A micro-needle patch (MAP) is an innovative method to deliver drugs and vaccines. Credit: QuadMedicine

By Busani Bafana
SEOUL, Jan 22 2024 (IPS)

If the fear of sharps makes a visit to the doctor dreadful, you need not dread it anymore.

A South Korean company’s invention of an innovative micro-needle patch could make you look forward to your next doctor’s visit.

The micro-needle patch (MAP) is a painless, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly way to administer vaccines and drugs in place of solid injections, its developers say.

The MAP system has the combined advantages of conventional patches and syringes. It has tiny needles whose tips are less invasive and almost painless when administering drugs, Chi Yong Kim, Research Coordinator at QuadMedicine, tells IPS.

“The feeling of the micro-needle is like a cat’s tongue. It’s like a scratch that does not cause pain,” Kim says of the MAP, which also delivers active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in the correct amounts.

QuadMedicine has patented the form of micro-needle patches that are separable MAPs, where the tips of the needle themselves are active APIs. In delivering the API, the tips of the micro-needle are inserted into the skin and break off, reducing delivery time and increasing delivery efficiency by almost 100 percent, said Kim.

Kim notes that the MAPS also offer the advantage of portability, and they are stable at room temperature, making them easy to carry, store, and transport before they are administered. Besides, the MAP can be recycled safely without generating much waste.

According to the World Health Organization, annually, an estimated 16 billion injections are administered worldwide, but not all of the needles and syringes are properly disposed of, making it necessary to ensure safe and environmentally sound management of health care waste.

Chi Yong Kim, Research Coordinator, QuadMedicine. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“Alternatively, we can also freeze dry forms of vaccines that use the same powder form of API,” he said, adding that lyophilized powder can be attached to the MAP.

The company is now investigating comparable vaccines and drugs, for instance, the messenger mRNA vaccines that can be used in the microneedle or patch platform. Plans are afoot to submit an IND filing for a clinical trial soon, and prototypes of the coated MAP and the separable MAP will be tested through Phase I to III clinical trials.

Kim said low- and middle-income countries as well as the premium market were targeted for innovation, which means vaccine-loaded MAPs will be affordable for global health.  For example, certain vaccines, such as the influenza vaccine, have a dosage-saving effect when applied with a micro-needle. The same amount of antigen used for the intramuscular route with a syringe is no longer used, so the API amount can be reduced when loaded on the micro-needles.

While professionals like medical staff or doctors must currently inject vaccines, the goal with the micro needles or patches is that volunteers can give them to patients who need vaccinations.

“I have a fear of the sharps,” Kim said, explaining that each time he visited the hospital, nurses asked him to relax so that his muscles could not be punched.

“I took my kids to the family doctor, and there was one option, the solid micro needle,” he said, explaining that a personal experience with the fear of needles was a coincidental decision for him to specialize at QuadMedicine, which has been involved in the development of the MAPS and patches.

“We have been developing new platforms to deliver vaccines and drugs through coated MAP or dissolvable MAP, which is a possible alternative to solid needles and a better solution to deliver the correct amount of the drugs and vaccines for our body to make good immune responses.”

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The work culture in South Korea is different and managers here often say that they are used to the rigid hierarchy at work.

By Ahn Mi Young
SEOUL, Jan 21 2019 (IPS)

Despite the international rise of South Korean businesses like Samsung, Hyundai and LG as global powerhouses, the corporate culture in this East Asian nation is often known to have a vertically rigid command line.

“When you have a good idea, you’d rather wait until you earn trust from your boss,” says Kim Chull-Soo, 42, who works at a Seoul-based finance business. “Trying to stand out in a crowd by explicitly speaking is not a good idea in Korean corporate culture,” Kim adds.

Diverse and global organisation that goes against the grain

But the Seoul-based Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has been initiating a corporate culture that is very different from this mainstream. From encouraging staff to be transformational without being afraid of sticking out, to having open plan offices which go against the traditional hierarchical structure of having individual offices, this international organisation is pushing boundaries as its fulfils its mandate to achieve resilient, sustainable growth.

“We are building a united cultural front to strengthen our core values to be bold, excellent, inclusive and act with integrity,” Christel Adamou, head of human resources, tells IPS from GGGI’s head office. She adds that the organisational culture here is unique because it “is younger, more dynamic”.

GGGI, an inter-governmental organisation committed to developing green economies through supporting its 30 member states, lists over 60 operational projects in all member countries. This includes projects that involve the development of: green cities, water and sanitation projects, sustainable landscapes, sustainable energy projects and cross-cutting strategies for financing mechanisms.

GGGI has around 300 employees. And among international organisations, GGGI is one of the smallest so it has had to expand its capacity to meet its global mission. “We at GGGI need a much greater capacity to help member states in their transition to sustainable development and also adapt to climate changes,” Ban Ki-Moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations the new president and chair of GGGI, said in 2018.

Hierarchical structure is the norm in most South Korean businesses

The work culture in South Korea is different. And managers at most South Korean firms often say that they are used to the rigid hierarchy at work. Creating and implementing new ideas is usually made by the boss of the organisation, explains Park Jae-Min, 43, who works at a Seoul-based business group.

“When we start something new, we are trying to listen and find out what our boss wants before we talk,” Park says.

Lee Jong-Min, 38, who works for a Korean-British joint venture business in Seoul, agrees. “Oddly, I usually feel comfortable with my Korean boss who makes a quick decision by himself and commands me to [implement it]. I sometimes feel embarrassed when my British boss asks my opinion before he makes an opinion.”

Practicing core values

But if core values tend to be hierarchal in South Korean businesses, at GGGI head office the values of inclusivity, boldness and transformation are clearly visible.

Adamou describes the organisation’s essence quite clearly from her first impression. “When I first came here in 2017, I felt the air of  dynamism and enthusiasm in GGGI here I didn’t find before in bigger organisations.” She joined GGGI after her stint as chief human resources officer for the United Nations peace-keeping mission in Haiti and as legal advisor to the U.N. Dispute Tribunal in Nairobi. She also worked at other U.N. organisations and has been based in Switzerland, Liberia and at the U.N.’s New York headquarters.

In South Korea, your job title also usually determines where you sit at work.

But GGGI’s office space itself has an air of interaction and youth. In the open plan office, there is a lively and communicative air among the staff who are mostly in their 30s or 40s. At the office centre there is an open plaza where people relax over coffee, talk and brainstorm.

“So there is a circle of staff, brainstorming, thinking together, designing the framework, how we would like to frame our values at GGGI. Decisions would usually be made top down, but for the culture-building initiatives, most was made in a bottom up way. [This way], there was more ownership, and of course the result was always better when you involve as many stake holders as possible,” Adamou explains.

Holding on to some South Korean practices

Meanwhile GGGI embraces the South Korean business culture of being competitive with integrity.

Acting with integrity is essential for GGGI to communicate as a neutral, trusty partner, explains Adamou, “because the in-country projects are embedded into diverse entities like government, finance, environment and health”.

Being based in-country also means that GGGI aids its staff in developing geographical mobility by increasing their exposure to internationally diverse settings. This, Adamou says, also fosters neutrality in the organisation’s work.

“A head programmer in Seoul may become a country representative in Cambodia. Or an analyst in Ethiopia may be programming in Columbia. Otherwise, if you stay too long in one location, it may develop too much of a relationship with one government and it can hinder [their mission] to be neutral. We work for GGGI not for personal relationships [with a particular entity],” Adamou adds.

A night market in South Korea. The country plans to ensure that 20 percent of all electricity generated is renewable by 2030. Credit: Yeong-Nam/CC BY 2.0

By Ahn Mi Young
SEOUL , Nov 1 2018 (IPS)

While major countries have pledged to be powered entirely by renewable energies in order to stop greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, there are a number of states that are investigating ways to implement this transition quickly in order to achieve their goals ahead of this deadline.

At the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) Energy Forum held in South Korea’s capital, Seoul, on Oct. 30, GGGI council members, leading energy experts, and policy makers from both the private and public sectors asked precisely that question.

They gathered to share their energy transformation experiences from the United Kingdom, Norway, Japan, Denmark, and Mongolia and discussed how South Korea can emulate them as it transitions from a coal and nuclear-centric energy dependence to renewables.

How to accelerate the transition to Renewable Energy?

“As there is a big global shift towards renewable energy (RE), we may ask questions: How can we accelerate the clean energy transition? Is the Korean target ambitious? How fast can it be transitional?” said Frank Rijsberman, director-general of GGGI in his keynote speech.

Although global decarbonisation on its own isn’t adequate to meet the ambitions of the Paris Agreement, the forum shared renewable transition cases and experiences of how they have accelerated the transition to RE.

The UK is leading the low-carbon transition and has implemented a drastic cut of emissions in the past 18 years while also continuing its rapid economic growth. Norway built the world’s electric car capital, and made the transition from oil to a renewable model. In Denmark, Copenhagen has become the world’s green city, as it uses district heating pipelines to heat houses and aims to become the world’s first carbon neutral city by 2025.

The most drastic turnaround comes from South Korea and Japan, which have been among the world’s major producers of nuclear power in the past. But both countries have joined the global renewable energy transition club in recent years.

100 Percent Renewables South Korea

The forum heard from Hans-Josef Fell, president of Energy Watch Group, an independent global network of scientists and parliamentarians that was founded in 2006 under the direction of Fell while he was still a member of the German parliament. “It is possible to be 100 percent renewable and we can work together with South Korea to reach the 100 percent goal,” he told participants.

Fell forecast that Solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind power will be the cheapest energy in G20 states by 2030, noting that RE has created 10.3 million jobs worldwide in 2017, with most jobs being in Asia.

The renewable breakdown of the global energy system in 2050 is forecast as:
• Solar PV: 69 percent,
• Wind power: 18 percent,
• Hydro: 8 percent,
• and bioenergy: 20 percent.

Fell also noted political will should be strong enough to fully embrace the RE transition, as he suggested the need for direct private investment in RE and zero-emission technology, for tenders to be granted only for capacity above 40MW, and the need to phase out all state subsidies on fossil fuels.

Hans-Josef Fell, president of Energy Watch Group delivers paper at the 2018 GGGI Energy Forum in Seoul. Credit: Ahn Mi Young/IPS

Japan transitions to PV

Japan is one of the countries that has shown the will to embrace RE. After committing to reducing its dependence on nuclear energy by 2030, Japan has set targets for becoming an economically independent and carbon-free mainstream power by 2050. Japan has reduced its nuclear power generation following the Fukushima nuclear power plant explosion in 2011.

Izumi Kaizuka, Director of RTS Corporation, a PV consulting company, who presented on the RE policy transition in Japan and the current status and outlook of the country’s PV market, said: “There has been an explosive growth of approved PV projects.”

But Japan has concerns about the future burden of surcharges, installation quality, environmental damage from natural disasters, and the lack of hosting capacity.

“There is a significant cost gap of the PV system between domestic and overseas [prices]. Prices are further decreasing due to global competition. Some emphasise the importance of how installation costs in Japan (not under global competition) will be further reduced,” Kaizuka said.

Japan has tried to address these concerns and introduced a new approval system to deal with delayed or unrealistic projects, to increase transparency for grid connections with disclosure of connection capacity and the price of work, as well as the exemption of surcharge for energy sufficiency efforts.

With these actions taken, Kaizuka had a strong growth forecast for PV-installed capacity in Japan. “Despite these concerns, PV is growing, since PV is stable and affordable,” Kaizuka said.

South Korea to move from coal-nuclear to renewables

Under its Renewable Energy 2030 Implementation Plan to achieve a 20 percent goal of renewable share of total electricity generation by 2030, South Korea is investing in clean energy.

This is a drastic reversal of the country’s previous nuclear-centric energy policy. In 2016, 25 reactors generated one-third of the country’s electricity and made South Korea the world’s fifth-largest producer of nuclear energy, according to the World Nuclear Association.

To reverse its energy mix, Seoul is driving a renewable boom under a private-public partnership.

“Active private investment is supporting the renewable energy transition. More than 95 percent of new capacity is PV and wind, which creates the largest number of jobs,” said Kyong-Ho Lee, Director of the New and Renewable Energy Policy Division, at South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE).

The local government-led, large-scale projects, where local governments play a key role in selecting sites and choosing business operators, are cited as a major driving force of the on-going RE transition in South Korea.

“To encourage citizen participation, the government gives monetary incentives for both urban and rural renewable energy installed, as well as state loans for rural RE installed. Thus farmers can make a double income from both farming and PV power installed,” said Lee from MOTIE.

Seoul has said that by 2030, out of a forecast total 63.8GW to be installed, its RE mix will be:
• 57 percent PV,
• 17.7 percent wind power,
• 5 percent bio, and
• 6 percent waste.

“It is a transitional moment as we continue to improve conditions through deregulation of RE, installing and collecting PV modules,” Lee said.

In Norway, financial incentive was strong enough to drive the electric car boom. About 45 percent of new cars sold in Norway in recent months were all-electric cars. People who buy electric cars pay no import taxes, tolls, parking or ferry costs, and are exempt from a 25 percent sales tax at purchase.

“Nationwide infrastructure is necessary to spread the EV [electric vehicle] boom from cities to rural areas,” said Atle Hamar, Vice Minister, Ministry of Climate and Environment, Norway. “In cities, there are enough charging stations but in rural areas, we need public support [to build more].”

District heating in Denmark

Denmark offers the best conditions for using geothermal heat because of the country’s well-developed district heating. In Denmark, boilers provide heat for entire districts through a network of heating pipes.

“We will be testing new technology to find a cost efficient and easier way of heating houses. For example, we are replacing biomass with geothermal heat pumps, which is easier to heat houses,” Jacob Rasmussen, counsellor, energy & environment, Embassy of Denmark.

How fast can it go from nuclear to renewable?

These countries offer great examples for South Korea. And while the forum generally saw a consensus formed on the country’s need to transition to renewables, it debated how fast the transition should be.

South Korea’s transition may be too fast, according to some experts.

“We must respect the role of the nuclear power source [that has driven our economy as the cheapest energy source],” said Sang-hyup Kim, visiting professor from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and chairman of the Coalition for Our Common Future.

“In fact, nuclear is a reality [in South Korea] based on its [60 years of] science and technology. Why should we give it up so rapidly?”

To others, the transition may be a bit slow.

“Some would say the 20 percent goal is not ambitious enough. But we should manage our satisfaction by setting a reasonable target,” said Sun-Jin Yun, professor of environmental and energy policy at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University (SNU).

Panelists agreed on the need to increase inter-Korean energy cooperation to bring peace to Northeast Asia. “Increasing energy interdependence is a way to secure peace for the whole of Northeast Asia. For example, a renewable energy-based grid connecting Mongolia and both Koreas and others can be the way to increase interdependence,” said YangYi Won Young, executive director, Energy Transition Forum, a private energy think-tank.

In the past two decades South Korea has made such vibrant progress that it now counts itself as one of the world’s leading economies. Credit: Anton Strogonoff/CC-BY-2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 27 2015 (IPS)

Back in 1996, when South Korea voluntarily quit the 132-member Group of 77 (G77) – described as the largest single coalition of developing nations — it joined the 34-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), long known as the “rich man’s club” based in Paris.

As one of only three countries to leave the G77 for the OECD – the other two being Mexico and Chile – Korea elevated itself from the ranks of developing nations to the privileged industrial world.

Perhaps more significantly, Korea also swapped places at the negotiation table: from an aid recipient to a donor nation.

“To play a greater role in the global community and fulfill its responsibility as one of the important donors, Korea will continue to increase its ODA [official development assistance]." -- Ambassador Choong-Hee Hahn, South Korea’s deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations
Since then, the Korean government has made a significant contribution to development aid, providing assistance to some 26 developing nations.

Ambassador Choong-Hee Hahn, South Korea’s deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, told IPS Korea has selected 26 priority partner countries – out of 130 partner countries – for development assistance.

The countries have been singled out based on their income level, political situation, diplomatic relations with Korea, and economic cooperation potential.

To enhance aid effectiveness, he pointed out, the Korean government provides 70 percent of its Official Development Assistance (ODA) to 26 countries, namely, Ghana, Nigeria, Nepal, East Timor, Laos, Rwanda, Mozambique, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Viet Nam, Bolivia, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Cameroon, Cambodia, Colombia, DRC, Paraguay, Pakistan, Peru, and the Philippines.

In 2014, Korea’s net ODA amounted to 1.85 billion dollars, ranking 16th in volume among OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members.

Korea’s ODA-Gross National Income (GNI) ratio reached 0.13 percent, ranking 23rd among the OECD DAC members.

“To play a greater role in the global community and fulfill its responsibility as one of the important donors, Korea will continue to increase its ODA,” the Korean envoy said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a former foreign minister of South Korea, points out that the international community must make progress on the three pillars of United Nations engagement.

First:  sustainable development. Second: conflict prevention and resolution. And third:  advancing human rights and democracy.

“Korea has unique lessons to share on all three pillars and can be an active catalyst in bringing the world together on these issues,” the U.N. chief said.

He said Korea evolved from a developing to a developed country within the span of a single generation, and successfully hosted the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in 2010.

“The international community is looking to Korea with high expectations,” said Ban praising his home country “for rising from a beneficiary to a donor.”

As it continues to enhance its international profile, Korea is now home to the Global Green Growth Institute and also host to the new secretariat of the Green Climate Fund.

Over the last 20 to 30 years, Korea has made such vibrant economic progress that it is now one of the world’s, if not Asia’s, leading economies, with global brand names such as Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, LG and Daewoo.

Asked about the secret of his country’s economic success, Ambassador Hahn told IPS Korea went through an unprecedented transformation from one of the least developed countries to a member of the OECD within a generation. Such economic success can be explained by several key factors.

First, Korea set ambitious yet realistic goals based on sustainable economic development plans.

He said this was achieved through the implementation of five-year economic development plans in the initial stage, even as Korea has made steady progress from the light industry to heavy industry, then to the service industry.

Second, human capital secured through quality education has been another major factor.

In sync with economic development, he pointed out, mandatory primary and secondary education was phased in.

“The strong will of the Korean people to educate also led to the establishment of high quality higher education infrastructure.”

Third, traits such as diligence, self-help, and cooperation contributed to the improvement in the ownership of the country’s development.

Especially, the concept of ‘Saemaul Undong’, which decisively contributed to poverty eradication and development of rural areas in the 1970s, created systematic cooperation between the central and local governments and motivated local governments and communities to foster leadership and ownership of poverty eradication.

These elements, he said, can be seen as the key characteristics of the Korean rural development model, which continues to be a good role model for developing countries today.

Lastly, securing efficiency and accountability through the establishment of democratic and efficient governance led to successful poverty eradication and democratization.

“I believe inclusive institutions, rule of law, and a healthy civil society played a significant role in progressing towards a democratic and open society that is respectful of justice and human rights, considerate of the vulnerable, and that emphasizes human dignity.”

Asked if North and South Korea will one day join into a single union – as East and West Germany did decades ago – Ambassador Hahn said this year marks the 70th anniversary of the division of Korea.

Just as South Korean President Park Geun-hye repeatedly called for bringing down the barriers dividing the Korean peninsula, “it is our sincere hope that conditions for a peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula are created in the near future, and that the Korean peninsula becomes a foothold to realize a ‘world free from nuclear weapons’,” he stated.

“Based on the Trust-building Process on the Korean Peninsula, we currently make efforts to lay the ground for unification by further developing inter-Korea relations, building confidence and easing tensions in the Korean peninsula,” he declared.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

The mayor of Nagasaki, Tomihisa Taue, presents the Nagasaki Peace Declaration, saying that “rather than envisioning a nuclear-free world as a faraway dream, we must quickly decide to solve this issue by working towards the abolition of these weapons, fulfilling the promise made to global society”. Credit: YouTube

By Ramesh Jaura
BERLIN/TOKYO, Aug 10 2015 (IPS)

Seventy years after the brutal and militarily unwarranted atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, a nuclear weapons free world is far from within reach.

Commemorating the two events, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made impassioned pleas for heeding the experiences of the survivors of the atomic bombings and the growing worldwide awareness of the compelling need for complete abolition of such weapons.

The atomic bombings in 1945 destroyed the two cities, and more than 200,000 people died of nuclear radiation, shockwaves from the blasts and thermal radiation. Over 400,000 have died since the end of the war, from the after-effects of the bombs.

As of Mar. 31, 2015, the Japanese government had recognised 183,519 as ‘hibakusha’ (explosion-affected people), most of them living in Japan. Japan’s Atomic Bomb Survivors Relief Law defines hibakusha as people who were: within a few kilometres of the hypocentres of the bombs; within 2 km of the hypocentres within two weeks of the bombings; exposed to radiation from fallout; or not yet born but carried by pregnant women in any of these categories.“Our world still bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, and policy-makers in the nuclear-armed states remain trapped in provincial thinking, repeating by word and deed their nuclear intimidation” – Kazumi Matsui, mayor of Hiroshima

During the commemorative events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reports in several newspapers confirmed that those bombings were militarily unwarranted.

Gar Alperovitz, formerly Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, wrote in The Nation that that “the war was won before Hiroshima – and the generals who dropped the bomb knew it.”

He quoted Adm. William Leahy, President Harry S. Truman’s Chief of Staff, who wrote in his 1950 memoir ‘I Was There’ [that] “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender …”

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the U.S. president from 1953 until 1961, shared this view. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.

Eisenhower stated in his memoirs that when notified by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the decision to use atomic weapons, he “voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.”

Even the famous “hawk” Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Twenty-First Bomber Command, went public the month after the bombing, telling the press that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all,” wrote Alperovitz.

“The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish,” warned Robert Oppenheimer, widely considered the father of the bomb, as he called on politicians to place the terrifying power of the atom under strict international control.

Oppenheimer’s call has yet to be followed.

In his fervent address on Aug. 6, Kazumi Matsui, mayor of the City of Hiroshima, said: “Our world still bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, and policy-makers in the nuclear-armed states remain trapped in provincial thinking, repeating by word and deed their nuclear intimidation.”

He added: “We now know about the many incidents and accidents that have taken us to the brink of nuclear war or nuclear explosions. Today, we worry as well about nuclear terrorism.”

As long as nuclear weapons exist, he warned, anyone could become a hibakusha at any time. If that happens, the damage would reach indiscriminately beyond national borders. “People of the world, please listen carefully to the words of the hibakusha and, profoundly accepting the spirit of Hiroshima, contemplate the nuclear problem as your own,” he exhorted.

As president of Mayors for Peace, comprising mayors from more than 6,700 member cities, Kazumi Matsui vowed: “Hiroshima will act with determination, doing everything in our power to accelerate the international trend toward negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention and abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020.”

This, he said, was the first step toward nuclear weapons abolition. The next step would be to create, through the trust thus won, broadly versatile security systems that do not depend on military might.

“Working with patience and perseverance to achieve those systems will be vital, and will require that we promote throughout the world the path to true peace revealed by the pacifism of the Japanese Constitution,” he added.

“We call on the Japanese government, in its role as bridge between the nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon states, to guide all states toward these discussions, and we offer Hiroshima as the venue for dialogue and outreach,” the mayor of Hiroshima said.

In the Nagasaki Peace Declaration issued on Aug. 9, Nagasaki mayor Tomihisa Taue asked the Japanese government and Parliament to “fix your sights on the future, and please consider a conversion from a ‘nuclear umbrella’ to a ‘non-nuclear umbrella’.”

Japan does not possess any atomic weapons and is protected, like South Korea and Germany, as well as most of the NATO member states, by the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

He appealed to the Japanese government to explore national security measures, which do not rely on nuclear deterrence. “The establishment of a ‘Northeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NEA-NWFZ),’ as advocated by researchers in America, Japan, Korea, China, and many other countries, would make this possible,” he said.

Referring to the Japanese Parliament “currently deliberating a bill, which will determine how our country guarantees its security”, he said: “There is widespread unease and concern that the oath which was engraved onto our hearts 70 years ago and the peaceful ideology of the Constitution of Japan are now wavering. I urge the Government and the Diet to listen to these voices of unease and concern, concentrate their wisdom, and conduct careful and sincere deliberations.”

The Nagasaki Peace Declaration noted that the peaceful ideology of the Constitution of Japan was born from painful and harsh experiences, and from reflection on the war. “Since the war, our country has walked the path of a peaceful nation. For the sake of Nagasaki, and for the sake of all of Japan, we must never change the peaceful principle that we renounce war,” the declaration said.

The Nagasaki mayor regretted that the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) held at the United Nations earlier this year had struggled with reaching agreement on a Final Document.

However, said Taue, the efforts of those countries which were attempting to ban nuclear weapons had made possible a draft Final Document “which incorporated steps towards nuclear disarmament.”

He urged the heads of NPT member states not to allow the NPT Review Conference “to have been a waste”. Instead, they should continue their efforts to debate a legal framework, such as a ‘Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC),’ at every opportunity, including at the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Many countries at the Review Conference were in agreement that it was important to visit the atomic-bombed cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Against this backdrop, the Nagasaki mayor appealed to “President [Barack] Obama, heads of state, including the heads of the nuclear weapon states, and all the people of the world … (to) please come to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and see for yourself exactly what happened under those mushroom clouds 70 years ago.”

No U.S. president has ever attended the any event to commemorate the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller was the highest-ranking U.S. official at the Aug. 6 ceremony. She was reported as saying that nuclear weapons should never be used again.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The recent agreement between Iran and six nations on nuclear non-proliferation will likely have a “positive impact” on North Korea, according to a senior South Korean diplomat.

Choong-Hee Hanh, South Korea’s Deputy Permanent Representative and former Deputy Director-General for North Korean Nuclear Affairs, told IPS that the Iran nuclear deal bolsters the case for taking a multilateral approach to resolving sensitive international security issues.

“I think the Iran nuclear formula will give us a general hint that these issues should be dealt with in this multilateral approach,” he said. “I think that this case of diplomacy in Iran will (bring) pressure to North Korea and (create) awareness to international society about the benefits of utilising pressure to resolve these issues.”

Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council in addition to Germany reached an agreement in Vienna last month to limit Tehran’s nuclear energy programme in order to prevent it from developing weapons. The U.N. Security Council promptly approved the deal, which capped prolonged negotiations.

Similar six-party negotiations involving North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and United States was begun in 2007 but it stalled in 2009 when North Korea pulled out. Pyongyang has since carried out nuclear tests and withdrawn from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

“I believe the Iranian case can lend a positive impact in North Korea,” Hahn said, but added a note of caution. “On the other hand, North Korea continuously argues that they are a nuclear weapon state according to their constitution. They may think they should not abandon their nuclear weapons programme for the survival of the regime, so it seems not easy to resolve this issue.”

While China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. shared the objective of preventing the nuclearisation of North Korea, he said, “At the same time, their priorities are a little bit different. “

“The Six-Party Talks are meaningful as it is an opportunity to explore the bottom line of North Korea’s mindset on this issue as well as a shared perception among five parties,” he added. “I think this shared perception of five parties on the situation is very important to taking the next step and moving forward.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

By Christine Ahn
NEW YORK, Apr 28 2015 (IPS)

A century ago, the suffragist Jane Addams boarded a ship with other American women peace activists to participate in a Congress of Women in The Hague.

Christine Ahn

Over 1,300 women from 12 countries, “cutting across national enmities,” met to call for an end to World War I. That Congress became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which is now gathering in The Hague under the theme Women Stop War.

Just as Addams met women across national lines to try and stop WWI 100 years ago, from May 19 to 25, a delegation of 30 women from 15 countries around the world will meet and walk with Korean women, north and south, to call for an end to the Korean War.

As WWII came to a close, Korea, which had been colonised by Japan for 35 years, faced a new tragedy. After Japan’s surrender in 1945, the United States proposed (and the Soviets accepted) temporarily dividing Korea along the 38th parallel in an effort to prevent Soviet troops, who were fighting the Japanese in the north, from occupying the whole country.

Japanese troops north of the line would surrender to the Soviets; those to the south would surrender to U.S. authorities. It was meant to be a temporary division, but Washington and Moscow failed to establish a single Korean government, thereby creating two separate states in 1948: the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north.We are walking on May 24, International Women’s Day for Disarmament and Peace, because we believe that there must be an end to the Korean War that has plagued the Korean peninsula with intense militarisation.

This division precipitated the Korean War (1950-53), often referred to in the United States as “the forgotten war”, when each side sought to reunite the country by force. Despite enormous destruction and loss of life, neither side prevailed.

In July 1953, fighting was halted when North Korea (representing the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers) and the United States (representing the United Nations Command) signed the Korean War Armistice Agreement at Panmunjom, near the 38^th parallel.

This temporary cease-fire stipulated the need for a political settlement among all parties to the war (Article 4 Paragraph 60). It established the Demilitarized Zone, two-and-a-half miles wide and still heavily mined, as the new border between the two sides. It urged the governments to convene a political conference within three months, in order to reach a formal peace settlement.

Over 62 years later, no peace treaty has been agreed, with the continuing fear that fighting could resume at any time. In fact, in 2012, during another military crisis with North Korea, former U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged that Washington was, “within an inch of war almost every day.”

In 1994, as President Clinton weighed a pre-emptive military first strike against North Korea’s nuclear reactors, the U.S. Department of Defence estimated that an outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula would result in 1.5 million casualties within the first 24 hours and 6 million casualties within the first week.

This assessment predates North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons, which would be unimaginable in terms of destruction and devastation. We have no choice but to engage; the cost of not engaging is just too high.

The only way to prevent the outbreak of a catastrophic confrontation, as a 2011 paper from the U.S. Army War College counsels, is to “reach agreement on ending the armistice from the Korean War”—in essence, a peace agreement—and “giv[e] a formal security guarantee to North Korea tied to nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

Recent history has shown that when standing leaders are at a dangerous impasse, the role of civil society can indeed make a difference in averting war and lessening tensions. In 1994 as President Clinton contemplated military action, without the initial blessing of the White House, former President Jimmy Carter flew to Pyongyang armed with a CNN camera crew to negotiate the terms of the Agreed Framework with former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.

And in 2008, the New York Philharmonic performed in Pyongyang, which significantly contributed towards warming relations between the United States and DPRK.

Christiane Amanpour, who traveled with CNN to cover the philharmonic, wrote that U.S. Secretary of Defence William Perry, a former negotiator with North Korea, explained to her that this was a magic moment, with different peoples speaking the same language of music.

Armanpour said Perry believed that the event could positively influence the governments reaching a nuclear agreement, “but that mutual distrust and fear can only be overcome by people-to-people diplomacy.”

That is what we are hoping to achieve with the 2015 International Women’s Walk for Peace and Reunification of Korea, citizen-to-citizen diplomacy led by women. We are also walking on the 15^th anniversary of the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for the full and equal participation of women in conflict prevention and resolution, and in peacebuilding.

Women from Cambodia, Guatemala, Liberia and Northern Ireland all provided crucial voices for peace as they mobilised across national, ethnic and religious divides and used family and community networks to mitigate violence and heal divisions among their communities.

Similarly, our delegation will walk for peace in Korea and to cross the De-Militarized Zone separating millions of families, reminding the world on the tragic 70^th anniversary of Korea’s division by foreign powers that the Korean people are from an ancient culture united by the same food, language, culture, customs, and history.

We are walking on May 24, International Women’s Day for Disarmament and Peace, because we believe that there must be an end to the Korean War that has plagued the Korean peninsula with intense militarisation. Instead of spending billions on preparing for war, governments could instead redirect these critically needed funds for schools, childcare, health, caring for the elderly.

The first step is reconciliation through engagement and dialogue. That is why we are walking. To break the impasse among the warring nations—North Korea, South Korea, and the United States—to come to the peacemaking table to finally end the Korean War.

As Addams boarded the ship to The Hague, she and other women peace activists were mocked for seeking alternative ways than war to resolve international disputes.

Addams dismissed criticism that they were naïve and wild-eyed idealists: “We do not think we can settle the war. We do not think that by raising our hands we can make the armies cease slaughter. We do think it is valuable to state a new point of view. We do think it is fitting that women should meet and take counsel to see what may be done.”

It is only fitting that our women’s peace walk in Korea takes place on this centennial anniversary year of the first international act of defiance of war women ever undertook. I am honoured to be among another generation of women gathering at The Hague to carry on the tradition of women peacemakers engaged in citizen diplomacy to end war.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Coal mining in India. Coal-fired plants contribute 60 percent of India’s energy capacity and are a large source of the air pollution that is taking a toll on people’s health and their livelihoods. Photo credit: The Hindu

By Chaitanya Kumar
NEW DELHI, Mar 19 2015 (IPS)

In November last year, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that he plans to double coal production in India by the end of this decade and, in an effort to enhance production, the Indian government has started a process of auctioning coal blocks.

Coupled with the auctions is the disinvestment of Coal India Limited (CIL), the world’s largest coal mining company, and both actions can provide short-term reprieve to India’s energy and fiscal deficit woes.

However, there are four reasons why investors and the government should be wary of investing in coal for the long run (10-15 years).

The first stems from the fact that it is rapidly becoming clear to big business and governments around the world that a large proportion of coal and other fossil fuels should be left in the ground. The second is that coal consumption is declining in many parts of the world, with economics increasingly in favour of alternate sources of energy, such as wind and solar.“A systematic effort is now under way to dilute environmental, land and forest laws … The latest land ordinance passed by the [Indian] government has done away with two key pillars of the process of land acquisition: social impact assessment and community consent”

Reasons three and four have to do with growing resistance from tribal and grassroots communities, and the fact that India will be forced to take some form of action as air pollution becomes increasingly dangerous.

Despite its plans for coal production, the Indian government has been giving the right indicators on its pursuit of renewable energy, but this ambition – though welcome – is being counterbalanced by the country’s continued lust for more coal.

Call it an addiction that is hard to let go or sustained pressure from big corporations and their existing investments in coal, the Indian government has turned its eye on the vast domestic reserves in the country.

Growing resistance from tribal and grassroots communities

A systematic effort is now under way to dilute environmental, land and forest laws in the country. The latest land ordinance passed by the government has done away with two key pillars of the process of land acquisition: social impact assessment and community consent. The ordinance is facing stiff resistance from opposition parties and the general masses of India.

Any project, either private or under a public private partnership (PPP), previously required the consent of 80 percent of the community that the project impacted but no such consent is now required.

Social impact assessments that factors in effects on the environment and human health, among others, were mandatory for projects and while such assessments were shoddy in the past, doing away with them completely sets a poor precedent for industrial practices and gives even less of a reason for companies to clean up their acts.

A lack of social impact assessment also adds to the ambiguity that exists in offering the right compensation as part of the rehabilitation and resettlement plan embedded in the land ordinance.

In the context of coal, the efforts of the government to re-allocate 204 coal blocks and begin mining will be met by stiff resistance from impacted communities. “There is a fear that we will witness greater state violence on people as they begin resisting projects that have immediate impacts on their lives and livelihoods”, says Sreedhar, a former geologist who now runs a network of activists called Mines, Minerals & People.

The Mahan coal block, forcefully pursued by the Essar company, is a case in point where local communities have been resisting open cast mining for several years. The mine is located in what is one of the last remaining tracts of dense forests in central India. Mahan has subsequently been withdrawn from the auctions, a victory celebrated by the local communities.

Foreign investors are especially wary of pumping money into projects that can see resistance from local communities. The high profile cases bauxite mining plans by British resources giant Vedanta in ‘sacred’ hills in eastern India and the plans of South Korea’s POSCO steel-making multinational to open a plant in the eastern state of Odisha have become strong deterrents for big money to enter India.

While the government’s efforts at allaying fears may work, there is a difference in rhetoric and on-the-ground reality because it will not be easy to simply wish away people’s concerns.

Visible resistance has taken shape in the state of Chhattisgarh where twenty tribal gram sabhas in the Hasdeo Arand coal field area of the state passed a formal resolution under the forest rights act against coal mining in their traditional forest land.

“There has to be an assessment of India’s energy needs alongside an evaluation of the forests that we stand to lose from coal mining. Allocation of coal blocks in dense forests is imprudent,” says Alok Shukla, an activist from Chhattisgarh who is mobilising tribal communities to uphold their forest rights.

These struggles might only intensify as government efforts are aggressively under way to further dilute tribal rights and open up inviolate forests for coal mining.

Air pollution is becoming hazardous and India will be forced to act

As the pressure to act on air pollution builds, India will have to enforce strict emission norms on coal plants and their operators. Installing flue-gas desulphurisation scrubbers should be mandatory on any new plant that is set to operate in coming years. These devices are very effective in limiting dangerous pollutants from escaping into the atmosphere but come at a heavy cost for investors and coal power generators. 

But why would the government work towards increasing operational costs for power plants in the pipeline? Here’s why – air pollution is killing Indians every year and is now the fifth largest contributor of deaths in the country. The fact that 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in India is a cause for great alarm. A study has indicated that one in three children have shown a reduction in lung function in Delhi.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) report, which makes this claim, advises that fine particles of less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter (PM2.5) should not exceed 10 micrograms per cubic metre. Delhi tops the list at 153 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre and it is only getting worse.

In Delhi, for instance, coal roughly contributes 30 percent of recorded air pollution (particulate matter) and the numbers are higher in the coal clusters of the country. Coal-fired plants contribute 60 percent of India’s energy capacity and are a large source of the air pollution that is taking a toll on people’s health and their livelihoods.

A recent report on coal pollution in India by Urban Emissions and Conservation Action Trust reveals a shocking statistic – in another 15 years between 186,500 and 229,500 people may die premature deaths annually as a result of a spike in air pollution caused by coal-fired power plants.

In dealing with air pollution, curbing the effects of harmful pollutants like nitrous and sulphur oxides from coal power plants is critical and there is growing pressure on the central government to introduce strict emission standards. India is the only major coal-powered nation that does not have any concentration standards for these pollutants, a requirement that should soon be in place.

Both domestic and international pressure can move India to clean up its air. The government cannot afford to have an ‘airpocalypse’ on its hands.

All is not well with the coal industry in India  

Undaunted, Narendra Taneja, energy cell convenor of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has claimed that coal and gas will remain the mainstay of the country’s economy for the next 50-60 years.

The impossibility of this claim becomes apparent when we look at the actual reserves of extractable coal. Only one-fifth of the coal reserves of CIL are extractable and if the ambitious doubling of domestic production happens, the known reserves are expected to last for less than two decades.

Coal mines that expire before the lifetime of new coal plants scream for greater economic prudence from investors.

India’s ambitious renewable energy expansion plans need to be complemented by a phase-out plan of coal. The world needs stronger political leadership from India as it tries to tackle the twin challenges of poverty and climate change.

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:

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

The Koreas on the globe. Credit: TUBS/ Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Ahn Mi Young
SEOUL, Feb 18 2015 (IPS)

The two Koreas are an odd match – both are talking about possible dialogue but both have different ideas of the conditions, and that difference comes from the 62-year-old division following the 1950-53 Korean War.

During this time, North Korea has become a nuclear threat – estimated to possess up to ten nuclear weapons out of the 16,300 worldwide (compared with Russia’s 8,000 and the 7,300 in the United States) according to the Ploughshares Fund’s report on world nuclear stockpiles – and South Korea has become the world’s major economic success story.

In a national broadcast on Jan. 16, South Korean president Park Geun Hye presented her vision for reunification by using the Korean word ‘daebak‘ (meaning ‘great success’ or ‘jackpot’). “If the two Koreas are united, the reunited Korea will be a daebak not only for Korea but also for the whole world,” she said.North Korea has become a nuclear threat – estimated to possess up to ten nuclear weapons out of the 16,300 worldwide – and South Korea has become the world's major economic success story

Since she became leader of the South Korea’s conservative ruling party in 2013, Park has been referring to a new world that would come from a unified Korea. Her argument has been that if the two Koreas are reunited, the world could be politically less dangerous – free from the North Korea’s nuclear threat – and a united Korea could be economically more prosperous by combining the South’s economic and cultural power and the North’s natural resources and discipline.

Denuclearisation has been set as a key condition for daebak to come about. At a Feb. 9 forum with high-ranking South Korean officials, President Park said that “North Korea should show sincerity in denuclearisation efforts if it is to successfully lead its on-going economic projects. No matter how good are the programmes we may have in order to help North Korea, we cannot do so as long as North Korea does not give up its nuclear programme.”

However, observers have said North Korea has no reason to give up its nuclear weapons as long as it depends on its nuclear capability as a bargaining chip for political survival.  “Nuclear capabilities are the North’s only military leverage to maintain its regime as it confronts the South’s economic power,” said Moon Sung Muk of the Korea Research Institute of Strategies (KRIS).

In fact, there are few signs of changes. North Korea has conducted a series of rocket launches, as well as three nuclear tests – all in defiance of the U.S. sanctions that are partially drying up channels for North Korea’s weapons trade.

Amid recent escalating tension between Washington and Pyeongyang over additional sanctions, activities at the 5-megawatt Yongbyon reactor in North Korea which produces nuclear bomb fuel are being closely watched to monitor whether the North may restart the reactor.

In the meantime, South Korea has been denying the official supply of food and fertilisers to North Korea under the South Korean conservative regimes that started in 2008.

During the liberal regime of 2004-2007, South Korea was the biggest donor of food and fertilisers to North Korea.

Then there appeared to be a glimmer of hope when North Korea’s enigmatic young leader Kim Jong Un presented a rare gesture of reconciliation towards South Korea in his 2015 New Year’s speech broadcast on Korean Central Television on Jan. 1.

“North and South should no longer waste time and efforts in (trying to resolve) meaningless disputes and insignificant problems,” he said. “Instead, we both should write a new history of both Koreas … There should be dialogue between two Koreas so that we can re-bridge the bond that was cut off and bring about breakthrough changes.”

In his speech, the North Korean leader even went as far as suggesting a ‘highest-level meeting’ with the South Korean president. “If the South is in a position to improve inter-Korean relations through dialogue, we can resume high-level contacts. Also, depending on some circumstances and atmospheres, there is no reason we cannot have the highest-level meeting (with the South).”

In South Korea, hopes for possible inter-Korean talks have been subdued. “What North Korea wants from dialogue with the South is not to talk about nuclear or human rights, but to have the South resume economic aid,” said Lee Yun Gol, director of the state-run North Korea Strategic Information Centre (NKSIS).

The government in Seoul remains cautious about Pyongyang’s peace initiatives. “We are seeing little hope for any rosy future in inter-Korean relationships in the near future, although we are working on how to prepare for the vision of ‘daebak‘,” said Ryu Gil Jae, South Korean reunification minister, in a Feb. 4 press conference.

North Korean observers have said that economic difficulties have been pushing the North Korean government to relax its tight state control over farm private ownership. North Korean farmers can now sell some of their products in markets nationwide, in a gradual shift towards privatised markets.

Further, according to Chinese diplomatic academic publication ‘Segye Jisik’ (세계 지식), quoted by the South Korean news agency Yonhap News, the North Korean economy has improved since its new leader took office in 2012. From a 1.08 million ton deficit in stocks to feed the 20 million North Koreans in 2011, the deficit now stands at 340,000 tons.

According to observers, this report, if true, could send the signal that if North Korea is economically better off, it may be politically willing to reduce its dependence on the nuclear card in any bargaining process with South Korea.

U.S. sanctions have been used in the attempt to force North Korea to denuclearise, thus restricting North Korea’s trade, and the U.S. government levied new sanctions against North Korea on Jan. 2 this year in response to a cyberattack against Sony Pictures Entertainment. The FBI accused North Korea of the attack in apparent retaliation for the film, The Interview, a comedy about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

But, while sanctions may work in troubling ordinary North Koreans concerned with meeting basic food needs, they have little impact on the North Korean government. “North Korea’s trade with China has become more prosperous and most of North Korea’s deals with foreign partners are behind-the-scene deals,” said Hong Hyun Ik, senior researcher at the Sejong Research Institute.

And, in response to the threat that it may be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC), on the basis of U.N. findings on human rights, Kim Jong Un reiterated: “Our thought and regime will never be shaken.”

South Korea may now stand as the only hope for North Korea, as the United States and the United Nations gather to turn tough against the country over the human rights issue, and South Korea may find itself faced with a ‘two-track’ diplomacy between the hard-liner United States and its sympathy for the North Korean people.

In past decades, North Korea has usually played out a game with the United States and South Korea. “In recent year, the United States has been using ‘stick diplomacy’ against the North Korea, while South Korea may want to shift to ‘carrot diplomacy’,” said Moon Sung Muk of the Korea Research Institute of Strategies (KRIS).

“The Seoul government knows that the pace of getting closer to the North should be constrained by U.N. or U.S. moves,” Moon added.

Edited by Phil Harris    

By Christine Ahn and Suzy Kim
HONOLULU, Dec 2 2014 (IPS)

On Nov. 18, a committee of the United Nations General Assembly voted 111 to 19, with 55 abstentions, in favour of drafting a non-binding resolution referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Christine Ahn

While there is overwhelming evidence that economic and political conditions in North Korea must improve, missing from debates in U.N. corridors is the fact that the unresolved Korean War (1950-1953) underlies North Korea’s human rights crisis."While there is overwhelming evidence that economic and political conditions in North Korea must improve, missing from debates in U.N. corridors is the fact that the unresolved Korean War (1950-1953) underlies North Korea's human rights crisis"

After claiming up to four million lives with at least one member of every family in North Korea killed by the war, the Korean War was halted by an armistice agreement signed by North Korea, China and the United States representing the United Nations Command.

Suzy Kim

As James Laney, U.S. Ambassador to South Korea during the 1990s explains, “one of the things that have bedevilled all talks until now is the unresolved status of the Korean War” and he prescribes the “establishment of a peace treaty to replace the truce.”

What does the past have to do with the present state of human rights in North Korea?

The continued state of war affects the human rights of North Korean people today in at least two ways. Domestically, the North Korean government prioritises military defence and national security over human security and political freedoms. Internationally, North Koreans suffer due to political isolation and economic sanctions.

The fact that the Korean War ended with a temporary ceasefire rather than a permanent peace treaty gives the North Korean government justification – whether we like it or not – to invest heavily in the country’s militarisation.

According to the South Korean government’s Institute of Defense Analyses, North Korea invests approximately 8.7 billion dollars – or one-third of its GDP – on defence.

Pyongyang even acknowledged last year how the un-ended war has forced it “to divert large human and material resources to bolstering up the armed forces though they should have been directed to the economic development and improvement of people’s living standards.”

Since military intervention is not an option, the Barack Obama administration has used sanctions to pressure North Korea to denuclearise. Instead, North Korea has since conducted three nuclear tests, calling sanctions “an act of war”.

That is because sanctions have had deleterious effects on the day-to-day lives of ordinary North Korean people. “In almost any case when there are sanctions against an entire people, the people suffer the most and the leaders suffer least,” said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on his last visit to North Korea.

International sanctions have made it extremely difficult for North Koreans to access basic necessities, such as food, seeds, medicine and technology. Felix Abt, a Swiss entrepreneur who has conducted business in North Korea for over a decade says that it is “the most heavily sanctioned nation in the world, and no other people have had to deal with the massive quarantines that Western and Asian powers have enclosed around its economy.” 

Whether in Pyongyang, Seoul or Washington, the threat of war or terrorism has been used to justify government repression and overreach, such as warrantless surveillance, imprisonment and torture (“enhanced interrogation techniques”) in the name of preserving national security.

In South Korea, one of the liberal opposition parties, the Unified Progressive Party, is currently on trial in the Constitutional Court on charges made by the Park Geun-hye government that its members conspired with North Korea to overthrow the South Korean government.

Amnesty International says that this case “has seriously damaged the human rights improvement of South Korean society which has struggled and fought for freedom of thoughts and conscience and freedom of expression.”

In the coming days, the U.N. General Assembly will vote on whether the U.N. Security Council should refer North Korea to the ICC, although it is likely to be vetoed by China and Russia. The United Nations vote, while lofty in principle, actually serves to further isolate Pyongyang, which will likely retreat even further behind its iron curtain.

“We’ve said from day one that if North Korea wants to rejoin the community of nations, it knows how to do it,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said, referring to the precondition of denuclearisation for talks.

Instead of relying on the failed Washington policy of “strategic patience” it is time for a bold move that will truly bring North Korea into the community of nations, leaving no excuse to delay addressing human rights – sign a peace treaty to end the state of war. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

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

Excerpt:

The disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL) that forms the maritime border between North and South Korea in the Yellow Sea cuts through a number of small islands and winds through rich fishing grounds. Credit: lamoix/CC-BY-2.0

By John Feffer and Michal Witkowski
WASHINGTON, Nov 11 2014 (IPS)

Environmental problems, by their nature, don’t respect borders. Air and sea pollution often affect countries that had nothing to do with their production. Many extreme weather events, like typhoons, strike more than one country. Climate change affects everyone.

These environmental problems can aggravate existing conflicts among countries. But they can also bring countries together in joint efforts to find solutions. A case in point is the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in Korea.

The NLL is the oft-disputed border between North and South Korea in the Yellow Sea off the west coast of the peninsula. Although the two countries agreed to a territorial boundary at the 38^th parallel following the Korean War armistice, they have never agreed on the maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea, which threads between a number of islands and through rich fishing grounds.

Over the years, North and South Korea have exchanged artillery fire across the NLL, and naval vessels as well as fishing boats have clashed in the area on a number of occasions.

Various environmental challenges have only sharpened the conflict. But with a new imperative to address these environmental problems, the NLL can offer the two Koreas an opportunity to chart a new relationship for the 21^st century.

Anatomy of a Dispute

North Korea maintains six naval squadrons on the [Northern Limit Line]. The North’s fleet consists of approximately 430 combat vessels. The South’s fleet is smaller in numbers, with about 120 ships and 70 aircraft. But it has the military edge, due to the size of the vessels and their technological superiority.
The NLL region has been a zone of contention between North and South Korea for more than six decades. It has been the site of several clashes between the Koreas.

Among the most notable are the naval confrontations of 1999 and 2002, the 2009 gunboat incident near Daecheong Island, the 2010 artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, and the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean navy ship.

This maritime border is heavily militarised. North Korea maintains six naval squadrons there. According to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the North’s fleet consists of approximately 430 combat vessels—around 60 percent of which are stationed around the coastal borders.

Due to the decline of the North Korean economy, the fleet mostly consists of smaller vessels used for covert operations and for escorting fishing boats around the NLL.

The South’s fleet is smaller in numbers, with about 120 ships and 70 aircraft. But it has the military edge, due to the size of the vessels and their technological superiority. It’s further reinforced by the presence of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in nearby Yokosuka, Japan.

South Korean troops, along with their American counterparts, carry out annual drills in the region, which always raise tensions along the disputed maritime border.

North Korea does not recognise the present border arrangement. Furthermore, the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) regime set by the U.N. – which grants states special resource exploration rights in a sea zone stretching 200 miles from their land borders – cannot be applied in a close-quarter situation such as the NLL.

The fishing zones that lie within the NLL are the source of fierce contention between both South and North Korea.

One of the major arguments that North Korea has made around the disputed NLL is that South Korea has access to the majority of fisheries within the current boundaries, while the North occupies far less territory than it potentially could.

When the NLL was being drawn up, the international standard for territorial water limits was three nautical miles; by the 1970s, however, 12 nautical miles became the norm. The North’s argument is that the current setting prevents it from accessing neighbouring sea areas, which, in Pyongyang’s view, should belong to the North.

Such a border set-up fails to acknowledge that small islands, such as Yeonpyeong Island, are not equivalent to continental masses in terms of generating maritime boundaries.

Environmental issues

Overfishing and other destructive fishing practices that have continued for decades have had perhaps the greatest impact on the NLL’s environmental situation. Such activities have caused habitat destruction and biomass change in the Yellow Sea.

For instance, due to overfishing between the 1960s and the 1980s, the number of invertebrates and fish dropped by over 40 percent. With the decrease in fish populations, more effort is required to maintain the desired catch capacity, and many commercially significant species have been severely depleted. As a result, the species composition and the relative proportions of the fish found in the region have been altered.

One country alone cannot ensure the region’s sustainability. The trans-boundary nature of these issues requires a cooperative approach.

The nature of the Yellow Sea – and in particular the seabed on which the NLL is located – limits water circulation, increasing the amount of harmful sediments and aggravating the quality of the water. This has decreased the sea’s ability to “cleanse itself,” making the area around the NLL even more vulnerable to pollution and the harmful effects of human activities on land.

Habitat depletion can greatly affect local communities as well as cause problems for the fishing industry. Development projects on the South Korean side have been a major factor in this process.

More than 30 percent of marshland fields have been lost in South Korea between 1975 and 2005 due to dam construction, embankment, and dikes. Rice paddy fields have been lost as a result of reclamation and the lowering of water tables in nearby lakes.

An ever-increasing market demand for seafood boosts the profitability of short-term-oriented fishing activities. Insufficient pollution prevention only aggravates the situation.

Possible Solutions

As a result of the tense security situation and the unresolved border – along with the lack of a peace treaty between the Koreas to formally end the Korean War – any sort of consensus on the matter of the NLL in the context of inter-Korean relations is difficult to achieve.

One proposed solution is the establishment of a joint fishing zone between the two countries. This zone would boost the North’s fishing industry and could serve as a start to a trust-building process between the neighbours.

Such a process would be based on increased economic cooperation in the NLL region that could lead to further improvements in relations and make future collaboration more likely.

The “Sunshine Policy,” a period of North-South engagement in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was an attempt at establishing such cooperation. In the negotiations regarding the NLL during that period, North Korea demanded changes in the border situation that had to be met before it could agree to participate in the 2007 inter-Korean summit.

The South reportedly agreed to this condition. However, the summit failed to bring any real closure to the matter: concrete decisions were left to be discussed in the future.

The overall framework dating back to the Sunshine Policy’s prime is still in place. For instance, the Kaesong Industrial Park – a joint North-South venture on the northern side of the DMZ – is still operational. Ties between the Koreas could be further enhanced by cooperation around the NLL region.

Some ideas have already been put forward and were initially agreed upon by both sides. In 2000, for example, the two countries came to an agreement along the maritime boundary on the east side of the peninsula where South Korean boats shared the profits from their squid fishing in Northern waters.

Also in 2000, the two sides agreed to create a special peace and cooperation zone around the west coast of the Korean Peninsula.

Another proposal was to combine a joint fishing zone with a common industrial complex in Haeju, a port city on the Northern side. Finally, the Koreas agreed to establish a “peace sea” from the island of Yeonpyeong right to the estuary of the Han River.

No military presence would be allowed in this area. With the South’s withdrawal from the Sunshine Policy framework under the right-wing President Lee Myung-Bak, however, the joint projects were put on hold.

A resuscitation of such joint projects could potentially move cooperation beyond the issue of the NLL to other areas of both business and policy-making. Two major obstacles would need to be overcome in order for such a solution to work.

First, an independent body to monitor the area would need to be appointed to prevent breaches of the agreement and to ensure that both parties follow environmental rules. This mechanism would have to recognise the specificity of the issues surrounding the NLL and formulate policies accordingly.

Second, the two sides would have to agree on a peaceful dispute resolution mechanism.

A universal solution that can resolve the NLL issue does not exist. A carefully devised policy that takes into account the political and economic tensions between the two Koreas may be the answer.

Importantly, the NLL would have to be gradually demilitarised to reduce the probability of any unwanted conflict that could destabilise the area. However, there is minimal possibility that the two countries will agree to reduce their military positions given that the two countries signed the armistice nearly six decades ago but never agreed on a peace treaty.

Thus, for such a solution to become possible, economic cooperation must come first.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service. Read the original version of this story here.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Excerpt:

In recent years, Japan has found itself it in a rapidly changing security environment. The global balance of power has shifted and various new threats have emerged within the region, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile systems that may soon be capable of delivering them.

These changes have sparked serious debate within Japan about how best to meet the changing security needs of the people of Japan and to protect their lives and livelihoods.We see Japan’s “peace constitution” as an expression of high and universal ideals in international relations.

Some have gone so far as to suggest that Article 9 of the Constitution, which famously declares that, “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes,” must be fundamentally revised if we are protect ourselves and our national interests.

The Japanese government has long taken the position that while the right of self-defence is recognised by the Constitution, this can only be exercised in response to a direct military attack against Japan and the use of force must be limited to the minimum necessary to repel the attack.

Others have sought to expand this interpretation to mean that the Japanese Constitution does not prohibit any form of self-defence that is recognised as legal under international law, including forms of “collective self-defence” sanctioned, for example, by a United Nations resolution.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this could mean that Japanese troops would find themselves in combat roles in places far from the homeland. This would run counter to the pacifist spirit of the Constitution and Japanese people’s strong desire for peace. It could provoke grave concern among our Asian neighbors, who still bear the bitter memories of Japanese military aggression in the 20th century.

Since its founding in 1964, the New Komei party has remained dedicated to a peaceful path for Japan. Central to this is our commitment to the Japanese peace constitution as a self-willed undertaking by the Japanese people to refrain from any use of force beyond the minimum requirements of self-defence. We see Japan’s “peace constitution” as an expression of high and universal ideals in international relations, specifically, the peaceful resolution of conflict through diplomacy and dialogue.

Isamu Ueda/New Komeito

As members of the ruling coalition, we also have a responsibility to deal with the real challenges facing Japan, including questions in the security realm – how best to protect the lives and peaceful existence of the Japanese people.

In May of this year, we began deliberations with our coalition partners, the Liberal Democratic Party, on how to clarify the constitutional limits on self-defence in ways that contribute to deepening mutual trust within the U.S.-Japan Alliance and to stability within East Asia.

We approached these discussions with the determination to protect and preserve the underlying spirit of the peace constitution which, along with the U.S.-Japan alliance, has been central to Japan’s prosperity and security in the decades since the end of World War II.

At the outset, we insisted that any interpretation must be based on and logically consistent with past government interpretations. This, we argued, was essential if Japan was to be recognized as a nation of laws. Prime Minister Abe expressed his support for this approach at the beginning of the discussions.

On Jul. 1, agreement was reached on a Cabinet Decision which, among other things, establishes three core conditions limiting the use of force.

These are: 1) that an armed attack against a foreign country with which Japan has a close relationship produce a clear danger that Japan’s national survival will be threatened and its citizens’ right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness fundamentally undermined; 2) that there are no other appropriate means available to protect Japan’s citizens; and 3) that any use of force be kept to the minimum necessary.

These strictly defined conditions limit potential military actions to those that are genuinely necessary for Japan’s defence. They do not open the path to the overseas dispatch of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDF) in the exercise of military force. The Cabinet Decision reaffirms Japan’s commitment to the three non-nuclear principles of not possessing, not producing and not permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons in its territory.

It also clarifies that Japan has no interest in becoming the kind of military power that would present a threat to other countries. Rather, the revised interpretation would enable a more closely coordinated response by Japan’s SDF and U.S. forces to situations arising in the country’s immediate vicinity that could gravely impact the nation’s peace and security.

This Cabinet Decision only provides guidance for future legislative measures. Such laws, which scrupulously define the limits of permissible action by the SDF, must be debated and adopted by Japan’s parliament to give effect to the new policy. We hope to use the process of legislative deliberation as an opportunity to inform world public opinion and gain wider understanding of Japan’s true intent in making these changes.

Among the goals stated in the Cabinet Decision is that “the Government, first and foremost, has to create a stable and predictable international environment and prevent the emergence of threats by advancing vibrant diplomacy…” In keeping with this, it adopts the policy that Japan should be a country that makes proactive contributions to peace. For the New Komei party, this means engaging in multifaceted diplomacy based on the spirit of the peace constitution.

Nowhere is such diplomacy more vitally important than with China, South Korea and our other neighbours in Asia. Over the decades, the New Komei party has engaged actively with our Chinese counterparts, seeking to maintain and develop the bonds of trust and friendship that can serve as the basis for mutually beneficial relations.

In January 2013, the leader of New Komei, Natsuo Yamaguchi, traveled to Beijing to meet with General Secretary Xi Jinping. He brought with him a letter from Prime Minister Abe and took the opportunity urge the early holding of a Sino-Japanese summit, stressing his confidence that differences between China and Japan can be resolved through persistent efforts at dialogue.

Ultimately, if Japan is to live up to the promise of our unique and remarkable constitution, it must be through an unwavering commitment to “advancing vibrant diplomacy” on many fronts. This must be our proactive contribution to peace.

Isamu Ueda is a member of the House of Representatives of the Japanese Diet, and chairs the international committee of the New Komeito party, a junior partner in the coalition government headed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of the Liberal Democratic Party. He was one of the members in the recent discussions on security issues between the coalition parties.

Japan has functioned under its “peace constitution” for nearly 70 years. The distinctive Article 9, which prevents the country from conducting war as a means of resolving international conflict, is showing its age.

Over the last several decades, after repeated “reinterpretations,” the peace constitution has become increasingly enfeebled. With its latest decision, the government of Shinzo Abe has quite nearly euthanized the document.Rather than a direct attack on the constitution, Japanese conservatives have favoured an approach of successive reinterpretation that has gradually gutted Article 9 of its original intent.

The Abe government recently announced a Cabinet decision that commits Japan to the principle of collective self-defence. Tokyo, in other words, can use force not only in self-defence but also to help an ally in peril, even if Japan itself is not under attack.

Prime Minister Abe has stressed that this reform reduces the risk of Japan being involved in war. He has also emphasised that this is not a major change in how Japan handles its foreign and military policy – and thereby does not violate the peace constitution. But the changes will in fact have significant implications.

The United States, which has long prodded Japan to shoulder more security responsibilities, immediately praised Abe’s bold move. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel called it “an important step for Japan as it seeks to make a greater contribution to regional and global peace and security.”

Japan’s neighbours were considerably less enthusiastic. Japan is currently embroiled in several island disputes – with China, South Korea, and Russia – which has coloured the reception of Abe’s statements in those countries.

For instance, not much unites the ruling party and the main opposition in South Korea, but Abe succeeded in forging at least temporary unity among them. Representatives of both parties condemned the Japanese move as a threat to regional stability. The Chinese media was even harsher, citing an “evil intent” behind the shift.

Nor has the change in policy been warmly embraced by all Japanese. The prime minister was forced to resort to pushing the change through at the Cabinet level rather than attempt to change the constitution itself. Japan’s ruling party and its allies don’t have the parliamentary supermajority needed to change the constitution.

A parliamentary vote would also require a national referendum. That step might not be any easier. According to one recent poll, 58 percent of Japanese oppose Abe’s latest reform. Jettisoning Article 9 altogether would likely encounter similar opposition. However, during his first term as prime minister, Abe pushed through a new referendum law that requires no minimum turnout.

Shinzo Abe has made it clear from the start that he wants Japan to have a more assertive military. But this is not the first time that a Japanese government has reinterpreted the constitution to enlarge the functions of the military, which is still formally called the Self-Defence Forces (SDF).

After North Korea launched a rocket into Japanese airspace in 1998, Japan ramped up its participation in U.S. missile defence. After Sep. 11, Japan passed new laws that allowed the SDF to support U.S. forces outside of Japan. It also overturned the ban on using military force should the country come under attack.

More recently, Tokyo got rid of the formal prohibition on exporting military hardware (though Japan had long been selling many of the same items under the pretense that they were for civilian use).

Rather than a direct attack on the constitution, then, Japanese conservatives have favoured an approach of successive reinterpretation that has gradually gutted Article 9 of its original intent.

The decision on collective self-defence also comes at a time when Tokyo is about to push ahead on the construction of a new U.S. military base in Okinawa. Despite opposition from nearly three-quarters of the Okinawan population, the United States and Japan are planning to replace the Futenma Marine Air Force Base with a new facility at Henoko in the northern part of the island.

Both Tokyo and Washington put considerable pressure on Okinawan governor Hirokazu Nakaima to switch his position and support situating the new base on the island. Some preliminary work site preparation has already begun, and drilling surveys are set to start at the end of July.

Okinawans have long opposed the deal to build the new base, which has been under negotiation between Tokyo and Washington since the 1990s. A non-violent sit-in protest at Henoko Village has been going on for over 15 years. The opposition movement is currently making plans to broaden their resistance to the base construction.

Japan’s rapidly evolving position on its military stance coincides with the much-heralded Pacific Pivot – or strategic realignment – of the United States. The Obama administration has emphasised the importance of a shift of military and economic focus to East Asia.

But this shift is taking place at a time of fewer resources for the Pentagon, particularly in comparison to the massive increases of the George W. Bush era. In order to accomplish this pivot, then, Washington needs to rely on the resources of its key allies: South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Japan.

Despite its peace constitution, Japan boasts one of the largest militaries in the world. It is the eighth largest military spender in the world – ahead of all other Asian countries except China – and it’s planning to increase its spending substantially over the next five years.

It already ranks in the top ten in the Global Firepower index. New fighter jets, naval destroyers, and surveillance drones will likely push it higher on the list. Japan has already made a commitment to the United States to purchase 42 F-35s, the mishap-prone fighter jet, at a total cost of around 10 billion dollars.

Without Japan, in other words, the pivot wouldn’t happen because the Pentagon simply couldn’t underwrite it. What has held Tokyo back in the past from stepping up its military cooperation with the United States has been its constitution. And now Abe has effectively removed that obstacle.

Although the United States played a major role in drafting Japan’s constitution back in 1946, today Washington is pushing hard for a rewrite. From the point of view of saving American taxpayer dollars, the U.S. encouragement of Japan’s new military policy makes a great deal of sense.

But given the ratcheting up of tensions in the region connected to Abe’s strategic realignment, Washington’s calculus may turn out to be penny wise and pound foolish.

In the weeks since the South Korean ferry Sewol sank—taking with it the lives of over 300 passengers, the vast majority of them high school students — the country continues to be wracked by a palpable mix of grief, guilt, and outrage.

The aftermath of the sinking has exposed a uniquely Korean sense of collective guilt and personalisation of disaster. In a comment that typified the national mood over the past weeks, one man told the Los Angeles Times, “I feel embarrassed as a Korean. We failed our children.”

Across all sectors of the country, and in ways difficult for international audiences to comprehend, people feel personally responsible for creating a society in which such a tragedy would be allowed to occur.

This combination of culpability and helplessness has turned to anger, and not just at the unforgivable actions of the captain and crew, who abandoned ship while leaving hundreds of students trapped in their cabins. In what could prove to be a major problem for President Park Geun-hye, it is the South Korean government that is now bearing the brunt of the public’s wrath.

“A Government Mafia”

The Park administration has come under heavy criticism from relatives of victims, who have protested in front of the Blue House and charged that the government did not act quickly or decisively enough in the immediate aftermath of the sinking.

These criticisms have been repeated throughout the web and in Korean media outlets, with even the reliably conservative Joongang Daily claiming that the disaster “underscored that [the government] lacked ability in times of crisis.”

A lack of cooperation among the agencies in charge of emergency response, combined with shifting and often contradictory messages about the progress of the rescue, has painted a picture of institutional incompetence and damaged the public’s trust in its leaders. The resignation of Prime Minister Chung Hong-won over the government’s response to the accident has served to validate much of this criticism.

The catastrophe has also shined a light on the cosy relationship between industry and governmental regulators. The Sewol had been the subject of a number of safety concerns, including a finding earlier this year by the Korea Register of Shipping (KRS) that the ship had become top-heavy and less stable after additional passenger cabins were constructed on the upper decks.

Adding to this, the owner of the ferry, Chonghaejin Marine, had been accused by a former employee of overloading ships, covering up accidents, and mistreating its workforce. Despite these troubles, the Korean Shipping Association (KSA), a trade group responsible for certifying cargo safety, gave the ship a green light to carry out its ill-fated voyage.

Executive positions in both the KRS and KSA are filled by retired government officials, who are charged with lobbying their former colleagues on behalf of their new employers.

This system is prevalent throughout Korean industry, and has been cited by the president herself as a factor in fostering the lax safety standards that led to the disaster. In her public apology following the sinking, Park referred to this arrangement as a “government mafia” and called for an elimination of the practice.

Park’s Katrina?

In many ways, the Sewol tragedy mirrors one of the more famous examples of institutional breakdown: the U.S. government’s calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina.

In that case, failure to coordinate the relief effort between state and federal agencies compounded the initial impact of the hurricane, leaving New Orleans residents stranded without food, water, or shelter for several days after the storm hit.

As with the Sewol, accusations of political cronyism abounded in the aftermath of the incident, when it was revealed that three top officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including director Michael Brown, were Republican political operatives with no experience in disaster relief management.

Americans viewed the ghastly scenes of post-Katrina New Orleans on nightly television, and wondered how their government could have so completely and utterly failed at protecting its own citizens.

As in South Korea during the aftermath of the Sewol disaster, where the finger of blame is being squarely pointed at the entire system rather than one political party, Americans initially assigned blame to both state and federal authorities.

While Park’s public support has slipped as a result of the sinking, she still enjoys a relatively robust 57 percent approval rating. Although Park, like then President George W. Bush in the early weeks following Hurricane Katrina, has largely been able to evade personal responsibility, she would be wise to take heed of his subsequent experience.

Reflecting in 2008 on the impact of the disaster, Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, noted that Hurricane Katrina “devastated President Bush.”

Through the mismanagement of the disaster, “his image as an incompetent president began to be reinforced and intensified.”

Bush’s approval ratings peaked at 45 percent in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina. But as the public perception of him began to change, he went from being seen as strong and decisive to looking bungling and inept, weighed down by Katrina as well as increasing public disillusionment with the Iraq War. His ratings plummeted, contributing to a landslide defeat of the Republican Party in the 2006 congressional elections.

Latent Outrage

Unlike Bush, Park may benefit from the shambolic state of the major opposition party, the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD). Founded in March through a merger of the establishment Democratic Party (DP) and the minor New Politics Party led by former independent presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo, the new coalition has steadily lost ground to Park’s centre-right Saenuri Party.

By throwing in his lot with the DP, Ahn has sacrificed his most valuable political currency: his image as an outsider who can rise above traditional politics. His standing was further damaged after a dispute with his new partners led him to reverse a key campaign pledge regarding the nominating process for local candidates.

Ahn had been one of the few politicians in the country capable of providing a credible alternative to Park, and his marginalisation has paved the way for Saenuri to consolidate its hold on power in the Jun. 4 legislative elections.

Gallup polling taken during the week of the sinking showed voter support for Saenuri at 59 percent, compared to the opposition’s paltry 25 percent. The ensuing public anger at the government has so far failed to translate into gains for the NPAD.

While it is unlikely that the NPAD will provide much trouble for Park in next month’s elections, the reverberations of the Sewol tragedy will echo throughout Korean politics for years to come.

Koreans are not shy about taking to the streets to vent their anger, but the degree of shock and grief in the country right now is unprecedented in recent history, and has left people unsure of how to proceed.

Regardless of the outcome of the elections, the psychological impacts of the tragedy will continue to linger in the national consciousness. If left to fester, they will remain a latent force that could undermine the president’s ability to govern.

Mitigating the national trauma will require leadership that balances a sense of empathy with an assumption of personal responsibility, and swift actions to overhaul a system in drastic need of reform.

For Park, who is by turns viewed as uncommunicative, callous, and ineffective, the Sewol sinking may prove to be, like Bush’s Katrina, the moment when a presidency began to crumble.

Geoffrey Fattig is a graduate student at UC San Diego’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. He lives outside Seoul and writes about Korea at www.jeollamite.com. This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy In Focus.

South Korea is now a rule-abiding participant in the global economy. If North Korea traded its nuclear weapons programme for a peace treaty, security guarantees, and economic development assistance, it might be able to accomplish the same trick. Credit: yeowatzup/cc by 2.0

By John Feffer
WASHINGTON, May 14 2014 (IPS)

Small underdeveloped countries, unless they suddenly discover oil or gold, are at a distinct disadvantage in the global arena. If they play by the rules, they will remain underdeveloped. Over the last half-century, very few countries have managed to jump from the Third World to the club of richest nations.

South Korea is one of the exceptions. It managed to jump over the development gap with luck, determination, and a willingness to break the rules. The luck was South Korea’s strategic location during the Vietnam War, which provided myriad business opportunities for companies that supported the U.S. military.For better or worse, both Koreas have recognised at some deep level that the rules of the game are rigged in favour of the already powerful.

The determination was the grit of an entire generation of people who sacrificed so much to send their children to university and thereby transformed a country of farmers into a nation of engineers, doctors, and lawyers.

The third factor, a willingness to break the rules, is the most controversial. The modernising authoritarian governments of the 1960s and 1970s were not content with the country’s comparative advantage at that time, which was to exporting raw materials.

Instead, the state directed strategic investments into sectors that produced goods that South Korea, if it were following the rules, would simply have imported from other countries. In this way, South Korea built up its iron, automobile, and shipbuilding sectors, and became a global leader. This commitment to the latest technologies laid the groundwork for future innovations in computers, software, and communications.

North Korea, in its own way, was following a similar path. It refused to take a subordinate position in the Soviet-dominated economic partnership known as Comecon. Instead, Pyongyang broke the rules of the Communist system by building up its own manufacturing capabilities.

Shut out of the capitalist global economy, however, North Korea hit a brick wall with its go-it-alone effort, and its economy began to decline after the 1970s.

But Pyongyang eventually discovered another way to break the rules and achieve something like parity with the most powerful countries in the world. Since its economy was declining relative to its southern neighbour, North Korea could no longer allocate enough money to maintain a conventional military that could serve as a deterrent.

So, it opted for the cheaper alternative: nuclear weapons. To do that, however, North Korea had to violate international rules and challenge the United States.

While other regimes that attempted something similar have failed—Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Qaddafi in Libya—the Kim dynasty appears to have succeeded with its strategy at least at one level. Although its economy remains marginal and the country labors under considerable sanctions, the political system has remained more or less intact into the third generation.

The rule-breaking spirit that unites North and South Korea has left them in very different circumstances. North Korea is a pariah state, and even its closest ally China treats the country with a measure of suspicion. South Korea, meanwhile, is profoundly integrated into the global economy and a web of security relationships.

The negative consequences of breaking the rules are apparent with North Korea. The regime has survived but at the expense of the people. The negative consequences of breaking the rules for South Korea require a bit more scrutiny.

For instance, South Korea’s ambition to catch up to the wealthier countries within a single generation required some cutting of corners, and those shortcuts sometimes proved fatal.

For many years, construction disasters were common in the country—such as the Wawoo apartment building in 1970s, the Seongsu bridge disaster in 1994, and the collapse of the Sampoong department store that killed more than 500 people and was the world’s deadliest building collapse at that point since the Roman era. All three disasters were caused by construction companies cutting corners.

The recent Sewol ferry tragedy reveals a similar inattention to rules, this time safety regulations. Accidents happen. But often what separates inconvenience from catastrophe is the amount of time and money invested in disaster preparedness. In the case of the Sewol sinking, the crew was clearly ill prepared for dealing with what was in fact a slow-motion disaster.

It’s important not to indict an entire society for the misdeeds of a few. In many respects, both North and South Korea are far more rule-bound societies than, for instance, the more freewheeling United States. But, for better or worse, both Koreas have recognised at some deep level that the rules of the game are rigged in favour of the already powerful.

The challenge is to figure out how to translate rule breaking into legitimate status rather than an outlaw reputation. In this sense, breaking the rules should be a ladder used to scale the heights before being kicked away. South Korea is now a rule-abiding participant in the global economy.

If North Korea traded its nuclear weapons programme for a peace treaty, security guarantees, and economic development assistance, it might be able to accomplish the same trick.

But the greatest challenge still looms. At a time when global inequalities are increasing, North and South Korea have to figure out how they can together break the rules and overcome the enormous economic, political, and social gap between the two countries. The rule, as established by West and East Germany, is that the more powerful absorbs the weaker, effectively canceling out the latter.

If the two Koreas manage to reunify the country in a more equitable fashion, one that honours the contributions and perspectives of ordinary North Koreans rather than simply forces them to behave exactly like South Koreans, then the countries will have transformed their mutual rule-breaking traditions into a new source of legitimacy for the peninsula as a whole.

John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus.

President Barack Obama watches archers on horseback demonstrate their skills at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, Japan, Apr. 24, 2014. Caroline Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, and her husband Dr. Edwin Schlossberg watch at right. Credit: Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

By John Feffer
WASHINGTON, Apr 29 2014 (IPS)

President Barack Obama’s recent tour of Asia was an opportunity to reenergise his foreign policy after a series of setbacks in the global arena.

The four countries on the week-long tour — Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines – have all been eager to upgrade their relationships with the United States in light of their concerns over Chinese maritime ambitions and an uncertain global economy.Ever since the Obama administration announced its “strategic rebalance” of U.S. foreign policy several years ago, the effort has encountered both domestic and foreign challenges.

But if the president thought that his short pass through Pacific would provide a lift to the much-vaunted U.S. “pivot” to Asia, he soon discovered that the world is not cooperating with his best-laid plans.

Ever since the Obama administration announced its “strategic rebalance” of U.S. foreign policy several years ago, the effort has encountered both domestic and foreign challenges.

At home, budget constraints have prevented the release of sufficient resources to finance a significant Pacific reorientation. Indeed, the threat of a government shutdown over the federal budget forced the president to postpone an earlier version of his Asia trip last October.

At the geopolitical level, meanwhile, the pivot was intended to reduce the liabilities of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. But that region has refused to allow the Pentagon and State Department to shift their attention.

The war in Syria, the collapse of negotiations between Israel and Palestine, the reversal of political fortunes in Egypt, and the ongoing talks with Iran have all continued to demand considerable U.S. focus.

An even greater distraction for the president at the moment is the crisis in Ukraine. Russia has already annexed one part of the country, the peninsula of Crimea. International sanctions have so far failed to discourage Moscow from fanning the flames of conflict in eastern Ukraine.

As Obama prepared to head toward Asia, Polish Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak urged the United States to “re-pivot to Europe” in order to bolster its NATO alliances.

Reassuring concerned allies over the potential military actions of a great power was also the expressed purpose of Obama’s trip to Asia. The president provided a good deal of rhetorical and symbolic assurances during his Pacific tour. But the pull of other pressing concerns has turned the “strategic rebalance” into a half-pivot at best.

Last week, Obama did reiterate that Washington would support Tokyo in any conflict over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. But he was also careful not to endorse Japanese sovereignty over the islands that China also claims.

Moreover, the Obama administration has quietly expressed dismay at Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s more provocative actions, such as his visit to Yasukuni shrine and his controversial interpretations of World War II history, which have outraged neighbouring countries.

Obama’s greater emphasis on Asia has failed to repair the relationship between the principle U.S. allies in the region, Japan and South Korea.

Despite some progress in the negotiations, the president was also unable to persuade the Japanese to remove trade barriers necessary for the completion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade pact involving 12 countries.

To a certain degree the discussions in Japan were moot, since the president lacks the votes in Congress to achieve “trade promotion authority,” the fast-track authorisation that nearly every trade pact has required for passage.

In South Korea, Obama’s visit was overshadowed by the ferry disaster that has so far left more than 200 dead. North Korea, meanwhile, tried to capitalise on Obama’s trip by ramping up its preparations for a fourth nuclear test.

Both Washington and Seoul have threatened repercussions should the North conduct a test, which would likely demonstrate the viability of its uranium enrichment programme.

But North Korea already endures some of the toughest sanctions in the world. Its decision to flout these warnings is yet more evidence that the Obama administration’s policy of “strategic patience” has failed to address either North Korea’s nuclear programme or any of the country’s underlying security concerns.

The trip to Malaysia reinforced the perception that the Obama administration has not put democracy and human rights front and centre of its foreign policy. In the first trip of a U.S. president to Malaysia in nearly 50 years, Obama did mention democracy in his official speech.

But Malaysia’s potential participation in the TPP and its role in pushing back against the expansion of China’s maritime influence all make the country critical to U.S. role in the Pacific. Obama needs Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s support, not his irritation, so it was left to National Security Advisor Susan Rice to meet with leading oppositionist Anwar Ibrahim.

The one success the administration is touting from this swing through Asia is a new basing agreement with the Philippines, which gives the U.S. military greater flexibility in its access to the country. The Philippine government asked the United States to withdraw from its military bases in 1992.

But the new agreement does not add substantially to the previous two agreements signed by the two countries, the Mutual Defence Treaty and the Visiting Forces Agreement. Even this modest bump-up in cooperation, however, generated sizable demonstrations in Manila over the rotation of U.S. troops in and out of the country.

The enormous panda in the room, of course, is China. Obama and his entourage took pains to emphasise that all of these negotiations and treaties and military upgrades are for the general stability of the region and are not targeted at any particular country.

The Chinese, however, view the Pacific pivot as a form of containment. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, the Pentagon was drafting a set of contingency plans to deal with any possible military moves by China.

“As outlined by Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping last June, the Pacific Ocean is large enough for the development of the two countries, and each side should respect the core interests of the other,” China’s Xinhua news agency observed before issuing a not-so-veiled warning.

“Meanwhile, it’s advisable for the United States not to underestimate China’s determination to defend its territories.”

Obama’s four-country trip did the minimum required to maintain the narrative of a reorientation of U.S. foreign policy to Asia. But distracted by other foreign policy challenges and soon heading into the mid-term election cycle, the president may not be able to return his attentions to the Far East any time soon.

Korean rice farmers protesting in Seoul against any new imports under an agreement with the World Trade Organisation. Credit: Ahn Mi Young/IPS.

By Ahn Mi Young
SEOUL, Apr 24 2014 (IPS)

Rice, a staple of the South Korean diet, is stirring up a bowlful of worry for Seoul. Under a promise to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the government has to make a tough choice on rice imports by June this year.

It can either allow foreign suppliers to sell rice in its market – that is, open up its rice sector to the world – or it can continue to import a fixed quota of rice annually from countries like the U.S., China and Thailand.To open up its rice market or to stick to an import quota – the decision will not be easy for Seoul.

While opening up the rice market would bring competition for local varieties of the grain – and in turn invite the wrath of Korean farmers – the second option would mean allowing a huge quantity of foreign rice despite little domestic demand for it.

The government’s dilemma comes at a time when rice consumption is falling in the country. South Koreans no longer have the “peasant diet” – a full rice bowl, a bean fermented soup and the spicy vegetable dish kimchi. They often dine out and opt for other menus. Often, women on a diet cut down their rice intake.

An average South Korean who used to eat 130 kg of rice a year in 1982 and 112.9 kg in 1992 ate only 67.2 kg rice in 2013, according to agriculture ministry data.

Despite such a trend, the government has to take a decision soon.

In 1993, when the Korean government tried to open up the rice sector, tens of thousands of angry farmers gathered across the nation to protest. “Opening up the rice market is like giving away the country’s food sovereignty”, their slogan said.

The government then promised farmers it would not liberalise the rice sector.

WTO instead allowed South Korea a concession in the form of minimum market access (MMA) norms. This system meant Seoul would have to permit a specified quantity of rice to be imported under an annual quota.

Thus, in 1994, South Korea began to import four percent of its annual rice consumption. In 2004, this agreement was extended for another 10 years, with the condition that the annual quota of imported rice be increased by 20,000 tonnes each year.

As a result, rice import under the quota jumped from about 225,000 tonnes in 2005 to 408,000 tonnes in 2014. The current quantity imported under the quota amounts to about 10 percent of the country’s total rice production, which was 4.23 million tonnes last year.

The major sources of its rice imports are China, the U.S. and Thailand, and it also buys from India, Vietnam and Cambodia.

But few South Koreans buy foreign rice, because of their strong preference for the “delicious” homegrown variety. Most of the imported quota rice is sold to food, liquor or confectionery companies but these too increasingly use more of Korean rice because of consumer preferences.

Seoul’s agreement with the WTO on the current import quota expires at the end of 2014. It must decide by June so that it can notify the WTO of its decision by September. Seoul has said the WTO is unlikely to allow any further delay in opening the rice market.

A senior official at the agriculture ministry told IPS: “If we open up, we will try to impose a 300 or 500 percent tariff on imported rice. Then the price gap between imported and domestic rice would be big enough to keep our farmers unaffected.”

Such a proposal from Seoul would have to be ratified by the WTO. “The key issue would be how high the tariff on imported foreign rice can be,” agriculture minister Lee Dong-Pil said at a press meeting in March.

Currently domestic rice sells for 162 dollars per gamani (80 kg). If South Korea imports the cereal at 60,000-70,000 won (56-65 dollars) per gamani and imposes 400 percent tariff, imported rice will cost about 280 dollars per gamani.

“Then even fewer companies would buy imported rice,” said a senior agriculture ministry official on condition of anonymity. “This may explain why major rice exporters like China or the U.S. may secretly want Seoul to maintain the current import quota system.”

The government also believes that settling for an import quota yet again – and thereby buying greater quantities of foreign rice – will not help the country. “Another delay will not benefit South Korea,” minister Lee said, referring to a growing stock of imported rice.

Talk of opening up the rice market has already spurred farmer protests.

Hundreds of them gathered in Seoul on Mar. 13 to oppose free import of foreign rice. “As we plant rice saplings in our fields, we also sow the seeds of worry in our heart,”, said a placard at the demonstration. “We will never accept an opening up of the rice market” read another.

There are 1.15 million farmers in the country and 494,352 of them are engaged in rice cultivation, according to 2012 data from the Korean Statistical Information Service.

Last month about 10,000 farmers gathered near a Seoul building where trade officials from South Korea and China were meeting for a bilateral free trade deal that would allow these two countries to increase trade between them by reducing or removing tariff on imports.

“Once a free trade deal is made between Beijing and Seoul, how can Seoul impose 300 percent tariff on Chinese rice?” asked Lee Byong-Gyu, who was leading the farmer group.

To open up its rice market or to stick to an import quota – the decision will not be easy for Seoul.

President Barack Obama talks with Vice President Joe Biden before boarding Air Force One at Pittsburgh International Airport for a domestic trip, April 16, 2014. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 22 2014 (IPS)

As he embarks Tuesday on a major trip through East Asia, U.S. President Barack Obama will be focused on reassuring anxious – albeit sometimes annoying – allies that Washington remains determined to deepen its commitment to the region.

Just how annoying some allies can be was underlined on the eve of his departure as Japan’s premier, Shinzo Abe, provoked renewed protests from both China and South Korea over his sending a ceremonial offering to the Yasukuni Shrine, the temple which honours Tokyo’s war dead, including senior officers responsible for atrocities committed by Japan in both countries during World War II.There is little question that security concerns, particularly those aroused by China’s recent assertiveness, will loom large.

As for anxiety, Asian commentators have made little secret of their concern that Russia’s annexation of Crimea and continuing tensions with Ukraine could set a precedent for a resurgent China, whose increasingly assertive behaviour in pressing its territorial claims in the East and South China seas has provoked a number of its neighbours to upgrade military ties to the U.S., as well as increase their own military spending.

Moreover, Obama, whose extrication from the deep hole his predecessor dug for him in the Greater Middle East has gone more slowly than had been hoped, has necessarily been distracted by the ongoing Ukraine crisis which, in turn, has prompted the U.S.’s NATO allies – especially the alliance’s newest member along Russia’s western periphery – to seek reassurances of their own.

“Can Mr. Obama afford to invest more time in Asia when he is bogged down with crises in Ukraine and Syria?” asked the New York Times’ “editorial observer”, Carol Giacomo, Monday.

Obama was originally scheduled to make this trip last fall, but he opted instead to stay home to deal with the Republican shutdown of the government – the latest example of the kind of partisan-driven action that has also sown doubts among Asian allies, as well as others, about the ability of Washington to follow through on its foreign commitments.

This week’s tour will begin with a state visit to Japan, during which he will meet with the troublesome Abe, whose personal visit last year to the Yasukeni Shrine drew a harsh public rebuke from Washington.

The main substantive agenda item on that leg of the trip, according to administration officials, will be to try to narrow differences on agricultural and automobile provisions in the pending 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, the main pillar of the administration’s non-military “pivot” or “rebalancing” toward the Asia/Pacific launched in 2010.

From Tokyo, Obama will fly to Seoul where he will take up both trade and security issues, including a visit to the Combined Forces Command to address U.S. troops charged with helping defend South Korea against the nuclear-armed North.

Obama will then become the first U.S. president to visit Malaysia since Lyndon Johnson nearly 50 years ago, in part to launch a “Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative” and meet with Malaysia civil society activists.

His last stop will be the Philippines where, among other events, he will attend a state dinner hosted by President Benigno Aquino III and meet U.S. and Filipino soldiers and veterans to underline Washington’s longstanding military relationship.

While Obama and his entourage will emphasise the growing economic links that tie the U.S. to the region – if, for no other reason than to counter the widespread impression that Washington’s “pivot” is primarily aimed at increasing its military presence to “contain” China – there is little question that security concerns, particularly those aroused by China’s recent assertiveness, will loom large.

Indeed, China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea conflict with those of both Malaysia and the Philippines with which the U.S. has a 63-year-old mutual defence treaty and which has not been shy about contesting Beijing claims – both through Law of the Sea Convention and most recently by successfully resupplying a long-stranded Filipino naval vessel blockaded by Chinese naval forces.

Nor has Aquino been shy about tightening military links with Washington, inviting it to enhance its military presence in the archipelago and negotiating an “access agreement” that could eventually return U.S. forces to Subic Bay naval base from which they were essentially evicted in 1991 at the end of the Cold War.

Security concerns are likely to play at least as strong a role in the early part of Obama’s tour.

While North Korea’s nuclear arms programme and missile launches remain a major preoccupation for both South Korea and Japan, China’s claims in the East China Sea – and most recently its declaration last fall of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) – increased tensions with both countries, especially Japan which has scrambled warplanes in response to Chinese aircraft that entered the zone near the disputed Senkaku Islands, which China claims as the Diaoyu Islands.

Although Washington responded to Beijing’s declaration with its show of force – an overflight by B-52 bombers – it disappointed Tokyo, with which it signed a mutual-security treaty in 1952, by instructing U.S. commercial airliners to comply with China’s identification requirements.

Some Japanese officials and analysts have publicly criticised what they regard as an insufficiently assertive U.S. response to Russia’s absorption of Crimea despite a 1994 agreement between Washington, Kiev, London, and Moscow guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

They worry that Beijing may now be tempted to make a similar move on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, just as some in Southeast Asia have expressed similar concerns about China’s intentions in the South China Sea.

But most U.S. analysts, including the administration, reject the analogy.

“We have longstanding alliances in Asia with most of the countries where the maritime territorial disputes with China are most severe, and we have stated time and again that we will meet our alliance commitments,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, a Brookings Institution expert who served as President Bill Clinton’s senior Asia adviser, last week.

“We don’t have any such commitments to Ukraine. We don’t have an alliance. We have never assured Ukraine’s territorial integrity by threatening the use of force…It’s a different situation, and I think the Chinese are very clear about those differences.”

Alan Romberg, a former top State Department expert who now directs the East Asia programme at the Stimson Centre here, agreed. “It’s a totally different situation,” he told IPS.

Besides the lack of any defence agreement, “if you look at the overall importance of East Asia to the U.S. and global peace and security,” he added, “there’s also no comparison.”

Obama, who will travel to China in the fall, has made clear that he nonetheless wants to avoid unnecessarily antagonising Beijing and has tried to tamp down tensions between it and Tokyo, in part by trying to dissuade leaders in both countries from stoking growing nationalist sentiments among their citizens.

Washington has also tried hard in recent months to reconcile Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-Hye – to the extent of personally convening a summit with the two nationalist leaders on the sidelines of a nuclear security conference at The Hague last month.

But Abe’s latest bequest to the notorious shrine, particularly coming on the eve of Obama’s trip, is unlikely to help matters.

“The U.S. can be a leader, a catalyst, and a stabiliser in the region, but it can’t do it all by itself,” noted Romberg. “It’s important that other countries, particularly allies, coordinate and cooperate, and not spend their time nattering at each other all the time.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

USS Ronald Reagan and other ships from RIMPAC 2010 transit the Pacific. The United States, a Pacific power whose military spending is not included in the Asia figures, has also played an important role in driving up the expenditures in the region. Credit: U.S. Navy photo

By John Feffer
WASHINGTON, Apr 14 2014 (IPS)

For the second year in a row, the world is spending a little less on the military. Asia, however, has failed to get the memo. The region is spending more at a time when many others are spending less.

Last year, Asia saw a 3.6 percent increase in military spending, according to figures just released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The region — which includes East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and Oceania — posted topping off a 62 percent increase over the last decade.To a certain extent, the arms race in Asia is connected not to the vast expansion of the Pentagon since 2001 but rather to the relative decline of Asia in U.S. priorities over much of that period.

In 2012, for the first time Asia outpaced Europe in its military spending. That year, the world’s top five importers of armaments all came from Asia: India, China, Pakistan, South Korea, and (incredibly) the city-state of Singapore.

China is responsible for the lion’s share of the increases in East Asia, having increased its spending by 170 percent over the last decade. It has also announced a 12.2 percent increase for 2014.

But China is not the only driver of regional military spending. South Asia – specifically the confrontation between India and Pakistan – is responsible for a large chunk of the military spending in the region. Rival territorial claims over tiny islands  — and the vast resources that lie beneath and around them — in both Northeast and Southeast Asia are pushing the claimants to boost their maritime capabilities.

Even Japan, which has traditionally kept its military spending to under one percent of GDP, is getting into the act. Tokyo has promised of a 2.8 percent increase in 2014-15.

The United States, a Pacific power whose military spending is not included in the Asia figures, has also played an important role in driving up the expenditures in the region. The Barack Obama administration’s “Pacific pivot” is designed to reboot the U.S. security presence in this strategically critical part of the world.

To a certain extent, the arms race in Asia is connected not to the vast expansion of the Pentagon since 2001 but rather to the relative decline of Asia in U.S. priorities over much of that period.

As U.S. allies, South Korea and Japan were expected to shoulder more of the security burden in the region while the United States pursued national security objects in the Middle East and Central Asia.

China, meanwhile, pursued a “peaceful rise” that also involved an attempt to acquire a military strength comparable to its economic strength. At the same time, China more vigorously advanced its claims in the South China Sea even as other parties to the conflict put forward their counter claims.

The Pacific pivot has been billed as a way to halt the relative decline of U.S. influence in Asia. So far, however, this highly touted “rebalancing” has largely been a shifting around of U.S. forces in the region.

The fulcrum of the pivot is Okinawa, where the United States and Japan have been negotiating for nearly two decades to close an outdated Marine Air Force base in Okinawa and transfer those Marines to existing, expanding, and proposed facilities elsewhere.

Aside from this complex operation, a few Littoral Combat Ships have gone to Singapore. The Pentagon has proposed putting slightly more of its overall fleet in the Pacific (a 60-40 split compared to the current 50-50). And Washington has welcomed closer coordination with partners like the Philippines and Vietnam.

Instead of a significant upgrade to U.S. capabilities in the region, the pivot is largely a signal to Washington’s allies that the partnerships remain strong and a warning to Washington’s adversaries that, even if U.S. military spending is on a slight downward tilt, the Pentagon possesses more than enough firepower to deter their power projection.

This signaling function of the pivot dovetails with another facet of U.S. security policy: arms exports. The growth of the Pentagon over the last 10 years has been accompanied by a growth in U.S. military exports, which more than doubled during the period 2002 to 2012 from 8.3 to 18.8 billion dollars.

The modest reduction in Pentagon spending will not necessarily lead to a corresponding decline in exports. In fact, the opposite is likely to be true, as was the case during the last Pentagon slowdown in the 1990s. The Obama administration has pushed through a streamlining of the licensing process in order to facilitate an increase in military exports – in part to compensate U.S. arms manufacturers for a decline in orders from the Pentagon.

Asia and Oceania represent the primary target for U.S. military exports, absorbing nearly half of all shipments. Of that number, East Asia represents approximately one-quarter (South Asia accounts for nearly half).

The biggest-ticket item is the F-35 fighter jet, which Washington has already sold to Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Long-range missile defence systems have been sold to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Overall between 2009 and 2013, Australia and South Korea have been the top U.S. clients. With its projected increase in military spending, Japan will also likely rise much higher on the list.

The more advanced weaponry U.S. allies purchase, the more they are locked into future acquisitions. The United States emphasises “interoperability” among its allies. Not only are purchasers dependent on the United States for spare parts and upgrades, but they must consider the overall system of command and control (which is now C5I — Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Combat systems and Intelligence).

Although a French fighter jet or a Russian naval vessel might be a cheaper option in a competitive bid, the purchasing country must also consider how the item integrates with the rest of its hardware and software.

The United States has argued that its overwhelming military presence in the region and lack of interest in territorial gain have dampened conflict in Asia. But the security environment has changed dramatically since the United States first presented itself as a guarantor of regional stability.

Japan no longer abides by a strict interpretation of its “peace constitution.” North Korea has developed nuclear weapons. China has dramatically increased its capabilities. South Korea has created its own indigenous military manufacturing sector and greatly expanded its exports. Territorial disputes in the South China, Yellow, and East China Seas have sharpened. The only flashpoint that has become more peaceful in the last few years has been the Taiwan Strait.

The continued increase in military spending by countries in East Asia and the massive influx of arms into the region are both symptoms and drivers of conflict. Until and unless the region restrains its appetite for military upgrades, the risk of clashes and even all-out war will remain high.

In such an increasingly volatile environment, regional security agreements – on North Korea’s nuclear programme, the several territorial disputes, or new technological threats like cyberwarfare – will be even more difficult to achieve.

Most importantly, because of these budget priorities, the region will have fewer resources and less political will to address other pressing threats, such as climate change, which cannot be defeated with fighter jets or the latest generation of battle ship.

A new ski resort opened in North Korea last year is drawing many tourists. Credit: Koryo Tours, Beijing.

By Ahn Mi Young
SEOUL, Feb 27 2014 (IPS)

If the North Korea of the 1990s was seen as a starving nation that produced an exodus of hungry people, then the picture should be even gloomier now – six years after it stopped receiving South Korea’s generous aid. But it’s not. The nation of 24 million people, widely said to be the most secretive in the world and a nuclear threat, appears to have weathered the years well.

Today, more people are reported to be better off. Many are engaged in trade. Its communist regime, inherited by the 30-something supreme leader of North Korea Kim Jong-Un after his father’s death in 2011, is actively wooing foreign investors and tourists, and introducing reforms. Pyongyang has even softened its attitude towards Seoul to resume talks.

North Korea has been gradually weaned off South Korean food and goods.Ordinary North Koreans no longer depend on rations from Pyongyang as these have more than halved in the past years.

From 1998 to 2007, the liberal government in Seoul used to supply some 400,000 tonnes of rice, large quantities of milk powder and medicines for infants, cement and construction equipment and fertilisers to North Korea each year. Truckloads of cargo used to cross the heavily-fortified border that has separated the two Koreas since the 1950 to 1953 Korean war.

Each month, thousands of South Korean tourists used to visit the North’s scenic Mount Kumgang, yielding millions of dollars for Pyongyang.

But ties between the two Koreas almost froze after a conservative government took office in Seoul in 2008. South Korea halted all trade with North Korea, and most investment, in May 2010 after the sinking of one of its warships, which Seoul attributed to Pyongyang.

The loss of Seoul as its largest donor resulted in Pyongyang becoming more dependent on China, its largest benefactor and only ally. According to the Korea International Trade Association (KITA), from 2012 to 2013, bilateral trade between China and North Korea increased 10 percent to 6.54 billion dollars.

North Korea has also been forced to become more self-reliant.

There are more now of the so-called “middle class” businessmen, including about 240,000 North Koreans who own 50,000-100,000 dollars worth of assets like apartments, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper published from Seoul.

“These new middle classes indicate that Pyongyang allows farmers or ordinary people to do business in the market. Earlier, doing business was unthinkable unless they proved their loyalty to the communist party,” an unnamed Seoul official was quoted as saying in the newspaper.

North Korean defectors in South Korea explain that these well off people are usually former farmers, traders or diplomats. A recent Media Research survey of 200 North Korean defectors indicates that at least 80 percent of ordinary North Koreans are engaged in local trade.

Ordinary North Koreans no longer depend on rations from Pyongyang as these have more than halved in the past years. The so-called “super-class apartments” in the North Korean capital are sold at rates of 100,000 dollars each.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), fewer North Koreans now say they need more food. Its 2013 survey says 46 percent of respondents have “adequate” food compared to 26 percent in the 2012 survey.

If all this is any indication, then the suspension of aid from Seoul created only short-term difficulties for the North, but in the long run it helped reform the economy.

With no food or aid from the South, workers who used to handle these supplies lost their jobs and had to find something else to do. “Many of them became sellers who are hawking in one market after another,” said Joo Sung-Ha, a Seoul-based North Korea expert.

Also, as the U.S. mounts pressure on China to make North Korea denounce nuclear weapons, Pyongyang will have to continue looking for other sources of funds, say analysts.

Already, North Korea has launched a series of reforms. In June 2012, it introduced a “family farm” system, wherein each farm family gives 30 percent of its harvest to the government and keeps the rest as its private wealth.

North Korea also announced the construction of 14 economic zones, where foreign investors can do business.

This January, a new ski resort was opened in the western city of Wonsan where foreign tourists can mingle with locals and drink European beers and even Coca-Cola.

Pyongyang has also proposed resumption of talks with Seoul. This month, for the first time after 2007, high-level officials from the two Koreas sat down to discuss the reunion of families separated during the 1950 to 1953 war.

Kim Jong-Un has reason to reform. He leads a nation that is perceived as a nuclear threat to the world. To reinforce his legitimacy, he must reduce the country’s heavy dependence on China and try to open up the economy.

But can such reforms bring about real change?

Kim Jong-Un, who succeeded his father Kim Jong-Il and grandfather Kim Il-Sung, is being accused of encouraging cult loyalty to keep his family in power. Last year, he purged the country’s number two leader, his uncle Jang Seong-Thack, executing him on treason charges.

“Kim is now terrifying the nation by sending hundreds of Mr. Jang’s men to concentration camps,” according to Cho Myong-Chull, a lawmaker in South Korea who used to be a professor at North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung University in Pyongyang.

Many North Koreans say their government cares more about itself than feeding its people. Around 90 percent of those surveyed by Media Research feel there is a wide gap between the rich and the poor today due to the emergence of the new rich. Industries have been hit by lack of electricity.

But at the same time, more North Koreans are getting to know about the outside world. The Media Research survey of North Korean defectors finds that 70 percent of them had already seen South Korean TV dramas and heard K-pop songs while living in North Korea.

More than three million North Koreans are believed to own cell phones. Most defectors settled in South Korea speak to their family members back home through mobile phones.

There are more than 26,100 North Korean defectors living in South Korea. They say that in the 1990s they left home to escape hunger. But since 2007, more left in search of a better life and better education for their children.

In recent years, North Korea has tried to woo back defectors instead of persecuting them. In fact, fewer people have left for South Korea since Kim Jong-Un took power, according to the South Korean Ministry of Unification.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden wrapped up his finger-wagging tour of Asia on Friday, with a busy week of lecturing the Chinese, trying to get the South Koreans and Japanese to play nice with one another, and damning North Korea with faint praise for releasing an 85-year-old American after more than a month of detention.

Aside from a couple of verbal gaffes, his performance elicited generally passing marks at home and abroad. But Biden’s effort did little to reverse the fundamental reality that the U.S. role in the region has dwindled over the last decade, despite recent efforts to reverse the trend.

The United States has long billed its presence in Asia as one of an “honest broker”. More recently, the Obama administration has tried to underscore U.S. interests in the region through its “Pacific pivot”, away from the roiling conflicts of the Middle East and toward the economic opportunities of the East."“The ‘pivot’ seems to reflect a desire to maintain things as they have been. I don’t see anything new in it.”
-- Patrick Smith

U.S. policy, however, has been slow to pivot. Continued turmoil in Syria, nuclear negotiations with Iran, and a raft of domestic challenges have absorbed Washington’s attention. Biden’s trip was an effort to bolster U.S. commitment to Asia after President Obama cancelled his trip to the region in October because of the U.S. government shutdown. The vice president, definitely not an Asia hand, was an unusual choice for emissary.

“Politicians always make a virtue of sheer circumstance,” observed Patrick Smith, a longtime correspondent in Asia and the author most recently of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century”. “Biden, we were told, was the right technology for this trip.”

“But Biden has no experience in Asia. He was the wrong guy in the wrong place,” Smith continued. “It underscored…that we just can’t keep up with events any more. I’ve seen this problem with pace coming for years, and now it’s here: China, Iran, Syria. We’re running to catch up.”

Biden’s mission was not just handicapped by his lack of deep regional knowledge. Instead of a bold effort to stay ahead of the curve, the Biden trip became an exercise in damage control when China announced a new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) shortly before he set out.

The newly expanded zone includes a set of islands that Beijing and Tokyo contest – Diaoyu in Chinese, Senkaku in Japanese – and which Tokyo currently controls. It also covers a submerged rock that South Korea uses as a tiny maritime research station.

The United States responded to China’s unilateral announcement by sending two unarmed B-52 fighter jets to fly through the zone without advance notification. Japan instructed its commercial airlines to ignore the demand to notify Chinese authorities of their flight paths through the zone. South Korea most recently has responded with its own slightly expanded ADIZ to encompass the submerged rock.

In Beijing, Biden pushed the Chinese to back off from applying its new rules to disputed parts of the zone, and the Chinese reiterated their own sovereign right to do what other countries have already done.

So the vice president was left to repeat his own diplomatic boilerplate about the importance of cooperation over competition, saying in an interview with a South Korean newspaper, “Economically, diplomatically, militarily, we have been, we are, and we will remain a resident Pacific power.”

The past history of involvement and present alliance commitments certainly bind the United States to the region. Even if  current tensions have more to do with simmering tensions between Tokyo and Beijing, Washington necessarily finds itself in the middle, leaning geopolitically toward Japan and geoeconomically toward China.

“My sense is that Washington will have to play a significant role,” argued Sheila Smith, a senior fellow for Japanese studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Two of the players, Japan and South Korea, are our allies. Crisis management will involve us – even if we are unprepared.”

The pivot to Asia was touted as a way for the United States to check rising Chinese influence, recommit to allies in the region, and tap into Asian economic success through trade and investment deals.

But Patrick Smith considered the pivot a “figment.” He explained that “if the thought now is to play the role in the region that we already played, that’s a reiteration and no more.” Rather than a set of new initiatives, the new policy is an effort to maintain the status quo. “The ‘pivot’ seems to reflect a desire to maintain things as they have been. I don’t see anything new in it,” he concluded.

Figment or fact, the “pivot” has not been an easy manoeuvre for the United States to execute. The Obama administration has been rearranging military forces in the region, sending Marines to a new base in Australia, expanding facilities in Guam, and negotiating new access agreements with the Philippines and Vietnam.

But local resistance has prevented the construction of a new military based to replace the facility in Futenma, Okinawa, and budget constraints at home make a significant increase in Pacific military presence unlikely.

Meanwhile, Japan has continued to develop its own more assertive foreign and military policy, most recently proposing to overturn its decades-old ban on weapons exports. Tokyo and Seoul have descended into a deep freeze in relations, with friction over their own disputed islands as well as Japan’s contrition – or lack of it — regarding its World War II actions in the peninsula. Further south, China and a number of countries spar over the South China Sea and the resources beneath the waves.

And Washington’s prospects for concluding a trade deal, the Trans Pacific Partnership, are not especially bright either. Opposition is fierce in some participating countries, such as Japan, and it will be very difficult for negotiators to meet the end-of-year deadline for the treaty’s text. Nor is the enthusiasm level in Congress particularly high.

Now that Biden is back in Washington, Asia is once again out of the U.S. headlines. Obama is heading to South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s funeral, the war in Syria grinds on, congressional opposition to the agreement with Iran continues to simmer, and the demonstrations in Ukraine are expanding. The territorial conflicts in East Asia haven’t disappeared. But the United States must attend to priorities other than its much-vaunted pivot.

As news of the death of former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla in a prison cell spread around the world, Julia Parodi, who was in this South Korean city to receive the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights on behalf of HIJOS, said he died in the right place.

HIJOS, the acronym for “Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence”, is an Argentine rights group founded in 1995 when children of people “disappeared” by that country’s 1976-1983 military regime came together to hold escraches or outings of human rights violators.

Argentine victims of forced disappearance. Credit: ha+/CC BY 2.0

An estimated 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the Argentine dictatorship’s systematic suppression of dissent. In 1976, then army chief Videla led the junta made up of the commanders of the three military forces after the coup d’état that overthrew the democratic government of Isabel Perón.

Videla, who died on May 17, may be physically no more, the 25-year-old Parodi told the audience in her acceptance speech, but Argentina is still trying to correct the historical wrongs of the regime he led for most of its seven years in power.

Parodi was with her colleague Marcos Kary in Gwangju to share the human rights experiences of Argentina and South Korea.

The Gwangju Prize is awarded by the May 18 Memorial Foundation in South Korea, which like HIJOS was established by the families of those subjected to the brutal excesses of a dictatorship. Protests against the rule of South Korean military commander and strongman Chun Doo-hwan (1979-1988) had culminated in the May 18-27, 1980 uprising in Gwangju, also known as 518, an allusion to the date the bloody crackdown began.

In spring 1980 there was a wave of demonstrations across South Korea. In Gwangju, in the southwest, the military responded with brute force, firing indiscriminately into crowds. Even passersby were killed. The final death toll is still uncertain, but up to 2,000 people may have died.

The uprising is seen as a pivotal moment in the struggle for South Korean democracy.

The May 18 Memorial Foundation was established in 1994, and the Gwangju Prize was created in 2000. Xanana Gusmao, who fought for the freedom of East Timor in Southeast Asia and was elected as its first president when it became a new country in 2002, was the first recipient of the prize.

The award has since gone to other leaders in South Asia, notably Aung San Suu Kyi, the icon for democracy in Myanmar/Burma, in 2004; Manipur’s Irom Sharmila, fighting the excesses of the military in northeastern India, in 2007; and Dr Binayak Sen, a civil rights activist working for the rights of tribal populations in India, in 2011.

For the first time, however, the prize has gone this year to an organisation so many miles and whole continents away from the parent country. HIJOS was chosen for its dedication to get justice for victims of human rights abuses during Argentina’s dictatorship.

Parodi and Kary, both students who work for and represent HIJOS, are not the children of any of those who fell prey to the atrocities of the regime, but are willing to carry on the job that the daughters and sons of the victims began nearly two decades ago.

Like other human rights groups in their country, their aim is to help restore truth and bring justice to Argentine society. The organisation has helped collect evidence, arranged legal assistance for those wishing to prosecute human rights violators, and offered psychological support.

Videla’s sentencing was a part of this effort. Tried and sentenced to life for human rights abuses soon after democracy was restored, he only served a few years in prison before he was released under a broad presidential pardon from Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

But the sustained efforts of organisations like HIJOS ensured that this impunity would not be permanent.

In the mid-2000s, the Argentine Supreme Court struck down the presidential pardon for the former members of the junta, as well as the two late 1980s amnesty laws, ruling that they were unconstitutional.

“In the period that no trials took place,” Parodi told IPS, “we undertook social action by identifying the perpetrators of atrocities and distributing leaflets to their neighbours indicating that the people next door were responsible for the brutal abuses that happened in the 1970s and 1980s.”

The human rights trials resumed after the pardons and amnesty laws were thrown out. In the central city of Córdoba, where Parodi and Kary work, there have already been four trials involving 400 victims and 43 accused, said Parodi. And a fifth trial began in December 2012 and will last another two years, the two activists told IPS.

However, helping to bring the perpetrators to court is not the end of HIJOS’s job, Parodi said, adding that there is still a lot to be done for human rights in their country.

“Human rights continue to be suppressed in Argentina,” Kary told IPS. “The military may no longer be in power, but the police continue to wield power, and their mindset has never really changed. Torture in jails continues.”

Meanwhile, the Gwangju Prize – and its 50,000 dollar cash award – has given the organisation an opportunity to share its human rights experience with rights groups and democratic movements in Asia. It is the first international recognition that HIJOS has received, and one it hopes to build on in its fight for human rights.

With all sides seeming to climb further up the escalatory ladder over the last several days, defusing the ongoing crisis on the Korean Peninsula — let alone persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arsenal as it once promised to do — looks daunting.

Indeed, the latest moves by the major players – the two Koreas and the United States – evoked new appeals Tuesday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for calm to be restored.The concern is that there will be a stray shell from either side that could set in motion a chain of events that would be tragic.

“The crisis has gone too far,” said the former South Korean foreign minister during a news conference in Andorra. “Things must begin to calm down; there is no need for the DPRK (North Korea) to be on a collision course with the international community. Nuclear threats are not a game.”

Ban was reacting specifically to recent threats by Pyongyang and specifically its announcement Tuesday that it was re-activating its nuclear complex at Yongbyon that U.S. intelligence officials believe had extracted enough plutonium to produce as many as eight nuclear bombs, at least two of which are likely to have been used in underground tests in 2006 and 2009.

The complex also includes a sophisticated uranium enrichment plant that could provide a second fuel source for building bombs. It was partially dismantled seven years ago in a denuclearisation-for-aid deal negotiated under the auspices of the long-stalled Six-Party Talks that included the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan, and Russia.

“This work will be put into practice without delay,” according to a statement released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), which also stressed that the complex would be used for the generation of electricity as well as “for bolstering up the nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity till the world is denuclearised”.

For its part, the United States sent a second guided-missile destroyer to join the USS John McCain, whose systems are designed to shoot down ballistic missiles shortly after they are launched, which was ordered into the region’s waters Monday.

Those deployments came amidst ongoing annual joint U.S.-South Korean manoeuvres that have so far included, among other well-publicised features, fly-overs by B-52 bombers and mock bombing runs close to the North’s border by two B-2 Stealth bombers that flew directly from the U.S.

The exercises, code-named Foal Eagle, appear to have provoked the latest escalation in tensions that were already at near-record highs after the U.N. Security Council imposed new economic and diplomatic sanctions against Pyongyang last month.

The Council, which included China, the North’s closest ally and its main source of fuel and food assistance, voted unanimously to impose the sanctions in response to Pyongyang’s Feb. 12 underground nuclear test, its third since 2006.

Since the sanctions’ approval, which co-incided with the start of the “Foal Eagle” exercises, the regime headed by the 29-year-old Kim Jong-un, the grandson of the DPRK’s founder, has claimed that Washington and Seoul were planning a nuclear attack against the North.

Since then, it has, among other measures, launched its own manoeuvres, renounced the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, cut off “hot lines” between Pyongyang and Seoul, threatened a “pre-emptive nuclear strike” against South Korea, the U.S., and its bases in the Pacific, and, more recently, declared that it has entered a “state of war” with the South.

While the administration of President Barack Obama has stressed throughout the crisis that it has seen no specific preparations by North Korea to act on its threats, fears that hostilities could break out by accident with both the North and the South on high alert and the hot lines between them disconnected, have risen steadily.

“The concern is that there will be a stray shell from either side that could set in motion a chain of events that would be tragic,” said Alan Romberg, a former senior State Department Asia expert who currently heads East Asia programmes at the Stimson Center.

“This is not a purposeful march to war, but it could accidentally lead us into a very dangerous situation.”

In an interview with IPS, Romberg said Tuesday’s announcement by Pyongyang was not necessarily all bad news, although it appeared to make clearer than ever that Pyongyang is determined to be recognised as a nuclear-weapons state and will not consider denuclearisation until the other nuclear powers agree to disarm.

He pointed, in particular, to the adoption by the North’s Supreme People’s Assembly Monday of a new law on “consolidating the position of nuclear weapons state for self-defence” which laid out the legal framework for the country’s nuclear strategy.

Among other provisions, the new law states that the main purpose of the North’s nuclear weapons is for deterrence and that they can be used only to “repel invasion or attack from a hostile nuclear weapons state and make retaliatory strikes.” It also provides for cooperation with international non-proliferation and disarmament efforts.

“They’re doing two things at the same time – taking steps to show they’re persisting in their nuclear programme, but also that they’re doing this in some orderly legal fashion,” according to Romberg.

“There’s no hint of retreat from the nuclear programme, but perhaps a standing down to some extent of the rhetoric which has had people so nervous.”

The latest developments, he said, pose difficult problems for the Obama administration, which has repeatedly stressed its openness to dialogue with Pyongyang on a range of issues, including negotiating a permanent peace accord, but only if the North re-commits itself to de-nuclearisation.

“At this point, North Korea says it will not address that issue any further, and, in the meantime, they’re clearly moving in the opposite direction,” he noted in a reference to Tuesday’s order to resume operations at Yongbyon.

A growing number of analysts outside the administration are urging it to re-consider its refusal to fully engage Pyongyang and note that failure to do so risks driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul whose new president, Park Geun-hye, has not made a de-nuclearisation commitment a condition for North-South talks.

In one widely noted column published by the Washington Post this week, one expert, Mike Chinoy of the University of Southern California, urged Obama to send a high-level envoy to meet with Kim “to explore possibilities of reversing the recent downward spiral.”

“(O)nly face-to-face discussions with Kim Jong Un will enable the United States to judge whether there is any hope of dialogue and revived diplomacy,” he wrote. “The alternatives are so bleak – at a minimum continued tension; at worst, a new Korean conflict or a frightening wave of proliferation – that it is worth Obama taking the political risk to test Kim’s intentions.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

By Ignacio Ramonet
PARIS, France, Jan 9 2013 (IPS)

Having survived the announced end of the world on Dec. 21, we can now try to foretell our immediate future, based on geopolitical principles that will help us understand the overall shifts of global powers and assess the major risks and dangers.

Ignacio Ramonet

Looking at a map of the world, we can immediately see some hotspots lit up in red. Four of them represent high levels of danger: Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

In the European Union (EU), 2013 will be the worst year since the beginning of the crisis in 2008. Austerity is the only creed and deep cuts to the welfare state continue because Germany, which for the first time in history dominates Europe and is ruling it with an iron fist, wills it so.

In Spain, political tensions will rise as the Generalitat de Catalunya (Government of Catalonia) decides the terms of a local referendum on independence for this autonomous community (province), a process that will be watched with great interest by the separatists in Euskadi, the Basque Country.

As for the economy, already in dire straits, it all depends on what happens – in the Italian elections in February; and on how the markets react to a possible win by conservative candidate Mario Monti, who has the support of Berlin and the Vatican, or by centre-left candidate Pier Luigi Bersani, who is the frontrunner in the polls.

Social explosions could occur in any of the countries of southern Europe (Greece, Portugal, Italy or Spain), exasperated as their people are with the constant cutbacks. The EU will not emerge from the doldrums in 2013, and everything could get worse if, on top of it all, the response of the markets is brutal (as neoliberals are urging) in France under the very moderate socialist President François Hollande.

In Latin America, 2013 will also be a year of challenges. In the first place, in Venezuela, which since 1999 has been a driver of progressive changes throughout the region, the unforeseen relapse in the health of President Hugo Chávez – re-elected Oct. 7 – is creating uncertainty.

There will also be elections on Feb. 17 in Ecuador. President Rafael Correa, another key Latin American leader, is expected to be re-elected. On Nov. 10 important elections will be held in Honduras, where former president Manuel Zelaya was toppled on Jun. 28, 2009. The Electoral Tribunal has authorised the registration of the Partido Libertad y Refundación (LIBRE – Freedom and Refoundation Party), led by Zelaya.

Chileans are due to go to the polls on Nov. 17. The unpopularity of conservative President Sebastián Piñera opens the way for a possible victory by socialist candidate and former president Michelle Bachelet.

International attention will be focused on Cuba as talks continue in Havana between the Colombian government and the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) with the aim of putting an end to Latin America’s last armed conflict.

Meanwhile, there again appears to be a stalemate in the Middle East, the location of the most disturbing events in the world.

The Arab Spring uprisings toppled several dictators in the region: Zine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

But subsequent elections allowed reactionary Islamist parties, like the Muslim Brotherhood, to come to power. Now, as we are seeing in Egypt, they want to hold onto it at all costs, to the consternation of the secular segments of society who had been the first to rise up in protest, and are refusing to accept this new form of authoritarianism. Tunisia faces the same problem.

After following with interest the explosions of freedom in the spring of 2011, European societies have again become apathetic about what is going on in the Middle East.

For example, the inexorably deepening civil war in Syria clearly shows how the big Western powers (the United States, the United Kingdom and France), allies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, have decided to support – with money, arms and instructors – the Sunni Islamist insurgents. On all fronts, they are gaining ground. How long can the government of President Bashar al-Assad last?

In the face of the “Shiite Front” (Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Syria and Iran), the United States has built a broad regional “Sunni Front” (from Turkey and Saudi Arabia to Morocco, including Egypt, Libya and Tunisia). Its goal: to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and deprive Teheran of its big regional ally by next spring.

Why? Because on Jun. 14 Iran will hold presidential elections, in which incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not eligible to stand. In other words, for the next six months Iran will be immersed in a violent election campaign between partisans of a hard anti-Washington line and supporters of negotiations.

Given this situation in Iran, Israel will no doubt be preparing for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. The Jan. 22 elections in Israel will probably result in victory for the ultra-conservative coalition that supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is all for bombing Iran as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama is looking toward Asia, a priority region for Washington since it decided on a strategic redirection of its foreign policy. The United States is attempting to curb the expansion of China by surrounding that country with military bases and relying on the support of its traditional partners: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

China’s seas have become the areas with the greatest potential for armed conflict in the Asia Pacific region. Tensions between Beijing and Tokyo caused by the sovereignty dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands could be heightened following the Dec. 16 electoral victory of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, led by the new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, who is a nationalist hawk.

China is moving full speed ahead with the modernisation of its navy. On Sept. 25 it launched its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, with the intention of intimidating its neighbours. Beijing is increasingly intolerant of the U.S. military presence in Asia. A dangerous “strategic distrust” is building between the two giants, which will doubtless leave its mark on international politics in the 21st century.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

A Third World War is not impossible, but fortunately is rather unlikely. Let us explore why, and what can be done to prevent it.

Johan Galtung

The worst-case scenario is a world war between the West — NATO, U.S., EU with Japan-Taiwan-South Korea — and the East—the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with Russia, China, Central Asia as members and India, Pakistan, Iran as observers. With four nuclear powers on each side, and West versus Islam as a major issue. In the centre is the explosive mix of a divided territory (Israel-Palestine) and Jerusalem, a capital divided by a wall.

We have been there before: the Cold War, with West versus Communism as a major issue. In the centre was the explosive mix of a divided Germany, and Berlin, a capital divided by a wall; and a divided Korea, by a demilitarised zone. And yet no direct, hot war, except by proxies; Korea, Vietnam. Why?

No doubt nuclear deterrence was one factor. They went to the brink but turned around–like in the 1962 Cuba-Turkey missile crisis. And no doubt nuclear deterrence also plays a role today, limiting the attacks on Israel, U.S. support for Israeli attacks on Arab-Muslim states ­ Syria-Iran in particular ­and any attack on Russia-China. But nuclear deterrence is not the material out of which positive peace is made: no depolarisation, and certainly no solution and conciliation.

The Cold War NATO-Warsaw Pact system was polarised, with secret police controlling contacts, speech and thoughts, looking for traitors. But the world was not polarised: there was the huge non-aligned movement. Europe was not polarised: there were the 10 neutral, or non-aligned, countries. And ultimately a strong movement against war emerged.

The NATO+-SCO+ system is less polarised, but the world and Europe more. So far, no non-aligned movement, and no strong peace movement.

The United Nations vote showed a 3/4 world united in YES for Palestine, NO to USA-Israel. Both are turning any moral high ground into moral deficit through continued expansion-occupation-siege and invasion-occupation-extrajudicial killings. The world is not against U.S.-Israel defending true homeland borders or 1967 borders but against the force and excesses they seem incapable of reversing. Reverse those policies and they could regain the moral high ground.

But still no actors carrying concrete peace policies like the Helsinki Accords. The reason lies in the difference between the West-Islam and the West-communism conflicts. Islam, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, covers more of the world territory and population than the West, but has few friends outside; unlike the West, emulated and admired by Russia-China-India, by Latin America and Africa. In all but Israel, Islam has a huge and growing diaspora by immigration-birth-conversion. Not a superpower, not an alliance, only “Islamic cooperation”; but present everywhere.

The result is uncertainty and fear: what do they want? A challenge to other worldviews, guaranteed by the freedoms of speech and religion. Islam offers healing togetherness and sharing to a West suffering from materialist individualism and egoism.

But Islam also threatens Western institutions with unwanted change. Western secular states won the struggle against the church with a secularism also exported to the Muslim colonies as loyalty to the state and the empires behind them. Today parts of the Islamic diaspora hit back, demanding loyalty to Alla’h and the ummah (community) beyond loyalty to Western states.

For immigration to be a peace-building effort, immigrants must respect laws and customs of the host country and be met with curiosity and respect in dialogues, for mutual learning benefiting all. If broken by either or both, stop immigration, and build ummah at home.

How about the other danger spots and zones in the world?

Afghanistan is coming to a close, not only with NATO withdrawal–except to guard what it was all about: a base for a possible war with China and an oil pipeline. There may be wars between India and Pakistan, but no other country feels strongly enough about Kashmir to participate. The world is concerned with Israel not because of anti-Semitism, but because of an alliance that may involve so much of the rest of the world.

North Korea has both nuclear arms and missiles, and will neither attack nor be attacked. The fight for peace treaty and normalisation with the U.S. will probably bear fruits, in the interest of all.

Taiwan and China will slowly converge toward a Hong Kong style solution of one country-two systems, Taiwan as part of China yet highly autonomous. Wisdom would urge the same for a limited Tibet. In neither case do we have conflicts out of which a third world war is made. For that to happen the ties have to be tight, like U.S. to other NATO countries and to Israel. Or, presumably, Russia and China to each other.

We are left with West-Islam. The lack of cohesion on the Islamic side helps. But we are missing a non-aligned Hindu India, lined up with the West in any major confrontation. Indonesia and Egypt are on the Islamic side, neutral Yugoslavia no longer exists, Latin America is Christian-West, and Africa is divided.

We need moderates on both sides. Tunisia-Turkey and the non-aligned powers, Egypt and Indonesia. And the West—maybe Germany, experienced in inter-faith dialogue? Germany should play a major peace role!

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, is author of “The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What?” (www.transcend.org/tup)

The daughter of South Korea’s former military ruler has won the country’s presidential election, promising in a speech to her supporters to heal a “divided society”.

The win over her liberal rival Moon Jae-in on Wednesday makes Park Geun-hye the country’s first female head of state.

The office of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak congratulated party colleague Park on her win, even before officials had finished counting votes.

The 60-year old conservative Park will now return to the presidential palace where she served as her father’s first lady in the 1970s, after her mother was assassinated by a North Korea-backed gunman.

With 92 percent of the national vote counted, Park had an insurmountable lead of 51.6 percent to the 47.9 percent of Moon, her liberal rival, according to the country’s election commission.

Her raucous, jubilant supporters braved sub-zero temperatures to chant her name and wave South Korean flags outside her house. When she reached her party headquarters, Park was greeted with shouts of “president”.

An elated Park reached into the crowd to grasp hands of supporters wearing red scarves, her party’s colour.

“This is a victory brought by the people’s hope for overcoming crisis and economic recovery,” she said. “I will be a president who fulfills in every way the promises I made to the people.”

High voter turnout

The election was marked by a high turnout of more than 75 percent, compared to 63 percent in the 2007 presidential poll.

Park is the daughter of one of modern Korea’s most polarising figures, the late leader Park Chung-hee, who is both admired for dragging the country out of poverty and reviled for his ruthless suppression of dissent during 18 years of autocratic rule.

Moon, who was chief of staff to the late left-wing president Roh Moo-hyun, is a former human rights lawyer who was once jailed for protesting against the Park Chung-hee regime.

“I feel so sorry and guilty that I have failed to accomplish my historic mission to open a new era of politics,” Moon told reporters outside his Seoul residence. “I humbly accept the outcome of the election,” he added.

Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said that Park had been able to appeal to enough of “middle ground” voters to swing the poll in her favour.

“This conservative candidate, who has really tacked away from some of the more right wing policies of her party, seems to have done enough not just to consolidate her own core constituency vote, but also to appeal to enough of a middle ground in this very high turnout election,” he reported.

“This is still a divided country in terms of generations, party lines and regions. People have stuck to quite long-held party allegiances.”

Engagement with North Korea

Both candidates’ campaigns highlighted the need for “economic democratisation” – a campaign term about reducing the social disparities caused by rapid economic growth – and promised to create new jobs and increase welfare spending.

Matthias Maass, assistant professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, told Al Jazeera that domestic politics had driven campaigns for both sides.

“The issues include the country’s economy, talk about measures to address a low birth rate, questions of unemployment, the wealth income gap, and social injustice,” Maass said.

The new president will face numerous challenges, including a belligerent North Korea, a slowing economy and soaring welfare costs in one of the world’s most rapidly ageing societies.

While both candidates had signalled a greater engagement with North Korea, Park’s approach was more cautious than Moon’s promise to resume aid without preconditions and seek an early summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Park has promised strong leadership that would steer the country through the challenges of global economic troubles.

“I have no family to take care of and no children to pass wealth to. You, the people, are my family and your happiness is the reason that I stay in politics,” Park, who has never been married, said in a televised press conference on Tuesday.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

The Korean Women’s Peasant Association won the 2012 Food Sovereignty Prize for its efforts on behalf of the survival of small-scale and ecologically sustainable farming in South Korea.

The announcement was made Wednesday at the fourth annual Food Sovereignty Prize ceremony in New York. In addition to its work on sustainable farming, the Korean Women’s Peasant Association(KWPA) also focuses on the consumer’s right to healthy and affordable food, decent wages and working conditions for farmers, and the right of female workers to receive the same wages as the men.

Jeomok Bak, chairperson of Korean Women’s Peasant Association, center, receives a Food Sovereignty Prize from Leticia Alanis, executive director of La Union, left, and Nancy Oritz-Surun, director of La Finca del Sur, right. Credit: Stuart Ramson/Insider Images for WhyHunger

“It is a great honour. I am really pleased that our work is being recognised,” Jeomok Bak, president of KWPA told IPS at the award ceremony. “Food is closely connected to women because women feed their families and children. The right to food is linked to women’s rights,” Bak added.

Apart from the winning organisation, three other initiatives fighting for food sovereignty were honoured at the ceremony, held at the National Museum of the American Indian and hosted by WhyHunger.

One of those initiatives, the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan Region, did not have a representative at the event. Envoys from this Honduran association of over 2,500 landless peasants, working for the right to land in a country where governmental land grabbing for biofuel plantations is commonplace, were not allowed to leave their home country.

Instead, Lucy Paguada from Honduras Solidarity NYC, originally a Honduran citizen and now a U.S. resident, held a speech on behalf of her Honduran friends.

“We want to name those responsible for our social tragedy,” she said. “First, the United States government, for financing and training the Honduran police and army.”

Paguada went on to criticise leading politicians and landowners in Honduras, calling them “puppets of the U.S.”. She also expressed her anger at the assassination of Antonio Trejo Cabrera on September 22. The Honduran human rights lawyer, who defend the peasants movement, was gunned down after leaving a wedding south of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

“He had previously denounced his killers on television,” Paguada said.

The two other initiatives being honored, National Fisheries Solidarity Movement from Sri Lanka and Coalition of Immokalee Workers from the state of Florida in the United States, were able to send representatives to the awards.

Rights for tomato workers

Lucas Benitez from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers told the audience about his movement’s struggle to improve working conditions at tomato farms in Florida. “90 percent of the tomatoes consumed in the U.S. in winter comes from Florida,” he explained. “This industry… is one of the richest and most powerful in this country.”

Despite the industry’s profits, in the past tomato pickers working in extreme heat were not provided with shade. Female employees who were sexually harassed had nowhere to go to report assaults. Working extremely long hours was standard, according to Benitez.

But the struggles of the CIW have helped to bring about a new code of conduct for the tomato industry in Florida. “Last week, we signed an agreement with Chipotle,” Benitez announced with pride, his voice strong.

The restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill is a major purchaser of tomatoes in the United States and has now committed to buying the vegetables at a fair price.

Still, many fast food conglomerates and supermarkets still refuse to pay respectable prices for tomatoes, Benitez stated, and so the CIW’s work must continue. “We will not stop until we feel that we are treated with the respect that all human beings are being entitled to.”

A global dilemma

Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, was a special guest at the Food Sovereignty Prize ceremony. He delivered a passionate speech about the meaning of food sovereignty.

The definition of the term is “the right of people to define their own food policy”, De Schutter said. The basic idea is that needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food – not the demands of markets and corporations – shall determine food policies.

“About 15 percent of the food being produced is traded across borders. It is not much,” De Schutter continued. “Yet that segment of the food system is determining all the rest to a large extent.”

“In many developing countries I see that investment goes to export agricultural products, not to the small farmers trying to feed their families. And look at how agricultural research and development is being financed. For whom? For the export market. For the large producers.”

The Belgian-born De Schutter also lashed out at his native Europe. “The European Union uses 614 million hectares (of land) annually to feed itself… 50 percent of this land that is used to satisfy the needs of the E.U. is land that is outside the Union, land in developing countries,” he said.

“Food does not go where the need is, it goes where the money is today.”

De Schutter also linked food sovereignty to climate change. “It is exactly because of climate change that we must deconcentrate food production, so that all regions are able to produce as much as they can for themselves. That is how resilience can be built.”

The event ended with a highly applauded performance by musician and activist Tom Morello, an original member of the bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, who also had a few concluding words: “Some people choose between Rolls Royce and Lamborghini. Others choose between which dumpster they are going to get their food from tonight. That is a crime.”

Participants of Duan Yuezhong’s Chinese language class conducted in a local park. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Sep 29 2012 (IPS)

While the 40^th anniversary of the normalisation of Japan-China relations passed under a dark shadow of rising tensions and bitter territorial disputes in East Asia, a strand of citizen-based diplomacy at the grassroots level is emerging in Japan as a path towards regional reconciliation.

Sabre rattling between Japan and its neighbours – namely its primary economic competitors, China and South Korea – reached new heights at the United Nations General Assembly currently underway in New York when Chinese president Hu Jintao dismissed Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda’s claims to a disputed chain of islands as “illegal and invalid”.

The uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea, which may shelter large deposits of natural gas, are known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, Diayou in China and the Tiaoyutai Islands in Taiwan.

The possibly resource-rich cluster that lies below Japan’s southernmost island of Okinawa has long been a major bone of contention between China and Japan, with Taiwan, too, laying claim to the territory.

The Japanese government’s proposal to buy the islands from a private owner sparked a wave of protest across 50 cities in China earlier this month.

The violence, which included the destruction of several Japanese establishments, forced a number of staff members to relocate back to Japan, while hundreds of Japanese tourists cancelled their visits to China.

The Senkaku Islands were not the only source of conflict at the U.N. this week. On Thursday, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak rejected Noda’s vow to protect Japan’s sea and land space – an obvious reference by the latter to the dispute with South Korea over ownership of Takeshima, a pair of rocky islets known in Korean as Dokto.

A street poll conducted by the Tokyo-based Nippon Broadcasting Corporation this month indicated the Japanese public wants the government to take a stronger stance in these territorial disputes, particular where South Korea is concerned.

East Asia political experts here view these tensions as a further threat to the rocky bilateral relations that have existed since diplomatic ties were established with China in 1972 and with South Korea in 1965.

But a growing number of concerned citizens are convinced that grassroots efforts and local diplomacy can help defuse tensions between the agitated neighbours.

These concerned voices are calling for a cooling down of the situation in an attempt to prevent mutual economic losses, trade boycotts or suffocation of the free flow of students, professionals, artists and information between the various countries.

A citizens’ movement for change?

Duan Yuezhong, a Chinese national living in Tokyo, is very dedicated to this movement. Undeterred by political hot-headedness, he is conducting a discussion group for the Japanese public.

“Nothing can stop my efforts in Japan towards a citizen-based approach to nurture closer ties between China and Japan. To withdraw now is to give up on the future,” he told IPS.

Yuezhong, a former journalist in China, has spent almost two decades in Japan. He owns a publishing company that prints books specialising in Japan-China relations and also conducts popular Chinese-language classes at a local park.

Yuezhong has great faith in the fledging citizen’s movement that highlights the need for political restraint and the importance of objective negotiations between countries.

Akiko Ozaki, a Japanese businesswoman who set up a travel agency in China two years ago, echoed these sentiments. She appealed to participants of her annual tour to Dalian, a major port city in the northeast of China, to go ahead with their visit scheduled for next month.

“My tour may survive. For ordinary people like us who have developed close business ties with China it is very difficult to throw away (our) hard work because of political (stubbornness),” she told IPS.

While economic ties have cemented East Asia as a formidable bloc — China has now overtaken the United States to become Japan’s top trading partner — mistrust is deep-rooted due to Japan’s history of colonisation in the region.

“There is a huge perception gap when it comes to understanding Japanese colonisation in all the three countries,” according to professor Masao Okonogi, an expert on Japan-Korea relations at Kyushu University.

“Against the growing international clout of China and South Korea, Japan must seek to put the past behind it,” he explained.

In an effort to do just this, Okonogi participated in several joint study programmes on history that took place on an annual basis between Japan and South Korea until the project was disbanded two years ago.

“Political interference on both sides dealt a severe blow to crucial attempts to foster a deeper sense of mutual understanding of the historical past but we must persevere,” he explained.

Yoichi Tao, scientist and manager of Global Voices – a website that hosts a myriad opinions including those of Chinese and Korean students in Japan – says space for wider debate on differences between Japan and its East Asian neighbours is crucial.

“Pursuing economic development has pushed the vital importance of bridging (misunderstandings) to the back burner. The latest upheaval has (proven) that the economy alone does not bring stability in East Asia,” he told IPS.

Kao Hui Fen, a Taiwanese national in Tokyo, cannot agree more. Fen says after fifteen years in Japan she has become more outspoken about Japanese colonisation of her country, an approach that has not caused her problems.

“I tell my Japanese friends that colonisation is bad. They do not respond angrily and some are even willing to discuss the past objectively,” she said.

Tao believes that sharing honest opinions at the civilian level can weaken conservative and narrow political agendas that have long divided Japan and its closest Asian neighbours.

“People can lead the way forward in East Asia where emotional historical issues have bogged us down for too long,” he said.

(END)

The conflicting role of big businesses did not go unnoticed by activists at Jeju. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
JEJU, South Korea, Sep 18 2012 (IPS)

At the close of the ten-day World Conservation Congress that ran from Sept. 6-15 on the South Korean island of Jeju, members of the convening International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) agreed on an ambitious four-year action plan for protecting global natural resources.

Taking the form of a 24-page document, the four-year programme focuses on the two main themes that dominated discussions among 10,000 participants at Jeju last week – that natural resources are stretched dangerously thin and that nature itself could hold the solutions to the crisis.

“The new IUCN Programme aims to mobilise and unite communities working for biodiversity conservation, sustainable development and poverty reduction in common efforts to halt biodiversity loss and apply nature-based solutions,” the IUCN stated on Saturday.

The challenge now, according to IUCN Director General Julia Marton-Lefèvre, is ensuring that the programme actually gets implemented.

Promoting nature-based solutions for industries as well as communities was the main thrust at the congress, from getting multinational companies to adopt sustainable solutions, to pressing governments to safeguard protected areas, or announcing a partnership with IT giant Microsoft to track extinction threats worldwide.

Experts agreed that the mega congress has the potential to set the agenda not only for the conservation community but for the entire global community to face up to threats brought on by changing climates.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), told IPS that the congress was the best forum to assess whether there was hope beyond “the political stalemate paralysing the current capacity of nation states to move on issues like climate change”.

Steiner added that this June’s U.N. summit on sustainable development (Rio+20) reiterated the unfortunate fact that the politically divided world still lacks the capacity to act in unison on saving the environment.

“None of us want to wait, but we are forced to wait,” Steiner said.

IUCN can step into this bubble of inaction and make its membership of 89 states, 124 government agencies and 1018 non-governmental organisations count.

The Union believes its primary strength is that it reflects the cutting edge of the conservation community and has the power to set a radical agenda.

An assessment titled ‘A Review of the Impact of IUCN Resolutions on International Conservation Efforts’ recalls that it was the IUCN meeting in Ashkhabad, held in the former Soviet Union in 1978, that gave birth to the term ‘sustainable development’,  which has now permeated the vocabulary of every leading international institution concerned with the impact of development on the natural world.

“This phrase has now entered the mainstream of development thinking and has had a profound influence on the design and operation of conservation and development practice throughout the world,” according to the report.

Braulio F. de Souza Dias, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), has much more recent examples of the IUCN’s influence on the world stage.

“All the progress we have made on the CBD agenda has been very much influenced by the results of discussions at IUCN congresses,” Dias told IPS, adding that the programme of protected areas, which the CDB set up in 2007, was a direct result of a proposal that came out of the previous IUCN congress.

Public-private partnerships

At the congress last week the emphasis fell unambiguously on getting businesses big and small to adopt sustainable solutions.

“It is great that they have come,” Marton-Lefèvre told IPS, referring to the overwhelming presence of businesses like Holcim and Nestle’s Nespresso who were showcasing their programmes at the congress.

Experts like Steiner and Dias were much more cautious in their praise of the multinationals, but acknowledged that the business community showing an inclination to be “green friendly” was welcome, given the paralysis of national governments.

Dias told IPS that environmental groups and activists were increasingly coming to the realisation that it was better to at least enter into dialogue with big businesses rather than keep up an endless stream of criticism.

“More and more organisations are seeing that they can be much more effective if they establish partnerships to discuss actual results,” he said.

Interactions between business groups and the conservation community is likely to lead to a better understanding of each other, according to Naoko Ishii, chairperson of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a Washington-based public fund that supports projects related to environment and sustainable development.

“I am confident that the discussions will influence action on a broader level,” Ishii, who has previously served as Japan’s deputy finance minister and country head of the World Bank in Sri Lanka, added.

However, Steiner cautioned against the expectation of results immediately after the congress.

“Let us be clear, to ask the private sector to lead change in the absence of corresponding public policy is not going to work,” he told IPS.

Dias, his colleague from the CBD, struck a much more positive tone, but he too admitted that once the talking stops, the real challenge will be to get all parties – governments, businesses and activists – onto one platform.

“Overall we are still losing biodiversity, and we have to scale up action,” he warned.

(END)

Asia has surpassed Latin America as the largest source of new immigrants to the United States, according to a major new report that found that Asian-Americans also enjoy the highest incomes and best education of any racial group in the United States.

The 214-page report, released Tuesday by the Pew Research Centre, said Asian-Americans now constitute nearly six percent of the total U.S. population, or some 18.2 million people. That’s a more than five-fold increase since 1965, when immigration laws were liberalised to permit more non-Europeans to come to the United States.

Asian immigration has risen steadily since 1965, according to the report, entitled “The Rise of Asian Americans”, but the growth rate appears to have accelerated in the last few decades, with nearly three out of every four-Americans with Asian ancestry having been born abroad. Japanese-Americans are the only sub-group in which the majority was born in the United States.

“A century ago, most Asian Americans were low-skilled, low-wage laborers crowded into ethnic enclaves and targets of official discrimination,” the report stated. “Today they are the most likely of any major racial or ethnic group in America to live in mixed neighborhoods and to marry across racial lines.”

This shift is part of a trend that would seem to indicate that Americans are becoming more tolerant towards immigrants, especially Asian-American ones. A 2010 Pew survey found that among white Americans, 62 percent “would be fine” with a relative marrying interracially, particularly someone who is black, Hispanic or Asian, up from 51 percent in 2001.

Chinese-Americans comprised the largest sub-group of all Asian-Americans, with about four million people, or about 23 percent of the total. They were followed by Filipino-Americans (3.4 million), Indian-Americans (3.2), Vietnamese-Americans (1.74), Korean-Americans (1.71) and Japanese-Americans (1.3). Together, those six sub-groups are the vast majority of the total Asian population in the United States.

Traditional values: Education and hard work

“Many Asians come to the United States because they still perceive it as a land of opportunity,” Andrew Lam, an editor at New America Media, an umbrella group of ethnic news organisations, told IPS.

The report, based in part on recent telephone interviews in English and seven other languages with a nationally representative sample of more than 3,500 Asian-Americans, also found that Asian-Americans place significantly more emphasis on attaining higher education and working hard than other racial groups in the United States.

While 93 percent of respondents in the poll said they believed that Americans who hailed from the same country of origin are “very hard-working”, only 57 percent of those respondents agreed that the same held true for their American counterparts as a whole.

Asian-Americans stand out for their educational achievements, in particular. While 26 percent of the U.S. population has a bachelor’s degree or higher, the comparable figure for Asians is 49 percent – nearly twice as high – and 18 percentage points higher than white Americans. The more recent arrivals have an even higher percentage – 61 percent among adults aged 25 to 64.

Asian-Americans also stand out compared to their cohorts in their home countries. On average, about 26 percent of Japanese and South Koreans in the same age group have a bachelor’s degree, compared to nearly 70 percent of comparably aged recent immigrants from those two countries.

Financial and economic aspects

According to the Department of Labour, the unemployment rate among Asians as a group is less than in America as a whole. The Asian-American unemployment rate stands at about 7.5 percent, lower than any other demographic, including white (8.7 percent), black (16) and Hispanic (12.5) and lower than the national unemployment rate of 8.2 percent.

The view among various Asian groups can differ significantly in terms of education and income. Indian-Americans, for example, lead all other sub-groups in both categories. Americans with Korean, Vietnamese or Chinese ancestry suffer higher poverty rates than does the general public, while those with Indian, Japanese or Filipino origins have lower rates.

And while the median household income in 2010 for the general U.S. population was nearly 50,000 dollars, for Asian-Americans the median figure was 66,000, according to the report.

Findings from the U.S. Census Bureau fall along the similar lines: between 2002 and 2007, Asian-owned businesses increased 40.4 percent – nearly twice the national rate – amounting to 1.5 million total businesses, generating more than half a trillion dollars in receipts and employing nearly three million people.

“Asian-owned businesses continued to be one of the strongest segments of our nation’s economy,” said Census Bureau Deputy Director Thomas Mesenbourg.

Asians’ success, however, has no helped alleviate racial tensions. In April, D.C. Councilman Marion Barry was caught on tape making derogatory comments about Asian-Americans and their businesses.

“We’ve got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses – those dirty shops,” Barry said, after winning his city’s Democratic primary, “They ought to go.”

Census data compiled by Pew suggests that Asian immigrants outnumbered Hispanic immigrants at some point between 2007 and 2010. In 2007, about 540,000 Hispanics – both documented and undocumented – came to the United States, while only 390,000 Asians did so.

But by 2010, about 430,000 Asians – or 36 percent of all new immigrants – arrived here, compared to about 370,000 Hispanics.

The reversal appears to have resulted primarily from a decrease in Hispanic immigration, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis, when a combination of harsh anti-immigrant legislation at the state level, tighter border security, and the slump in the U.S. economy (especially its construction industry, where many male Hispanic immigrants have found work) discouraged many would-be immigrants from crossing the border.

The Yeosu Expo 2012 exemplifies how the Republic of Korea (ROK) has made its debut on the world stage.

With one national, Ban Ki-moon, embarking on an uncontested second term as U.N. secretary general, Jim Kim Yong, a Korean American taking office in July as the new president of the World Bank, and a Korean President Judge Sang-Hyun Song of the International Criminal Court, the Expo shows the engagement of the Republic with the rest of the world.

The latter is especially significant: Seoul signed the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2000, when some sections of Washington were bitterly opposed, and Ban, then foreign minister, was forthright in his support for the court, even when running for the secretary general’s position with support from ICC-hating John Bolton as U.S. acting permanent representative.

The support for the ICC showed that Korea had emerged from the shadow of its neighbours. For years, its foreign policy outlook had been overshadowed by the U.S., China, Russia and North Korea – none of them friends of the ICC – and former occupier Japan.

Understandably, with such neighbours looming on all its horizons, South Korea found it difficult to rise above the event horizon to become an active member of the world community as befits its economic stature. It has certainly overcome that reticence now and its principled support for the ICC is emblematic.

In times past, Korea was known as the Hermit Kingdom. And in their different ways, both North and South lived up to their reputation. Both halves ignored the advice of the Washington consensus, each conducting a real time experiment in methods of development, neither of them in the early years factoring much democracy into the equations. In this real time experiment, Seoul won hands-down.

The fall of the dictatorship in the South accelerated its economic development, and demonstrated to cheerleaders for so-called free-market authoritarian regimes like Pinochet’s Chile that democracy and civil rights were entirely compatible with, indeed possibly inextricable from,increasing growth and prosperity.

The South now is one of the world’s most highly developed countries, according to the UNDP Human Development Index, where its ranking is 15th – above most European countries. Most other indicators of GDP and economic rankings put it in that ballpark as well.

Indeed, the ROK has not only joined the developed world on most financial market indices, for the last 20 years it has had universal health care – making it in some ways more advanced the world’s biggest economy.

Ironically, the World Bank and the MSCI index still count South Korea as an “emerging market”, one almost suspects in revenge for the temerity of Seoul’s government and industry in pursuing its own route to development, but also because along with the other Asian Tigers, like Taiwan, they form such a large part of of MSCI’s emerging market index that their official emergence to developed market status would leave it without customers.

Interestingly, MSCI’s objections to Korea’s “emerged” status invoke some of the very reasons that South Korea has developed on the scale that it has. That is state direction and protection of sectors such as aviation, telecommunication, utilities which have limits on foreign ownership and alleged manipulation of the currency.

Rather than confront the “Washington Consensus” directly, however, Seoul tends to use the security situation with the North as the excuse for behaviour that until a few decades ago was regarded as entirely desirable and normal for developing governments.

With bitter memories of the conditions the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed during what the rest of the world called the Asian Currency Crisis, but in Korea is known as the IMF crisis, it is understandable that South Korea does not give full faith and credit to advice from the institution. Indeed, since the crisis it has more than tripled its GDP – in spite of the IMF conditions.

There are indeed issues with the Chaebols, the interlinked business groups that dominate Korean finance and industry. They do not make for the market “transparency” so beloved by Wall Street and the IMF, but more pertinently their stranglehold on the economy can work against the interests of consumers and workers alike.

However, the South Korean government and society have the means and willingness to tackle such issues.

Additionally, those companies have become major players in the world economy, 14 of them in the world’s top 500 companies. Nor have they grown in isolation, with Samsung for example, having the majority of its business, its employees and even its shareholders overseas.

Which brings us back to the Yeosu Expo, which draws together all these strands, domestic and foreign. Ignoring the neoliberal calls for austerity across the world, Seoul has put billions of tax dollars not only into the Expo, but also into a “stimulus” package for a region that had not totally shared the prosperity of the growing economy: infrastructure investment in roads, rail, airports and associated development not only brings a short term stimulus but lays the foundations for future growth and investment in the area.

The Expo aims to “Raise the status of marine science, the new frontier for science,” and the theme “The Living Ocean and Coast” is in keeping with the traditions and history of the region.

Korea’s shipbuilding industry, the world’s biggest, has now been joined by the offshore plant industry in terms of revenue, while Korean ports are ranked fifth and its shipping industry 10th in the world.

But one would be naive to expect corporations to voluntarily sacrifice profits for ecological reasons, so another emphasis of the Expo is the need for national and international regulation and standard setting on pollution and energy efficiency, which harmonises with Korea’s attested support for global governance, whether from the U.N., the ICJ or the International Law of the Sea.

Add to that Seoul’s promotion from being a recipient of OECD aid to being a donor: in connection with Yeosu, it is stepping up its overseas development aid, targetting environmental projects above all.

The Expo does mean South Korea is joining the world with a symbolic splash.

*Ian Williams is a senior analyst at Foreign Policy In Focus, and columnist, Tribune.

By Manipadma Jena
YEOSU, South Korea, May 26 2012 (IPS)

As thousands gear up for the 2012 Earth Summit, Rio+20, scheduled to kick off in Brazil on Jun. 20, questions on the viability and adequacy of a ‘green economy’ abound.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Experts, activists and policy makers are divided on what is needed to solve the deadlock on carbon emissions agreements and tackle global warming. Some believe a complete paradigm shift, away from the neoliberal freemarket ideology, is necessary to turn the massive tide of climate change, while others believe a market-based approach to the crisis still has merit.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), believes a healthy mix of both frameworks will be the key to success.

An environmental guru whose career quite literally grew alongside the idea of sustainable development, which came into being twenty years ago at the first Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Steiner has negotiated for years within the tumultuous arena of global environmental crises.

Against the backdrop of Expo 2012, currently underway in South Korea’s port city of Yeosu, whose primary theme is the protection of the world’s oceans and marine resources in the face of rapid climate change, IPS correspondent Manipadma Jena interviewed Steiner on the various intersecting solutions to the climate crisis.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What, in your opinion, has been the state of the global environment since the 1992 Earth Summit?

A: The balance sheet in overall terms remains a negative one. We have not managed to achieve what we set out to in 1992, which is to introduce a greater degree of sustainability into the global economy.

We have more people consuming more, there is biodiversity loss, an unfolding crisis of overfishing; emissions continue to go up, the notion that we could somehow decouple resource consumption and societies’ pollution footprint has not succeeded.

Still, it is not as if we are confronted with an unsolvable dilemma. We have an extraordinary array of examples of how development can be sustainable. It is not a coincidence that the scheme of the green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication has emerged on the scene. The challenge we face, wherein also lies the importance of Rio+ 20, is: how do we scale up these good lessons, because we know we can do it.

Q: Would it be faster if change came from the top?

A: (It would be helpful) if the top didn’t stand in the way. What we (see) today is that the architects of our economic policies are sometimes of the corporate outlook. They are very often also an obstruction or a constraint on innovation because they don’t allow green technologies to emerge or new policies to be tried out.

Q: Rio+20 will likely see a discussion on expanding and strengthening UNEP’s mandate. What role do you see UNEP playing in coming years to maintain the health of oceans and livelihoods of fisher communities?

A: It is critical that we address three major drivers that are currently affecting the future health of our oceans.

Pollution is the first, not just land-based but also through the shipping trade. Over 75 percent of our world trade travels though the oceans. Pollution through new forms of resource exploitation, oil exploration, deep-sea drilling and deep-sea fishing are all affecting the functionality of oceans.

The second issue is fishing and marine biodiversity. We are mining the very stock of protein that is available to us as a growing population to a point where fish stocks are collapsing.

Governments are subsidising fisheries in the world’s oceans at 27 billion dollars a year of which we estimate that 20 billion are actually fuel subsidies. They are encouraging over-exploitation. We have to change the way we see the subsidy regime. We have to reduce industrial fishing capacity and stop illegal fishing.

We have to restock and restore fish supplies, particularly for traditional fishing communities. It’s the only way in which we can achieve both the environmental objective of maintaining fish stocks and also the social objective of maintaining the livelihood of millions of fishers.

Also we all must understand how protected areas can be a critical building block for nations. Marine protected areas account for less than one percent in terms of the coverage. We want to get to a point of having 10 percent coverage.

Q: Critics of the Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme say monetising nature and valuating forests could be used as collateral for debts by poorer countries and eventually risk being lost to creditors. What are your views?

A: Certainly the risk is there but it is diminishing as forests increasingly become a public issue and societies see forests as a national asset, economically as much as ecologically. In every society and every economy there is a temptation to exploit natural resources for short term gains. But to link the notion of payment of ecosystem services as something that might threaten forests because it could lead to the credit-collateral phenomena is like saying we should not introduce money as a way of transacting because people could use it for corruption purposes.

Does such valuation equal monetisation? Not necessarily. We in most contexts today sell our labour for money. It is the way in which we transact. Why would we draw this imaginary line around ecosystem services as not being part of this reality today?

Q: If the world does make a paradigm shift away from the current basis of calculating gross domestic product (GDP), what components should ideally go into estimating GDP?

A: We need a more sophisticated indicator. Most people today would acknowledge that the GDP growth in itself is extremely crude and not a legitimate indicator of economic and development progress, because it does not acknowledging that a society has a natural stock of wealth, alongside the services that nature provides us.

Current GDP may not disappear but it will not retain this exclusive monopoly on which a country’s economic success or failure is determined. Many governments are in fact on the verge of doing a more inclusive kind of accounting.

And finally we also need to look at how economics is often being used in terms of pricing. The price of energy used to be defined as most successful when it was cheapest. Yet we know today that renewable energy technologies will increase employment by more than 30 percent compared to the current business-as-usual model. Is it not a vital consideration to pay a few more cents per kilowatt of power, when you can create jobs for these armies of unemployed youth in our societies?

(END)

Excerpt:

Fifty-five percent of global atmospheric carbon captured by living organisms happens in the ocean.

The theme pavilion at the Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea is built over the sea to represent this year’s theme: ‘Living Oceans and Coasts’. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Between 50-71 percent of this is captured by the ocean’s vegetated “blue carbon” habitats, which cover less than 0.5 percent of the seabed, according to a 2009 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report entitled ‘Blue Carbon – The role of healthy oceans in binding carbon,’ one of the first documents to demystify the term.

These recent discoveries – of the efficiency of ocean vegetation in mitigating greenhouse gases and ocean ecosystems’ ability to store atmospheric carbon dioxide for millennia – has sent scientists running to probe the potential role of ‘blue forest’s in global efforts to lessen climate change.

An international symposium on the effects of climate change on the world’s oceans, at the Yeosu Expo 2012 being held here from May 12-Aug. 12 under the theme ‘Living Oceans and Coasts’, brought together scientists and researchers to discuss the carbon management of blue forests.

“Carbon stored and taken out of the atmosphere by coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrass and salt marsh is called blue carbon,” explained Nairobi-based Gabriel Grimsditch of the UNEP.

“Blue carbon is important because it allows investment in protection of coastal ecosystems. These ecosystems are important for more than just carbon sequestration and storage – they provide food through fish and protect coastal populations from storms and tsunamis,” he added.

Wendy Watson-Wright, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and assistant director-general of UNESCO, told IPS, “In order to make good policy we need good science. Not much about blue carbon is known outside the scientific community but it is of crucial importance that its huge benefits be known to policy makers and particularly local communities who take care of and derive their livelihood from this ecosystem.”

In a paper presented at the symposium, ‘Vegetated Coastal Habitats as Intense Carbon Sinks: Understanding and Using Blue Carbon Strategies’, Nuria Marba Bordalba, a scientific researcher at Spain’s Mediterranean Institute of Advanced Studies, claimed that there is more carbon stored in the soils of vegetated marine habitats than the scientific community had hitherto accounted for.

An important aspect of blue carbon is that most of it is found in the soil beneath the ecosystems, not in the biomass above ground. Carbon can be stored for millennia due to sea level fluctuation, as opposed to terrestrial forests that reach the carbon saturation point earlier.

But there are risks. The flip side to blue carbon is that if these ecosystems are degraded or destroyed, the huge amount of stored carbon – sometimes accumulated over millions of years – is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide due to oxidation of biomass and of the organic soil in which carbon may have been stored.

In fact, some key questions on the table at the symposium were: how vulnerable are coastal carbon sinks to climate change habitat degradation? And, if the habitat is destroyed, how do carbon stocks react?

“The rate of carbon emission is particularly high in the decade immediately after disturbance but continues as long as oxidation occurs,” Grimsditch told IPS.

“When a wetland is drained, carbon is released, first slowly, then (at an) accelerated pace,” said San Francisco-based Stephen Crooks, co-chair of the International Blue Carbon Science Working Group.

“There is now a growing realisation that we will not be able to conserve the earth’s biological diversity through the protection of critical areas alone,” said Gail Chmura, associate professor at the Canadian McGill University’s Department of Geography.

The East Asian Seas region of the world has lost 70 percent of its mangrove cover in the last 70 years. A recent publication, ‘From Ridge to Reef’, by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) warned that if this pattern continues the region will lose all its mangroves by 2030.

This would be a disastrous scenario, since the region’s coast is comprised of six large marine ecosystems and supports the livelihoods of 1.5 billion people.

“On the global scale, mangrove areas are becoming smaller or fragmented and their long-term survival is at great risk. In 1950, mainland China had 50,000 hectares of mangroves. By 2001, it was down to 22,700 hectares – a 50 percent loss,” Guanghui Lin, professor of ecology at the Centre for Earth System Science in Beijing’s Tsinghua University, told IPS.

Researchers currently estimate loss of mangroves, seagrass beds and salt marshes at between 0.7 to two percent a year, a decline driven largely by human activities such as conversion, coastal development and over harvesting.

“Ecological restoration is a critical tool for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development,” Chmura stressed.

During the last three decades China has established 34 natural mangrove conservation areas, which account for 80 percent of the total existing mangrove areas on the mainland, according to Lin.

“One of the replicable regeneration policies is a mandatory funding from the real estate sector for mangrove regeneration,” Lin said.

“The cost of seagrass restoration may be fully recovered by the total carbon dioxide captured in 50 years in societies with a carbon tax in place,” Bordalba suggested.

“Seaweed production as a climate change mitigation and adaption measure (also) holds great promise because it will (contribute to) global food, fodder fuel and pharmaceutical requirements,” said Ik Kyo Chung from the oceanography department of the Pusan National University of South Korea.

While acknowledging the considerable uncertainty surrounding estimates and a lack of concrete data, the UNEP report suggests that blue forests sequester between 114 and 328 teragrammes of carbon per year.

Luis Valdes, head of Ocean Science at IOC-UNESCO told IPS, “There are two sides to the blue carbon issue, one is the scientific aspect of how much carbon is actually sequestered, technology transfers and so on; the second facet is political – identifying and negotiating with developing countries, collaborating and funding for blue carbon projects.”

“Socialist countries in South America like Venezuela or Cuba are skeptical of blue carbon. They are often opposed to market-based solutions to climate change,” said Grimsditch.

Mexico, Senegal and Bangladesh are already trying out blue carbon sequestration through demonstration projects. Senegal is using mangroves for carbon credits and REDD+, something the UNEP is pushing in other countries’ policies too.

UNEP and GEF with Indonesia have initiated a Blue Forests Project, which seeks to standardise methodologies for carbon accounting and ecosystems valuation.

“We also need to better understand the economics of blue carbon, and whether it is possible to pay for ecosystem management through carbon credits,” said Grimsditch.

(END)

As schools of whales move to music undersea at image definitions of 6.54 million pixels on the giant ceiling mounted LED screen, 218 X 30 metres in length and width, expectations run high from the International Exposition Yeosu Korea 2012 at harbour town. The expo showcases 104 participating countries’ visions and achievements on the Expo theme: ‘The Living Ocean and Coast: Diversity of Resources and Sustainable Activities’.

The Expo is a modern marketplace where unlikely bedfellows are meeting – the private sector, usually demonised as the exploiter of natural resources for profit, and conservationists.

“The marine realm is facing multiple challenges – from over-fishing and climate change to pollution from hazardous materials. The Expo and the UN Pavilion can inspire people, business and governments to greater awareness and more decisive action,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, through UN press briefings.

Expo 2012 which opened May 11, aims to enhance the international community’s understanding of the function and value of oceans and coasts, share knowledge on sustainable use of marine environment and enhance cooperation in the sector.

An estimated 11 million and targeted 8.3 million footfalls are expected over the three months that the Expo runs.

The Expo’s second largest pavilion is a telling example of the many layers of interaction between conservationists, the public and the business sector.

“The message of One UN – a group of 24 UN organizations – is one of edu-entertainment, more on the lines of imparting information on not commonly known or ignored facts about the oceans, and the resources it provides humans,” UN Commissioner-General, 2012 Yeosu Expo, Samuel Koo told IPS.

The UN Pavilion pitches its conservationist message through the Expo theme expanded to ‘Oceans and Coasts: Connecting our Lives, Ensuring our Future, the Choice is Yours.’

The UN pavilion offers information-packed quizzes, simulated digital coasts that visitors help clean up and other exhibits that depict the wonders of marine ecosystems and the challenges of climate change and pollution.

“Like the Shanghai Expo in 2010, the Korean government has chipped in with a 50 percent or 1.5 million dollar funding partnership,” Koo tells IPS. Part of the private contributions comes from Korean Green Fund, a national level non-governmental organisation which has a track record in building environmental cooperative networks between the government, corporations, civic organizations, and individuals

“The Expo is a happening of many different actors, a stage to present national and corporate development to an international community. It is the conversation that people will begin to have when they go around and when they go home, that will be change-making,” says Achim Steiner, Executive Director UN Environment Programme (UNEP) that is co-ordinating the UN Pavilion.

“It is the informed people’s demand and their choice of new entrepreneur with an environment friendly product or technology that will ultimately drive change,” Amina Mohamed, UNEP Deputy Executive Director told IPS. “For instance the State of California in the United States is investing heavily in renewable energy infrastructure, not waiting the federal government to take the lead,” Mohamed added.

According to a UNEP report, ‘Green Economy in a Blue World’, released January 2012, there is huge potential for economic growth and poverty eradication from well-managed marine sectors.

“We have all the policies and technologies we need to sustainably manage these extraordinary assets. Yeosu 2012 can contribute towards a positive outcome at Rio+20 in June and help us build the future we want,” said Ban Ki-moon.

“We have only tapped into 5 percent of marine resources,” said Steiner. “After land, marine resources may hold the potential to sustain human kind,” said Yeosu’s Member of Korea national assembly, Kim Sung- gon at the UN Pavilion opening on May 12th.

“Ocean is the destination of everything and has enough to provide our needs if we understand its fragile nature,” said Lee Bae-yong, Chair of the Korean Presidential Council of Nation Branding.

According to information from the UN Pavilion, fish products supply over 4.2 billion people with 15 percent of average protein intake. However in 2009, fisheries supported livelihoods of 540 million or eight percent of the world population. Over 30 percent of world fish stocks are overexploited or depleted and 50 percent are fully exploited.

“While one cannot generalise among all businesses, it is undeniable that there are business concerns that are taking the long view”, Raphael P.M. Lotilla, the Executive director of Partnerships in Environmental Management for Seas of East Asia (PEMSEA), told IPS, adding that this coastal country is serious about sustainable management of its marine resources.

Underscoring his point that management of some businesses are taking on greener hues, Lotilla cites an example in the Philippines where 19 corporations led by Petron Corporation have organised the Bataan Coastal Care Foundation, Inc. which provides financial and other support to the Bataan Provincial Government’s Integrated Coastal Management Programme and oversees Bataan’s Land and Sea-Use Zoning Plan.

Another example is Thailand’s Chonburi province’s Oil Industry Environment Group, which is working to formulate an oil spill contingency plan with the national and local government, Rotilla said.

“Business is not some homogenous interest group; there are companies here at the Expo with hi-tech solutions to environmental problems and the fact that Korea chose this theme of oceans, has in fact brought all the exhibitors here, with at least a need to express, what is their contribution to the challenge of sustainable use and management of oceans. And this is as high you should put the threshold, beyond that is expecting too much,” Steiner told IPS. (END)