Cultural Diplomacy as a Policy Tool

“How can Cultural Diplomacy serve as a vehicle to enable an East Asian Community?”, this was the title of the 6th Jeju Peace Institute and Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Joint Workshop, which took place from Oct. 5 to 7 in Jeju Peace Institute, Jeju Province, ROK.

The discussions of the workshop proved to be very productive. In his keynote speech Ambassador Lee Joongyu, Chancellor of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, stressed that “Cultural Diplomacy establishes a foundation of trust and friendly feelings and has spill-over effects on other political and economic areas”. Walter Klitz, Director of the Foundation’s office in Seoul, admonished in his welcome remarks Cultural Diplomacy should not be confused with Nation Branding.

After their presentations, the speakers from Korea and overseas structured their recommendations which will serve the Korean government to formulate its Cultural Diplomacy strategy, along the following items: 1. Agenda of the Proposed Cultural Diplomacy Initiatives, 2. Agents or Organizers of the Proposed Cultural Diplomacy Initiatives, 3. Vehicles of Proposed Cultural Diplomacy Initiatives, and 4. Target Audience of the Proposed Cultural Diplomacy Initiatives.

Their detailed recommendations are as follows:

1. Agenda of the Proposed Cultural Diplomacy Initiatives

We suggest that the cultural diplomacy initiative should be designed to help educate, enhance, and sustain the relationships between the East Asian countries and cultures. The ultimate goal of the initiative is to help enable relationships between the East Asian region based on dialogue, understanding and trust. As we address the ways in which the different East Asian countries are perceived and presented in their neighboring countries, we suggest a cultural diplomacy initiative that assists in correcting mis-information that might be present and supplements partial information that might already be present. For example, in the case of South Korea, we could organize discussions about the “Korean Wave” and the implications that it has on the perception of Korea abroad. These discussions should be inter-disciplinary in nature in order to provide a more comprehensive view of the country and the countries national identity as a whole.

In addition, we feel as if cultural diplomacy can serve a role in assisting in overcoming historic conflicts that have not yet been resolved between the East Asian countries and ultimately lead to reconciliation. We believe that through humble and honest discussion and exchange about the strengths and weakness as well as the successes and failures of each of the East Asian countries, one can come closer to achieving sustainable reconciliation. We suggest that the initiative support and facilitate multi-language exchanges as well in order to support the learning of local languages in the region.

This initiative should assist in strengthening the cultural bridges as a first priority, however whenever possible should also assist the economic and political bridges between the East Asian countries, which is of course a complimentary win-win goal. Our goal would be to achieve stronger multilateral relationships based on sincere and sustainable understanding and trust.

2. Agents or Organizers of the Proposed Cultural Diplomacy Initiatives

In order to maintain as much neutrality as possible, and to achieve the maximum amount of success, we suggest that the main agent or organizer of the proposed cultural diplomacy be a non-governmental, non-profit, and non-partisan organization. This organization should then work in partnership with public sector, private sector and civil society organizations in each of the respective East Asian countries. Through these partnerships, greater neutrality will be achieved and there will be less of a risk that the cultural diplomacy initiative will be perceived as being linked to a governmental or private sector agenda.

3. Vehicles of Proposed Cultural Diplomacy Initiatives

Our suggestion for the vehicle of the proposed cultural diplomacy initiative would be to create a sustainable network of young professionals and students within the East Asian region. One suggestion was to create a structure to enable easier student exchange within the East Asian region similar to the ERASMUS program in Europe. The other suggestion was to create an East Asian Young Leaders Forum similar to that of Young Leaders Forum of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy. Such an interdisciplinary sustainable network of young leaders could serve as a very efficient and cost-effective way of creating a new platform for the high level leaders, the young leaders and civil societies in the East Asian region to come together.  These programs should be designed as interactive as possible and should be built in such a way to attract the highest level of press and media attention as possible. The choice of themes for each of the programs is very important and should address the key opportunities and challenges facing the region in contemporary times.

4.Target Audience of the Proposed Cultural Diplomacy Initiatives

We suggest that the target audience be as broad and inter-disciplinary as possible. The region in focus when we discuss “East Asia” is: ASEAN plus 3 (China, South Korea, and Japan), plus 3 India, New Zealand, Australia). The student exchange programs should include as many academic fields as possible and the young leaders network should remain inter-disciplinary and international in nature.