Expert talk on North Korean nuclear issues at Jeju National University

Two foreign nuclear experts had discussions with students and professors from Jeju National University on Oct. 31. 

During the event, short presentations were made by two participating experts, followed by lively Q & A from the floor; Mr. Joel Wit, senior fellow at the U.S –Korea Institute of Johns Hopkins University and Prof. Dr. Hans Gaertner, Director of the Austrian Institute for International Affairs.

Critically analyzing the US approach under Obama administration, Mr. Wit called for launching soon a new policy which can be named “strong diplomacy” to tackle the North Korean issues. He sees that the current policy would eventually lead to a tacit acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear state, which consequences would not serve our national interests at all.

As for Prof. Heinz Gärtner, he proposed that the North Korean nuclear issues need to be dealt with from the liberal internationalist perspective, which believes that “the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would lower the likelihood of war and pull and push also non-democracies in the new system because they would benefit from it.

The event was co-organized by the Institute for Peace Studies at jeju National University and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Korea Office (FNF). It was the first joint initiative between the two institutions to provide students in Jeju with more opportunities to discuss various important topics with foreign scholars.