The task of peace-making

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WE were in Seoul last week with veteran former 30year US Congressman Dan Burton, our Co-Chairman at the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace (IAPP) for the Peace Road 2016 launching in support of the hopes for peaceful reunification of North and South Korea, the birthday anniversary of the founder of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), late Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his widow, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, and the first anniversary of the founding of the IAPP at the Korean National Assembly.

Towards the end of last year in Washington D.C, we had our last IAPP launching at the US Senate Kennedy Room, in the House of Representatives, and at a 3-day conference at the Marriot Hotel, following multiple inaugurals throughout 2016 in Northeast Asia, South Asia, London, Africa, and Central and South America.

At the Korean Parliament, we spoke of the British national anti-poverty organization OXFAM revelation that the richest one percent (1%) controls half of the world’s income scale. A few weeks ago, the report was already worse: just eight (8) men, own as much wealth as the world’s 3.6 billion people, about half of the world’s population.

OXFAM said “It is obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when 1 out of 10 people survive on less than $2 a day.”

In discussions with the hard-working, then Secretary of Social Welfare Dinky Soliman, we noted that to help reduce the huge gaps between rich and poor, perhaps a hundred nations should be mobilized and dramatically take on and even enlarge the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs pioneered by Brazil and Mexico in the 1990s, adopted by then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, expanded by President Benigno Aquino III and being continued today by President Rodrigo Duterte through his able DSWD Secretary Judy Taguiwalo in the Philippines, among only more than 25 countries.

Yes, the CCT programs to some extent help protect poor families from the impact of economic meltdowns, national disasters and other crises, ensure that children grow up healthy and stay in school, empower women and girls, and create jobs. But they only make more than just a dent in the epic battle against global poverty as grimly pictured by OXFAM.

In Seoul, we also said we should renew our call for the establishment of an Asia-wide “Asian Anti-Poverty Fund” or better still an enlarged “Global AntiPoverty Fund” or “Global Micro-Finance Fund” to help combat poverty and inequality and help lift the poorest peoples in our region and in the world.

And in our much earlier speeches at the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. and at the United Nations University in Barcelona, Spain, we suggested then that there might be merit in bringing together the best elements of both capitalism and socialism in a new applied art of governance—based on what works best for a particular society over a specific historical period considering the persistent huge gaps between rich and poor in our time.

We pointed out that the concept could also integrate the finer features of Germany’s “social market” economy and the Scandinavian welfare system, and should operate under the aegis of a liberal constitutional democracy committed to free elections, free markets, and a free press.

We earlier said that in China, the then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, hero of China’s successful modernization and opening to the world, advocated—in fact started off—a Chinese economic system neither Marxian socialism nor Adam Smith-type capitalism, but something in between or what has been called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” or “Confucian synergism” which has worked exceedingly well for China, lifting more than 500-million people from poverty, and becoming a leading economic power in the world, next only to the US President Xi Jin Ping is continuing the successful program and China is diversifying it into South Asia, Central Asia towards Europe under its 21st Century One Belt, One Road Program.

Indeed since the early years of the 20th Century, the rapid unprecedented growth of the US, the revival of Europe and Japan after World War II, the recent growth of ASEAN and the Northeast Asian powers and of a number of countries in Latin America, Africa and Oceania have lifted global growth.

But still the British OXFAM report continues to present a grim picture of the economic condition of more than fifty-percent (50%) of the population of the world.

In Seoul we further said that South Korea and the intrepid Korean people, despite war and destruction, have done it, and done it exceedingly well and in so short a time in destroying poverty, became a developed nation, and we said and pray that in God’s own time, unification of the Two Koreas might come to pass and be an exemplary power in Asia and the world.

We believe that the lingering conflict and potentially dangerous flashpoint in the Korean Peninsula with North Korea, now nuclear-armed and continuously testing improved nuclear weaponry, and perhaps even missiles launched from submarines, could over time perhaps be resolved peacefully through sustained, non-stop diplomacy, cooperation and multilateral dialogue, and direct talks between officials and civil societies of the North and South.

More than ever, we urge as well the revival of the long-postponed Six-Party talks among the US, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea which could contribute to enhancing political stability and security not only in the Korean Peninsula but in the Asia Pacific region, but most importantly, hope to lead eventually to reconciliation between the two Koreas, forswear war, and together build a strong, united prosperous first-world nation for the Korean peoples in the first half of the 21st Century, a most difficult dream but not impossible.

It had been done before in the case of the two Germanys and the two Vietnams. At some point, with history’s good fortune, and with strong, enlightened mutual will in sustained, sincere and patient even long-drawn-out negotiations, the inter-Korean family might perhaps emerge someday united in a unique, federated system under common inclusive leadership and which will surely lead to a modern prosperous first-world power in Northeast Asia.

The founders of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, over the years have built genuine goodwill in Pyongyang and among the Koreans in the North and donated their hotel and erstwhile automobile factory that they established in Pyongyang to the North Korean government and people.

Today we urge nations and societies of goodwill to contribute to the modernization and development of North Korean agriculture because of the occasional recurrence of drought and famine there and invest in the development of North Korean industries and exports and jobscreating community enterprises. The successful dynamics of North Korea’s nuclear breakthrough could perhaps be channelled as well to economic mobilization. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has his plus point as a strong leader, propelling his country to high military status.

But what I remember distinctly when I led a parliamentary mission to Pyongyang in 1990 as a younger congressman, we had a memorable, morethan-anhour meeting with Kim Jong Il’s grandfather, North Korea’s founder, President Kim Il Sung at his mountain home outside Pyongyang, and I asked him if there was any truth to press stories that he planned to attack the South.

He solemnly replied: “If we attack the South, the South will be destroyed. But we in the North will also be destroyed.” Yes, I therefore believe there is merit in continuing the most difficult but not impossible task of reconciling the two Koreas.

Kim Il Sung did more than that. Before I left Pyongyang with the then President Cory Aquino’s brother-in-law Len Oreta, the late Rep. Mike Romero, former Education Undersecretary Nestor Kalaw, and Japanese journalist Kiyoshi Wakamiya, I asked President Kim for a letter and he confirmed in writing that Pyongyang “will not provide ideological or material support for the Philippine New People’s Army.” President Kim Il Sung did even more.

On my request in more than one-hour talks, he sent in the following weeks to Manila, North Korean Vice-Premier Kim Dahl Hyun who exchanged diplomatic notes with Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus that established formal Philippine-North Korean (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – DPRK) diplomatic relations. Our trail-blazing North Korean journey was followed months later by Japan’s political leader Kanemaru and by former US President Jimmy Carter.

For lack of space, we shall report in our next column on more specific ideas in the battle against poverty and on our visit to Khartoum, Sudan, Feb. 24-26 for a historic tricontinental meeting among panels of Asia, International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean (COPPPAL) and Council of African Political Parties (CAPP) as a prelude to hopefully a larger global meeting.