UPF: Inter-Korean Peace - Introduction

This September 24, 2012 NASA Earth Observatory satellite photograph shows the level of development at that time in North Korea with a small amount of light discernible only in Pyongyang. The boxed area shows that even lights onboard fishing vessels were more numerous. We hope that significantly greater development exists today.

Genie Kagawa: Hello everyone, we appreciate all the enthusiastic responses we have received about our Peace Talks webinar series and all your encouraging feedback. This week’s Peace Talk webinar is special and will focus on an important and timely topic. It is the Prospects for Peace on the Korean Peninsula in Light of Recent Developments. We are privileged today to have expert specialists on this topic as panelists — Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, Dr. Alexandre Mansourov and Ambassador Tae-ik Chung. The panelists will speak for seven minutes to address the overall topic, followed by questions and answers. Once they finish their statements, the audience’s questions will be presented to the panelists. Translation will be offered in French, Korean, Spanish and Russian.

Thomas Walsh: Good morning to our audience and viewers. Our topic focuses on the Korean Peninsula. It has been an area of a lot of interest recently, one being the recent Covid crisis which has affected many of our countries. South Korea has been a poster child of good governance during this crisis. We also had the disappearance of Kim Jong-un for a number of weeks, which created a lot of discussion and chatter about succession issues, stability on the peninsula and future prospects for peace. Also South Korea recently held elections, with a strong showing by Moon Jae-in. We are interested to know the implications of that. The growing tensions between the US and China that are growing out of the Covid crisis… We will discuss a number of factors. We are gathering on the significant anniversary of V. E. Day (Victory in Europe), which the World War II Allies, at least Europe and the United States, celebrate on May 8. Russia celebrates it on May 9. This reminds us of a major historical conflict of huge, enormous proportions.