Workshop: Historical Reconciliation & the Future of North East Asia

East Asia suffers from what President Park Geun-hye calls "Asia's Paradox": the discrepancy between the growing economic interdependence in the region on the one hand and the relatively underdeveloped political and security cooperation on the other. Moreover, Northeast Asia currently lacks mechanisms for effective multilateral cooperation to deal with inter-state conflicts. One of the reasons why several inter-state conflicts in the region persist is the lack of reconciliation between the relevant countries. 

Against this backdrop, the 9th Joint Workshop of the Jeju Peace Institute (JPI) and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) provided experts with an opportunity to review the achievements of the German reconciliation process and to draw lessons from it for the future of North East Asia.

Professor Somei Kobayashi of Kyunghee University talked about the improvement of relations between South Korean and Japan, while Dr. Xiaobo Chu of Peking University focused on the history of relations between China and South Korea. "Theoretical approaches to historical reconciliations in East Asia" was the topic of Professor Woondo Choi's presentation, who is a research fellow at the Northeast Asia History Foundation.

Professor Hermann Wentker heads the Institute of Contemporary History in Berlin and spoke about Germany's reconciliation with its former enemies after 1945 before Dr. Dagmar Pruin explained the role and achievements of NGOs in German reconciliation. She is executive director of "Action Reconciliation - Service for Peace" as well as director of "Germany Close Up". The workshop closed with Professor Stefan Garsztecki's lecture on "Regional cooperation for reconciliation: Germany and its Eastern neighbours in the process of European Integration".

JoongAng Daily interviewed Dr. Pruin and Prof. Garsztecki the following day in Seoul about their experiences.