – understanding the privilege of being a human being and democratic values.

Q:What is GCED methodology?

A: Global education should be based on the participation of multiple stakeholders. Not only teachers and students, but also worldwide social, economic, cultural experts, NGOs and youth groups.

GCED should be built on a methodological paradigm, not based on textbooks, but on discussions and participation of all students in the class. New audio-visual methods, and participatory discourses, through fieldwork and exchange programmes. We need a new system that revitalises the classrooms and contributes substantially to peace and security.

GCED is not about replicating the paradigm of “Enlightenment and Western” values. On the contrary, by focusing on inclusiveness, it aspires to find a world denominator common to developed and developing countries.

However, given that many children still have no access to education, GCED should mobilise funding and concrete means of implementations. GCED should also be participatory and content-sharing.

To do so, it is important to develop Information and Communication Technology (ICT) through the use of internet, computers, and mobile phones, even in the remotest areas of the planet, along with the support of the private sector. For instance, in Korea, we are leading several educational projects with private companies such as Samsung .

Q: What are the main challenges to GCED?

A: Unfortunately there are still huge financial gaps and inequalities among countries.

Recently, a proposal for a global fund for education was put forward, but it is not easy, as there are already many other funds, such as funds to finance development or the Green Climate Fund.

There is the Global Partnership for Education, the existing global fund which helps developing countries to get access to education for all.

However, we need more financial resources, improved capacity building, and more ICT equipment to deploy in developing countries.

An additional challenge is the fact that education is not yet perceived as a top priority in many government agendas. This is the real problem. As long as there are not enough investments by local authorities in national education, Global Education will be impossible to achieve. Therefore, it is fundamental the collaboration of the private sector in developing an ethical Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

“Just as the world is moving towards multi-polarity, so is Asia … The economic fragmentation of the region and the competitive pursuit of security interests may well consign the Asian Century into a brief interlude rather than a millennial transformation”. Photo credit: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

By Shyam Saran
NEW DELHI, Jun 1 2015 (IPS)

It has been apparent for some time that we are in the midst of a historic shift of the centre of gravity of the global economy from the trans-Atlantic to what is now becoming known as the Indo-Pacific.  

This is an emerging centre of economic dynamism and comprises what was earlier confined to the Asia-Pacific but now includes the South Asian region as well.

This is a region which now accounts for nearly 40 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP), which is likely to rise to 50 percent or more by 2050.  Its share of world trade is now 30 percent and growing.

Shyam Saran

This year, the region has become the largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI), surpassing the European Union (EU) and the United States. China has been the main driver of this historic shift, but other Asian economies have also made significant contributions.

As the Chinese economy begins to slow, India shows promise of regaining an accelerated growth trajectory under a new and decisive political leadership. This will help extend the scale and direction of this shift. Its geopolitical consequences will be profound.

It must be recognised that the economic transformation of Asia, in particular the spectacular growth of China, has been enabled by an unusually extended and liberal global economic environment, underpinned by the faith in globalisation and open markets.

It has also been enabled by a U.S.-led security architecture in the region which kept in check, though did not resolve, the long-standing political fault lines and regional conflicts over competing territorial claims and unresolved disputes.

This relatively benign and supportive economic and security environment is in danger of unravelling precisely at a time when the situation in the region is becoming more complex and challenging.  Paradoxically, this is partly a consequence of the very success of the region in achieving relative economic prosperity.“The danger is that instead of an inclusive and regionally integrated Asia, we may end up with exclusive and competing clusters, moving at different speeds, with different norms and standards. This may well undermine the very basis of Asia’s economic dynamism”

We are witnessing new trends in the region which, unless managed with prudence and foresight, may well sour the prospects of an Asian Century.

The relatively open and liberal trade and investment regime, in particular access to the large consuming markets of the United States, European Union and Japan, is now under serious threat.

Protectionist trends are already visible in these advanced economies as they struggle with prolonged economic stagnation which is the fall-out of the global financial and economic crisis of 2007-2008.

Instead of the consolidation and expansion of the open and inclusive economic architecture that had hitherto been the hallmark of the regional and global economy, we are witnessing its steady fragmentation.

In the Indo-Pacific region, there are competing regional trade arrangements and investment regimes, with no clarity on the contours of a new and emerging economic architecture.

The United States is spearheading its Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which will include some Asian economies, but not India and China.

China has countered by proposing a free trade area encompassing the current Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) membership.  This will include China and the United States but not India and some of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies.

The Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership (RCEP) would include all ASEAN countries plus China, Japan, Republic of Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, but not the United States.

And finally, there is the East Asia Summit process (EAS) which includes all the above-mentioned countries but also the United States and Russia.

The danger is that instead of an inclusive and regionally integrated Asia, we may end up with exclusive and competing clusters, moving at different speeds, with different norms and standards.  This may well undermine the very basis of Asia’s economic dynamism.

In the security field, too, we are witnessing a growing salience of inter-state tensions and competitive military build-up.

The U.S.-led security architecture remains in place formally but its erstwhile predominance is diminished.

The gap between the military capabilities of China and the United State is closing steadily. As China’s security footprint expands beyond its shores, it will inevitably intersect with the existing deployment of the forces of the United States and its allies and partners.

Faced with an increasingly uncertain security environment and threatened by a more insistent assertion of territorial claims by China, the countries of the region, including Japan, Republic of Korea, members of ASEAN, Australia and India are building up their own defences, in particular maritime capabilities, and this itself is escalating tensions.

There is as yet no emerging regional security architecture which could help manage inter-state tensions in the region. This includes the growing possibilities of confrontation between the United States and China.

In the absence of such a regional security architecture, based on a broad political consensus and a mutually acceptable Code of Conduct, the region may well witness a heightening of tension and even conflict.  These developments would inevitably and adversely impact on the dense network of trade and investment relations that bind the countries of the region together and erode the very basis of their prosperity.

In this context, mention may be made of the Chinese One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative which seeks to deploy China’s surplus capital to build a vast network of transport and infrastructural links not only across the Indo-Pacific but also straddling the Eurasian landmass.

The newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) initiated and led by China would become a key financing instrument for the OBOR.  China has also recently come out with a new Defence White Paper, which puts forward a new strategy of Open Seas, shifting the emphasis from coastal and near sea defence to an expanding naval presence which matches China’s growing global profile and world-wide location of Chinese-controlled economic assets.

While China’s investment in regional infrastructure in Asia may be welcome, it will inevitably be accompanied by a security dimension which may heighten anxieties among countries in the Asian region and beyond.

It is apparent from the above analysis that it is no longer possible for any major power in the Indo-Pacific to unilaterally seek a position of overweening economic dominance or military pre-eminence of the kind that the United States enjoyed over much of the post-Second World War period.

Just as the world is moving towards multi-polarity, so is Asia.  It is now home to a cluster of major powers with significant economic and security capabilities and interests. The only practical means of avoiding a unilateral and potentially destructive pursuit of economic and security interests would be to put in place an inclusive economic architecture underpinned  by a similarly inclusive security architecture which provides mutual reassurance and shared opportunities for promoting prosperity.

The economic fragmentation of the region and the competitive pursuit of security interests may well consign the Asian Century into a brief interlude rather than a millennial transformation. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Yilmaz Akyüz
GENEVA, Mar 30 2015 (IPS)

Debt restructuring is a component of crisis management and resolution, and needs to be treated in the context of the current economic conjuncture and vulnerabilities.

International debt workout mechanisms are not just about debt reduction, but include interim arrangements to provide relief to debtors, including temporary hold on debt payments and financing.

They should address liquidity as well as solvency crises but the difference is not always clear. Most start as liquidity crises and can lead to insolvency if not resolved quickly.

Yilmaz Akyuz

Liquidity crises also inflict serious social and economic damages as seen in the past two decades even when they do not entail sovereign defaults.

International mechanisms should apply to crises caused by external private debt as well as sovereign debt. Private external borrowing is often the reason for liquidity crises. Governments end up socialising private debt. They need mechanisms that facilitate resolution of crises caused by private borrowing.

Only one of the last eight major crises in emerging and developing economies was due to internationally-issued sovereign debt (Argentina). Mexican and Russian crises were due to locally-issued public debt; in Asia (Thailand, Korea and Indonesia) external debt was private; in Brazilian and Turkish crises too, private (bank) debt played a key role alongside some problems in the domestic public debt market.

We have had no major new crisis in the South with systemic implications for over a decade thanks to highly favourable global liquidity conditions and risk appetite, both before and after the Lehman Brothers bank collapse in 2008, due to policies in major advanced economies, notably the United States.

But this period, notably the past six years, has also seen considerable build-up of fragility and vulnerability to liquidity and solvency crises in many developing countries."There are problems with standard crisis intervention: austerity can make debt even less payable; creditor bailouts create moral hazard and promote imprudent lending, and transform commercial debt into official debt, thereby making it more difficult to restructure”

Sovereign international debt problems may emerge in the so-called ‘frontier economies’ usually dependent on official lending. Many of them have gone into bond markets in recent years, taking advantage of exceptional global liquidity conditions and risk appetite. There are several first-time Eurobond issuers in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.

In emerging economies, internationally-issued public debt as percentage of gross domestic product has declined significantly since the early 2000s. Much of the external debt of these economies is now under local law and in local currency.

However, there are numerous cases of build-up of private external debt in the foreign exchange markets issued under foreign law since 2008. Many of them may face contingent liabilities and are vulnerable to liquidity crises.

An external financial crisis often involves interruption of a country’s access to international financial markets, a sudden stop in capital inflows, exit of foreign investors from deposit, bond and equity markets and capital flight by residents. Reserves become depleted and currency and asset markets come under stress. Governments are often too late in recognising the gravity of the situation.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending is typically designed to bail out creditors to keep debtors current on their obligations to creditors, and to avoid exchange restrictions and maintain the capital account open.

The IMF imposes austerity on the debtor, expecting that it would make debt payable and sustainable and bring back private creditors. It has little leverage on creditors.

There are problems with standard crisis intervention: austerity can make debt even less payable; creditor bailouts create moral hazard and promote imprudent lending, and transform commercial debt into official debt, thereby making it more difficult to restructure; and risks are created for the financial integrity of the IMF.

Many of these problems were recognised after the Asian crisis of the 1990s, giving rise to the sovereign debt restructuring mechanism, originally designed very much along the lines advocated by the U.N. Conference on Trade and development (UNCTAD) throughout the 1980s and 1990s (though without due acknowledgement).

However, it was opposed by the United States and international financial markets and could not elicit strong support from debtor developing countries, notably in Latin America. It was first diluted and then abandoned.

The matter has come back to the attention of the international community with the Eurozone crisis and then with vulture-fund holdouts in Argentinian debt restructuring.

After pouring money into Argentina and Greece, whose debt turned out to be unpayable, the IMF has proposed a new framework to “limit the risk that Fund resources will simply be used to bail out private creditors” and to involve private creditors in crisis resolution. If debt sustainability looks uncertain, the IMF would require re-profiling (rollovers and maturity extension) before lending. This is left to negotiations between the debtor and the creditors.

However, there is no guarantee that this can bring a timely and orderly re-profiling. If no agreement is reached and the IMF does not lend without re-profiling, then it would effectively be telling the debtor to default. But it makes no proposal to protect the debtor against litigation and asset grab by creditors.

There is thus a need for statutory re-profiling involving temporary debt standstills and exchange controls. The decision should be taken by the country concerned and sanctioned by an internationally recognised independent body to impose stay on litigation.

Sanctioning standstills should automatically grant seniority to new loans, to be used for current account financing, not to pay creditors or finance capital outflows.

If financial meltdown is prevented through standstills and exchange controls, stay is imposed on litigation, adequate financing is provided and contractual provisions are improved, the likelihood of reaching a negotiated debt workout would be very high.

The role of the IMF in crisis management and resolution is incontrovertible. However, the IMF cannot be placed at the centre of international debt workout mechanisms. Even after a fundamental reform, the IMF board cannot act as a sanctioning body and arbitrator because of conflict of interest; its members represent debtors and creditors.

The United Nations successfully played an important role in crisis resolution in several instances in the past.

The Compensatory Financing Facility – introduced in the early 1960s to enable developing countries facing liquidity problems due to temporary shortfalls in primary export earnings to draw on the Fund beyond their normal drawing rights at concessional terms – resulted from a U.N. initiative.

A recent example concerns Iraq’s debt. After the occupation of Iraq and collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution to implement stay on the enforcement of creditor rights to use litigation to collect unpaid sovereign debt.

This was engineered by the very same country, the United States, which now denies a role to the United Nations in debt and finance on the grounds that it lacks competence on such matters, which mainly belong to the IMF and the World Bank.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* This article is partly based on South Centre Research Paper 60 by Yilmaz Akyüz titled Internationalisation of Finance and Changing Vulnerabilities in Emerging and Developing Economies.

Excerpt:

A group of international women peacemakers announced on Wednesday at the United Nations their intention to walk across the two mile De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), in a call for peace and reunification of Korea.

The walk is planned for May 24th, the International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament, depending on the approval of the Korean authorities. Leading organiser Christine Ahn said at the U.N. that women will walk “to imagine a new chapter in Korean history marked by dialogue, understanding and ultimately forgiveness. We are walking to help unite Korean families tragically separated by an artificial man-made division.”

The announcement was made in light of the 59th meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women.

Amongst the 30 walkers, there are two Nobel Peace Laureates Mairead Maguire and Leymah Gbowee, various authors, academics, humanitarian aid workers and faith leaders.

The Korean people are still waiting for an official peace treaty to reunify the country. However, a cease-fire has been in place since the 1953 signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement which established a de facto border between the two countries.

The group is planning to meet in Pyongyang and walk south, across the DMZ, meeting with southern Korean women in Seoul, where they will hold an international peace symposium.

Ahn said, “We realise that crossing the most militarized border in the world is no simple task. We are seeking approval from both Korean governments and the U.N. We received a letter of intent last year from Pyongyang supporting our event, with a very stern caveat ‘if the conditions are right’. However, given the tense moment right now they may not be.”

American author and Honorary Co-Chair of the international delegation, Gloria Steinem, remarked, “If this division can be healed even briefly by women, it will be inspiring in the way that women brought peace out of war in Northern Ireland or in Liberia.”

Even without an official approval, the group is urging leaders to reduce military expenditure and redirect public money towards social welfare and environmental protection.

“We are walking to lessen military tensions on the Korean peninsula which has ramifications for peace insecurity throughout the world (and) ensure that women are involved at all levels of the peacebuilding and peacemaking process,” said Ahn.

Professor Chung Hyun Kyung from the Union Theological Seminary said that nuclear militarisation, and the increasing demonisation on both sides have caused serious social and cultural ruptures between North and South. She noted that is important to recreate an idea of wholeness and democracy across the peninsula.

The activists said that they will soon launch an online petition calling on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, United States and Korean leaders to take the necessary actions to reach a peaceful reunification.

Follow Valentina Ieri on Twitter @Valeieri

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

South Korean born Russian athlete Viktor Ahn wins gold at the Sochi Olympics. Credit: Yonhap News Agency/IPS.

By Ahn Mi Young
SEOUL, Mar 12 2014 (IPS)

Old family bonds still seem to run deep in the South Korea of today. For evidence, one need only look at the yearning of the elderly to meet their long separated kin in North Korea during last month’s historic family reunions.

Yet, in a country that has rapidly evolved in the past six decades from a largely static rural community to the world’s most wired economic power, people today alternate between traditional, collectivist mindsets and young, individualist values.South Korea tops the world's suicide rate: 33.5 in every 100,000 people commit suicide every year in the country.

It was back to the past for many when family reunions between the South and the North were held Feb. 20-25 at North Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort. These families met for the first time since the 1950-1953 Korean War.

Such reunions had been suspended the past three years because of strained ties between the two sides. The South Korean unification ministry said 763 Koreans from both sides participated. They had waited 60 years to spend 19 hours together.

South Korean Kim Young-Hwan, 90, was speechless after meeting his wife, Kim Myong-Ok, 87, whom he had left behind in North Korea during the war. He had married again in South Korea and had five children with his second wife. But his North Korean wife continued to live with their only son without marrying again.

“I came here with the deepest sadness in my heart. I am feeling so sorry,” Kim Young-Hwan said.

South Korean Gang Neung-Hwan, 93, could recognise his son, now 64, even though he had never seen him before. Gang had left his pregnant wife in the North during the war. “My son and I look so alike! I knew immediately that he was my son.”

In Korea, family, loyalty and seniority have typically been given priority over individual pursuit. In the 1950s and early 1960s, most people suffered from post-war poverty. Fathers would sell their cattle to send their sons to Seoul for an education. In a farming society, there was a sense of mutual obligation between group members.

But Korea has since evolved into an industrial society, and further, to a technology-oriented society.

South Korea has produced brands like Samsung, LG and Hyundai. Korean K-Pop and Psy’s Gangnam Style have made the world dance to Korean beats. Beauty brands are riding Korea’s pop culture wave, popularly known as hallyu.

Last month South Koreans watched with a mix of pride and regret a Korean-born short-track skater earning three gold medals under the Russian flag at the Sochi Winter Olympics.

In 2011, at the invitation of Russians, Viktor Ahn – Korean name Ahn Hyon-Soo – gave up his Korean nationality and chose to become a Russian. The decision came after his dream for the Vancouver Games was reportedly frustrated by an ‘internal feud’ of the South Korean skating federation.

What if something like this had happened ten years ago? A Korean star who abandoned his nationality for personal gain would hardly have had the sympathy of South Koreans. Now there is less hostility.

This mindset persists even today in fields like academics and science. Dr. Hwang Woo-Seok, a disgraced South Korean scientist, is one such example.

He was hailed as a national hero when he claimed to have developed the world’s first human embryonic stem cell, but fell from grace when he was found in 2005 to have fabricated scientific data. Hwang was fired from the prestigious Seoul National University. He was convicted for embezzlement and bioethical violations. He had hurt the nation’s reputation globally – something considered unforgivable.

Few South Koreans blame sports star Ahn. “We are willing to applaud Viktor Ahn’s personal triumph,” said Bang Hyeon-Chull, in an editorial in Chosunilbo newspaper. “Nobody can criticise him for his choice. To a person who has talent, nationality should no longer be a limit. Viktor Ahn gave us a task to build a new rule of the game where we are competing and assessed individually.”

Generational differences are also visible today. While senior Koreans cherish the importance of being together, things are becoming different for the younger generation that has come of age at a time of relative affluence and freedom.

The number of births each year has halved in the last three decades, with the figure touching 430,000 in 2013, according to the Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS). In 2050, 36-39 percent of South Koreans will be 65 or older, KOSIS said.

There is a massive corporate retiree population from among the seven million South Koreans born in the post-war period from 1954 to 1964. They make up 14.6 percent of the country’s population. The impact of this demographic shift is already showing – South Korea’s working population is falling by 1.2 percent annually.

The per capita gross national product (GNP) has jumped from 80 dollars in the 1960s to at least 20,000 dollars in 2013. But as the country transforms into a highly competitive society, many now suffer from depression now. The illness, which seldom showed up in an agrarian society, has today become one of the major causes of death in South Korea.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said in its 2010 survey that South Korea tops the world’s suicide rate: 33.5 in every 100,000 people commit suicide every year in the country.

There are conflicts old and new crying for solution and reconciliation, not violence, with reasonable, realistic ways out.

Take the South Sudan conflict between the Nuer and the Dinka. We know the story of the borders drawn by the colonial powers, confirmed in Berlin in 1884. Change a border by splitting a country – referendum or not – and what do you expect opening Pandora’s box? More Pandora.

There is a solution: not drawing borders, making them irrelevant. The former Sudan could have become a federation with much autonomy, keeping some apart and others together in confederations-communities, also across borders. Much to learn from Switzerland, EU and ASEAN.

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

Take the Maghreb-Mali+ complex: a road to peace runs through Tuareg high autonomy and confederations of the autonomies, in addition to the state system. Proceeds from natural resources – oil, uranium, gold, metals – should benefit the owners, not former colonisers. The United Nations’ task is to make the West comply with socioeconomic human rights.

Take what is called the last colony (well, Ulster? Palestine?): Sahrawi, Spain’s shame for not having decolonised; the United Nations Charter Article 73 formula is not perfect but differential treatment is unacceptable.

Take Ceuta and Melilla, “Spanish” enclaves in Morocco, and Gibraltar, an “English” enclave in Spain: use the Hong Kong formula with sovereignty for the owners, flag and garrison, and leave the system as it is.

Geography and history matter; sovereignty for one, system for the other. Not a bad formula for the Falkland/Malvinas islands or Northern Ireland, with a reborn Republic of Ireland in a Confederation of British Isles.

Back to Berlin 1884, institutionalising the outrageous sociocide, with genocide and ecocide, perpetrated on Africans on top of centuries of Arab-West slavery. But do not forget the Congress of Berlin six years earlier, in 1878, doing the same to the Balkans, with the infamous Article 25 giving the Dual Monarchy, Austria-Hungary, the right to occupy and administer Bosnia-Herzegovina temporarily.

On Oct. 6, 1908 they did exactly that, Turkey and Russia both being weak. What do you expect when annexing someone’s land? A resistance movement of course, and ultimately, on Jun. 28, 1914, the sacred date to the Serbs, having been defeated by the Turks 525 years earlier: Two shots rang out in Sarajevo.

One century later “historians” (who pay their salaries, states?) see the shots as the cause of World War I, not what caused the shots; like seeing the terrorists, not what causes terrorism.

Then as now the same two stories, nations made prisoners of states, and states-peoples made prisoners of empires. Sarajevo used against terrorism.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson used self-determination to dismantle the beaten Prussian, Habsburg and Ottoman empires; but not the victors’ empires as a young Vietnamese in Paris experiences, chased away from the U.S. Embassy: Ho Chi Minh, claiming the same for his people.

And the U.S. Versailles delegation rejected that claim by Sudeten Germans against Czechoslovakia; accepted by England, not to “appease” Adolf Hitler, but to rectify a wrong.

What a fantastic chance for German-Austrian foreign policy!

Start this 2014 centenary year preparing 150 anniversary conferences, in 2028 and 2034, apologising for 1914, undoing some harm, letting Africans be Africans and Balkans be Balkans of various kinds, stop blaming their victims for being unruly, restless, terrorist and so on. The peaceful century 1815-1914: some peace! Don’t miss the chance.

But they were not alone. In 1905 the U.S.-Japan, Taft-Katsura (later president and prime minister, respectively) agreed to U.S. rule in the Philippines and Japanese rule in Korea, in the interest of “peace in East Asia” – their peace, meaning rule. A good century later the Obama-Abe (president and prime minister, respectively) uneasy agreement on Japan’s aggressive policy.

The solution to the Korean Peninsula conflict is a peace treaty and normalisation with North Korea, a Korean nuclear free zone and work on the open border-confederation-federation-unitary state continuum.

If the U.S. fails to go along, why not go ahead, also multilaterally and via United Nations.

But they were not alone: in 1917 Balfour Jewish homeland followed the Sykes-Picot treason with four disastrous colonies. With a major difference, however: the Jews had been there before; some title to some land, but not to an ever-expanding Jewish state (just one word away from “only Jewish”).

The road to peace must pass through a pre-1967 Israel with Jewish characteristics, Palestine recognised, a Middle East Community of Israel with border countries, an Organisation for Cooperation and Security in West Asia, with Syria (an upper chamber for the many nations with cultural autonomy – Ottoman millet), Iraq (maybe confederation, with no U.S. bases), the Kurds (autonomy in the four countries for some land, a confederation of autonomies), Iran (an end to Benjamin Netanyahu extremism), a moderate Israel, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection.

Afghanistan? Full U.S.-NATO withdrawal, an end to foreign bases, coalition government, Swiss-style constitution with much autonomy for villages and nations, and gender parity. But let Afghans be Afghans.

China’s claims on sea and air space? Too much, but the Chinese had been there before, 500-1500; some title to some sea, some air.

And U.S.-China: direct cooperation for mutual benefit, make it more equal; the U.S. is cheating itself, building warehouses, not factories.

U.S. spying on the world: the point is not clemency for Edward Snowden but to drop the NSA and punish those, also allies, who violated human rights.

The West tries to claim the moral high ground by changing discourse to something they think they have and others do not: democracy. Running a huge colonial-imperial system against the will of others? Some democracy.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 26 2013 (IPS)

When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a former foreign minister of South Korea, met with Psy last October, he jokingly told the wildly popular rapper that he was “a bit jealous” of him.

Courtesy of Samuel Koo

“Until two days ago, someone told me I am the most famous Korean in the world,” Ban told the pop star, who has generated over one billion views on YouTube, the highest ever in the website’s history.

“Now, I have to relinquish (that title). But I have no regrets,” he said during a photo opportunity – even as the secretary-general pretended to gyrate like the rapper, triggering peals of laughter in his 38th floor offices in the U.N. Secretariat.

Not to be outdone, Psy, who has skyrocketed to fame with his Gangnam Style “wacky horse-dance” video, responded with mock-seriousness, “So, now you have the first and second famous Korean in the same building.”

But both Ban and Psy (real name: Park Jae-sang), two global brand names from the Republic of Korea (ROK), have been outpaced by one of the largest electronic conglomerates in that country: Samsung.

Last year, one U.S. newspaper branded the electronic giant, which has invaded most offices and homes in the United States with its smart phones, tablets, TV sets, refrigerators and washing machines, with a title worthy of its name: the Republic of Samsung (Forget ROK).

Samuel Koo, chairman of the Presidential Council on National Branding, who presides over a brand-conscious institute in the capital of Seoul, says Koreans seem to have a love-hate relationship with big conglomerates, referred to as “chaebol”, and particularly with Samsung.

With its more than 60 affiliates, Samsung accounts for a quarter of Korea’s exports and stock market and generates a whopping 20 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

In an interview with IPS, Koo said while Koreans are enjoying the fruit of the economic success that Samsung and other chaebol have brought, they also seem troubled by the fact that its enormous power also influences politics, government and even media.

Still others complain about Samsung’s outlawing of unions and corporate governance, which lags behind international standards, he added.

For example, the Korean Development Institute’s study shows that Chairman Lee Kun-hee’s family exercises voting rights in affiliates that are 17 times greater than the family’s actual shareholdings.

The anticipated succession from Lee Kun-hee to his son, Lee Jae-yong, will once again underline the family’s grip on power, said Koo, who last year was the U.N. Commissioner-General for Expo 2012 and also president of the Seoul Tourism Organisation.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What is the reason for the growing phenomenon of Korean brand names?

A: Aside from Samsung, which made the top 10 for the first time on the world’s 100 Best Global Brands in 2012 by Interbrand, the world’s leading brand consultancy, Hundai and Kia made to the list by being ranked as 53 and 87, respectively.

LG, SK and POSCO are other brands that will push Korea to be the economic engine of Asia while sustaining its vibrancy as forecast by experts and news media at home and abroad.

Some predict conglomerates such as Samsung will help propel Korea to the rank of the fourth most affluent country in the world in 2050 with per capita income estimated at 107,752 dollars.

Q: How visible is the Korean brand name in the world of culture, including art, music, movies and cuisines?

A: In recent years, Korea has emerged as a powerhouse in all spheres of culture and sports – the most notable being the phenomenal success of Psy. The Korean Wave, Hallyu, is certainly a recognisable brand in popular culture which includes TV Dramas and K-Pop.

Director Kim Ki-Duk’s anti-capitalist movie “Pieta” has won the coveted Golden Lion prize at the Venice film festival. We made to the fifth in the gold medal standings of the 2012 London Olympics.

Korean artists’ presence in classical music, ballet.and paintings is iincreasingly visible as well. Korean food is also gaining global attention.

Q: Korea is one of the few countries in the United Nations which transformed itself from a recipient of aid to a donor. What would be its contribution to the world’s poorer nations?

A: Korea’s overseas assistance programme consists of the overseas volunteer programme called World Friends Korea (WFK), official development assistance (ODA) and Knowledge Sharing Programme (KSP). Since 2009, Korea has sent more than 20,000 WFK volunteers overseas, the second largest in number after the U.S. Peace Corps. The WFK programme will continue to be expanded.

Korea’s still small ODA will reach 0.25 percent of its GDP by 2015. Over the last five years we have been increasing our aid to least developed countries (LDCs) and other low-income countries (LICs), particularly heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs).

Our goal of course is to reach the U.N. recommended level of 0.7 percent. Also through KSP, Korea is transferring its development experience to developing countries. Among the countries that have benefited from the programme are Vietnam, Cambodia, Algeria, Azerbaijan and Ghana.

Excerpt:

Jeju Island is home to multiple UNESCO World Heritage sites and other environmental and cultural special status designations. Credit: oshokim/CC By 2.0

By Jon Letman
KAUAI, Hawaii, Aug 10 2012 (IPS)

As construction of a hotly contested naval base on South Korea’s Jeju Island advances, there’s a showdown underway.

Korean groups, increasingly aided by sympathetic outsiders, are protesting the base which they say is being built in Gangjeong village under pressure from the United States.

But the latest battle isn’t between base protestors and Korea’s military or police, it’s between the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and those opposing its upcoming Sep. 6-15 World Conservation Congress (WCC) at Jungmon resort, seven km from Gangjeong.

Jeju, home to multiple UNESCO World Heritage sites and numerous other environmental and cultural special status designations (see side bar), is taking on new strategic importance as regional military powers and the United States, which maintains dozens of military bases in South Korea, Japan and Okinawa, vie for dominance in northeast Asia.

The naval base at Gangjeong, which Seoul said will also have civilian uses, is expected to accommodate submarines and up to 20 warships, including U.S. Aegis-equipped destroyers which opponents say will make the island less safe, not more.

For five years, Gangjeong has been the site of daily protests and frequent arrests. Now, just weeks before the Congress is to begin, conservationists, academics and NGOs are challenging the IUCN.

In mid-July 55 Korean environmental and civic groups sent a memo to the IUCN asking it to clarify its position on at least half a dozen environmental issues including the naval base while strongly criticising the decision to hold the Congress on Jeju.

A second group, Jeju Emergency Action Committee, submitted an open letter to the IUCN calling for the postponement or relocation of the Congress unless base construction is halted.

One of the authors of that letter is Jerry Mander, founder and co-chair of the International Forum on Globalization. He said the South Korean government’s support for the base, next door to the event, defies the IUCN’s historical purpose. He contends the IUCN is being “nice” about the base just to act like “grateful guests”.

“I think the IUCN’s willingness to praise its financial sponsors while, next door, the sponsors undermine the entire purpose of the IUCN is unforgivable,” Mander told IPS.

The IUCN has confirmed that Samsung C&T and Hyundai are among sponsors helping the South Korean government offset the cost of hosting the Congress. Critics are quick to note that Samsung is the lead contractor at the base and Hyundai Heavy Industries is working with Lockheed Martin to produce the Aegis Combat System to be deployed on U.S. warships at the Jeju naval base.

Opponents say holding the WCC so close to the site of the disputed development and its associated protests, arrests and a police crackdown on groups fighting to protect the environment is in direct conflict with the IUCN’s stated aim to “improve how we manage our natural environment for human, social and economic development”.

In a written statement responding to criticism, IUCN director general Julia Marton-Lefèvre said: “Unfortunately, no country has a totally unblemished record on the environment…The Jeju Congress will bring together thousands of dedicated conservations from all over the world to debate, discuss, share and vote on our most pressing environmental problems and their solutions.”

In an interview on Korean television, Marton-Lefèvre explained that IUCN’s vision is “a just world that values and conserves nature” with a mission to “influence society based on good science to conserve nature and natural resources in an equitable and sustainable manner”.

Speaking to IPS from Switzerland, IUCN director of communications John Kidd said, “IUCN is not a campaigning organisation like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. We’re a membership organisation that exists to promote scientific research and facts and to bring different groups in society together.”

Kidd said it’s important that the WCC, which is held every four years, remains on Jeju.

“We want (the base) issue, with all the people involved, to be discussed at the Congress…in a very open, pragmatic, structured way.” To postpone or relocate the Congress, Kidd said, would not be good for people affected by the Gangjeong base or other environmental issues in Korea.

“Part of the benefit of the Congress is that (as) a movement to be more sustainable and environmentally conscious, (it) spills over to the place where the Congress is held. We’ve seen that going back decades,” Kidd said.

With between 8,000-10,000 attendees (about half from IUCN member organisations) at the quadrennial gathering, Kidd said the Congress provides an important venue to discuss the Gangjeong base and other issues.

“We’re very confident there will be a proper, open dialogue between the two main parties at the Congress (South Korean government and NGOs, specifically the Gangjeong village association) regarding the base.”

Kidd continues, “We’d like people to learn the background to these issues… and to look at both sides and the facts behind the issues, versus the politics…. We hope that delegates will go visit the site of the naval base…We’d like people to look at these also in view of similar issues in their own countries and regions.”

Sung-Hee Choi, who has been actively protesting in Gangjeong since 2009, told IPS she also wants IUCN members to see the culture and environment whose existence she said is threatened by the base.

Choi, who was photographed lying on the ground to block a bulldozer with her own body, argues Jeju is not only ecologically and culturally sensitive, but filled with spiritually important sites.

Another protestor, Jung-Min Choi from Seoul, has been arrested three times in Gangjeong. She told IPS that even if the IUCN doesn’t postpone its meeting, she wants it to include a statement about the impact of the base in its final resolution.

The theme for this year’s World Conservation Congress is ‘Nature+’ which the IUCN said is “about boosting the resilience of nature – improving how quickly nature and people adapt to change”.

As construction of the naval base in Gangjeong continues to alter the human and natural landscape of Jeju, many fear nature’s resilience is no match for the military and they’re pleading for help.

When South Korea took the initiative to integrate a development cooperation programme into this year’s World Expo, it stepped up its efforts to gain credibility as a donor on the international stage.

“The Expo is intended not only to enhance the public awareness of the dangers faced by the sea, but also to promote the need for international cooperation to turn these challenges into hopes for the future,” Ambassador Kim Sook the U.N. permanent representative of South Korea, told IPS.

The series of capacity building programmes, titled the Yeosu Project, is the first international cooperation initiative ever to accompany a World Expo, involving countries from Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa.

Greening aid

Under the banner of Green Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), the project includes programmes for developing eco-friendly marine fishing technology, improving coastal environment conservation and disaster prevention monitoring.

The Korean government plans to increase the percentage of “Green ODA” to 30 percent of its total ODA by 2020.

The East Asia Climate Partnership (EACP), set up by the Korean government in 2008 to facilitate international cooperation on climate change mitigation, currently has 20 projects underway in 10 countries.

In Mongolia, programmes numbering five in total include a water resource management project in the new town of Yarmag in Ulaanbaatar, a solid waste management project and a heating and hot water systems project.

“Such policy direction was well considered during the preparation process of the Yeosu Expo. Korea’s commitment to Green ODA will be materialised through the Yeosu Projects,” Kim told IPS

“For those developing countries keen to pursue a Green Economy path, the greening of ODA is likely to be welcome in terms of them accelerating and scaling up such ambitions,” Achim Steiner, U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director, told IPS.

Gaining donor credibility

The greening initiative coincides with a concerted effort on the part of the Korean government to scale up its development cooperation programme following its recent accession to the Organisation for Overseas Cooperation and Development Assistance Committee (OECD DAC) in 2010.

Mexico, Chile and South Korea are the only former developing countries to ever to have transferred into the DAC.

“As a recipient-turned-donor country, the Republic of Korea has made strenuous efforts to bridge the gap between developed and developing countries,” Kim told IPS.

Heavily reliant on foreign aid in the 1960s, Korea propelled itself from destitution following the Korean War to its current status as the thirteenth largest economy in the world.

According to government estimates, it received 12.7 billion dollars in the post-war period.

In response to growing interest from developing countries in learning from Korea’s development experience, the Korean government established the Knowledge Sharing Programme (KSP) in 2004 with the Korea Development Institute, and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

For sustainable development, “Knowledge sharing is crucial. No one country has all the solutions to large scale (climate) challenges; the perspective and experience of individual nations, including traditional knowledge can, through shared programmes, and the sharing of lessons learnt, act as a catalyst for action,” Steiner told IPS

“Not least by building confidence that addressing marine and climate change issues are not insuperable but infinitely do-able,” he added.

“Building on its commitment to South-South Cooperation, Korea has become a world leader in knowledge sharing,” David Arnold, president of the Asia Foundation, non-profit organisation working towards the development of the Asia-Pacific region, told IPS.

The government has also committed to doubling its development assistance by 2015.

“I am very proud as a Korean that Korea has now become a donor country in the world from a poverty-stricken, war-devastated country.” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said in his speech at the 2011 High Level Forum (HLF4) on Aid Effectiveness in Busan.

Tied aid, loans and MDGs

However, 75 percent of Korean ODA is tied aid, according to OECD statistics, which binds recipient countries to conditions that promote donor country products and exports.

While the DAC estimates that tying aid raises the cost of many goods, services and works by 15 to 30 percent, a U.N. study of bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa found that tying aid reduces the value of the aid by 25-40 percent.

Since embarking on a “Roadmap on Untying”, Korea has reduced tied aid from 98 percent in 2008 OECD statistics.

South Korean assistance to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is also predominantly in the form of loans, which often foster dependency due to the inability of poorer countries to pay back the loan. LMICs on the other hand mostly receive grants, considered a more sustainable form of assistance.

A 2008 DAC review recognises that Korea’s emphasis on mutual cooperation “is important in understanding Korea’s thinking, and to some extent drives policy choices such as the heavy use of loans and tied aid”.

But the committee recommends that South Korea “maintains a focus on poverty reduction and contributes to the MDGs, by prioritising LDCs and low-income countries and using appropriate aid instruments”

An Asian perspective

At the HLF4 the Asian Approaches to Development Cooperation dialogue series raised the issue of “whether donor alignment around an agreed set of principles and approaches is desirable or possible” for Asian approaches, Arnold, who represented the Asia Foundations at the HLF4, told IPS.

Countries like Korea, India, China and Malaysia have been providing training and technical assistance to other countries since the 1950s.

“Beyond resources, these emerging actors bring distinctive philosophies, expertise, partners, and modalities to their cooperation,” Arnold told IPS

Arnold highlighted some key similarities in Asian approaches such as mutual benefit with partners, responding to partner country requests, shared and sustained growth and capacity development.

“Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are not often used to describe either the goals or indicators of development cooperation in Asia,” he said.

In a similar endeavour to avoid the aid-recipient dichotomy, “’Aid’ is rarely used to describe Asian cooperation partnerships and most countries do not consider themselves donors,” Arnold told IPS.

But “Asian approaches to development cooperation have mostly fallen under the radar of OECD DAC donors until recently,” he said.

Highlighting Korea’s key role in facilitating mutual North-South learning at HLF4 negotiations Arnold told IPS “Korea, as host, played a unique bridging role between donor and partner countries, between DAC and non-DAC donors, and between ‘Asian’ and ‘Western’ development partners.”

Balancing the bargaining tables of foreign aid, “Korea was instrumental in shepherding the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation and expanding the dialogue on development and aid effectiveness to include important emerging donors like China and India,” he said.

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 2012 (IPS)

When South Korea picked an oceans theme for the 2012 Yeosu World Expo, it became host to the largest marine-themed event in history, with the potential to make a concrete contribution to sustainable development and simultaneously buoy the Korean global image.

Ambassador Kim Sook. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

With hi-tech spectacles, such as a virtual whale that feeds on the text messages of visitors, and the emblematic “Big O” structure, which floats above Yeosu’s sparkling waters projecting a nightly multi-media show, the global exhibition does not disappoint.

But the question is can South Korea translate a captivating display of oceanic beauty and marine threats into concrete action to protect the world’s oceans and environment?

In an interview with U.N. correspondent Isabelle de Grave, Ambassador Kim Sook, permanent representative of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations, talks about what the 2012 Yeosu Expo means for South Korea, for Yeosu and for the protection of the world’s oceans. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What does this year’s Expo mean to South Korea, its global image and role on the international stage?

A: The Expo is one of the most significant international events and is expected to upgrade the national brand of Korea. It serves as a good opportunity to address climate change, depletion of natural resources, and the destruction of the ecosystem, which will bring out Korea’s active role in consolidating global cooperation.
The Expo is also expected to stimulate Korea’s shipbuilding and associated ocean-related businesses, which will further strengthen its economic dynamism. In addition, being held in a relatively small city located in the southwestern part of the Korean Peninsula, the Yeosu Expo will raise awareness of the region and help diversify the images of Korea

The government of the Republic of Korea expects that the event will provide an opportunity to enhance the international community’s awareness of the function and value of the ocean and coast, to share the knowledge on the sustainable use of the ocean and coast, and to strengthen the need for cooperation in the maritime sector.

At the end of the Expo, the Yeosu Declaration will be launched, in which Korea’s strong commitment towards developing countries will be clearly reflected. As a recipient-turned-donor country, the Republic of Korea has made strenuous efforts to bridge the gap between developed and developing countries. This year’s Expo is an extension of such efforts, particularly in the field of oceans.

Q: How has the coastal town of Yeosu benefited as host to the Expo and subsequent beneficiary of an eco-friendly urban regeneration project?

A: The Korean government introduced the concept of “low-carbon green cities” and has applied it to new urban planning and urban regeneration projects since 2009. Low-carbon green cities aim to build a low energy-consuming socio-economic system that promotes environmental protection and economic growth simultaneously.
By seizing upon the Expo’s momentum, Yeosu has been transformed into a model case of the green growth project. Now Yeosu has become a low-carbon green city that promotes green growth by combining green technology, including green construction, green traffic, and new renewable energy, with smart grid and information technology.

Despite its rich marine resources, Yeosu’s poor infrastructure has restrained its potential for development. However, the improved infrastructure has helped the city to fully utilise its potential for sustainable development and to set the foundation for the future development of the entire southern coastal region.

Q: How will Expo 2012 build upon the outcomes of the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development?

A: Oceans is one of the areas with the most important outcomes in Rio+20, including an agreement to take a decision on the development of an international instrument under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to address the issue of marine biodiversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction as well as to call for the elimination of IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing and market-distorting subsidies.

Rio+20 is not an end, but a beginning of our journey into sustainable development. To make Rio+20 an ultimate success, we have to translate our words into actions.

The theme of the Yeosu Expo, “The Living Ocean and Coast,” conceptualises the future we want for oceans, where sound preservation of oceans is essentially linked with sustainable development for humankind. I am certain that the Yeosu Expo will expedite the continued progress on international cooperation to achieve the conservation and sustainable use of oceans, seas, and coastal areas.

Q: What contribution can technological exhibits at Yeosu make to sustainable development?

A: Green technologies, which are being exhibited at the Expo are not merely token green technologies, but technologies of the future, and some of them are also popular in Korea now. Green growth seeks to achieve the dual goals of environmental sustainability and economic growth at the same time, and green technologies are the foundation upon which both of these goals can be achieved.

In January 2009, the Korean government drew up a Comprehensive Plan for the Research and Development of Green Technologies. In May 2009, a Strategy for the Development and Commercialization of Major Green Technologies was established.

The Korean government has increased investment for the Research and Development of green technologies. In 2012, about two billion dollars will be invested in order to secure original technology and ease market entry. In addition, the Korean government is making further efforts to facilitate, disseminate and commercialize green technologies.

It also endeavors to establish the foundations for green technology industries while simultaneously promoting active international cooperation.

Q: How do you view the government’s recent announcement to allow whaling for scientific research against the backdrop of the 2012 Yeosu Expo geared towards protecting the world’s oceans?

A: The Korean government understands concerns expressed by the international community on the issue of scientific whaling.
The Korean government will soon make its decision on whether to submit the proposal on scientific research whaling after thorough consultations with domestic fishermen’s associations and environmental organisations, and discussions with concerned International Whaling Commision (IWC) Member States.

Even if the Korean government decides to submit a proposal on scientific research whaling, its decision to conduct scientific research whaling in accordance with international regulations and procedures will be fully committed to the recommendations of the IWC Scientific Committee.

Excerpt:

Gazing over the ocean somehow puts a human being at peace with the world. To build a home with a view of the sea is the dream of many. The expanse of water, the beach, and tide magically draw us to them.

Courtesy of Sam Koo.

One hundred years ago a stroll along the shoreline almost anywhere in the world would have been a pure experience, clean and invigorating whether the ocean was calm or crashing with waves. Today, the same cannot be said.

The world’s coasts, oceans and the creatures that inhabit them are suffering, and man is the irresponsible culprit. A beachcomber today is less likely to discover seashells washed up on the shore than he will shards of plastic.

Pollution, whether from enormous oil spills or the casual dumping of garbage, has spoiled the ocean bottom and formerly pristine regions where the sea meets the land.

Vast stretches of coastline have been dredged and reengineered to create arable land, destroying the habitats of birds, shellfish and other coastal life in the process. Industrial fishing fleets with nets laid for kilometres scoop up fish, driving them to the point of extinction.

The list of how the oceans are exploited goes on and on. It’s not too much to say that we face a fundamental ecological crisis that threatens our very lives.

And while we crave a quiet walk along the life-giving sea and the moment for reflection it offers, how much thought do we give to what is at risk?

The Korean government, along with 104 countries and the United Nations, are confronting this great question and much more at a three-month-long world’s fair in Yeosu on the south coast of the Korea peninsula.

You would be hard pressed to find a better place to hold an international exposition on the importance of the ocean. Yeosu, once an unheralded port city of 300,000, unfolds from a small harbor.

Along the waterfront sprouts a futuristic Disney-like park that has been welcoming millions of visitors from around the world to explore exhibitions pointing up the delights of the oceans and the dangers they face.

The United Nations has been playing a central role at Yeosu Expo 2012 sponsoring an array of educational programmes to highlight crucial issues such as climate change, the rising sea levels and marine pollution among many others.

Rising sea levels will challenge the very life of coastal communities – rich and poor – across the globe. Before long, small island countries may simply disappear into the water.

Without adequate research and education about the nature of tsunamis, thousands of people will continue to perish as they did following the powerful undersea earthquakes in the Indian Ocean basin and off the east coast of Japan last year.

And security on the seas affects all nations that are dependent on the free passage of trading vessels. International cooperation, with the U.N. as a facilitator, is critical if countries are to safeguard oceans today from criminals on the high seas.

In addition to the exhibits from many countries, the Expo is an “edutainment” site for young and old. The grounds are expansive and fun-filled.

At the heart of the complex is a 12-story-high structure in the shape of an “O,” which spews water, laser lights and beams. It can emit a thin sheet of water upon which videos can be reflected. “O” of course stands for oceans, but also zero, symbolising a beginning in a collective effort to restore the health of the seas.

In the nearly two months since the Expo opened, the “Big O” has become the most popular destination of the visitors.

This centrepiece at Yeosu grounds stands above a massive 60-million-dollar fountain that can be raised and submerged in the surrounding water, all orchestrated by computers. In the public thoroughfare leading from the main entrance, a canopy of digital lights develops the themes of the Expo: ocean conservation and recognition of the perils of climate change.

Whales appear to swim overhead. Two large industrial silos on the grounds, which once stored cement, have been “recycled” and turned into what organisers call the world’s largest pipe organ. Another popular attraction is an enormous aquarium, which will survive after the Expo ends.

Korea’s best-known companies – Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Daewoo and steelmaker POSCO – have invested heavily to promote the ideals of the Expo and to showcase their products, and their advanced design and gadgets have turned out to be very popular too.

The range of activities taking place at the fair is startling: lectures to raise public awareness on the importance the oceans are nearly continuous, singing and dancing groups perform daily, from ballet to symphonic concerts to daily K-pop shows.

The United Nations itself holds a permanent exhibition as well as changing exhibitions involving 24 U.N. agencies and international organisations. It also has fielded attractive stars including Seohyun of the Girls’ Generation.

Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, states the overall goal of the Yeosu Expo well: “Managing and protecting the ecosystem services of our blue world are part of the transition towards a global Green Economy that will ultimately ensure jobs, eradicate poverty, help us adapt to climate change and maintain the health of our oceans.”

And informal surveys show the Expo, helped by the blanket media coverage, has successfully managed to instil in many the important messages of protecing the oceans and furthering the knowledge of the marine ecosystem.

On the other hand, despite the strenuous efforts to stage an environment-friendly Expo, the result seems mixed at best.

Thousands of plastic water bottles and lunch boxes, and the heaps of promotional brochures, leaflets and souvenirs get thrown into trash bins daily, prompting some to question the wisdom of staging a massive modern-day expo like Yeosu.

At end of the Expo on Aug. 12, dignitaries from around the world, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, will gather to proclaim the Yeosu Declaration, spelling out concrete action plans to safeguard our seas for posterity.

We know the path of neglect we are on leads to further ruin and the destruction of one of our most important relationships with the planet. Preserving the oceans ranks with the fight to insure there is clean water for all and preserving the rainforests.

Mr. Ban observed recently that the Yeosu Expo highlights “the invaluable services provided by oceans and coasts – from the food we eat to the oxygen we breathe. I hope all who visit the UN Pavilion will come to feel more connected with these indispensable ecosystems – and with the United Nations, too. Let us work together – in Yeosu and around the world – to build the future we want.”

*Samuel Koo, a former international journalist, UN official and cultural diplomat, has spent a career fostering humanitarian ventures in music and the art as well. He serves as United Nations Commissioner-General for Yeosu Expo 2012