Peace and Prosperity for World

By Yoon Seong-hoon

Global Student Reporter

When I went to Finland as an exchange student in January 2006, I met with a new world. It was not just Helsinki, the capital city of Finland, but the European Union.

Most of the exchange students there were from other European countries. They, the Europeans, hanged out together, having a party at least once a week. I was eager to mingle with them, rather than be a wallflower in their exciting parties.

It was a fresh experience for me. In Korea, I rarely mingled with people from other Asian countries. But here in the plain capital city of Finland, the European friends enjoyed themselves having parties and calling each other “my friend.”

It seemed that they were saying “we are one” in the name of EU. From then on, I had some fantasies about united countries and started having thoughts of a united Asia. We Asians would also feel closer to each other in the name of an Asian Union, I thought.

After I came back to Korea, I joined a school club in which members study world affairs together. I held a seminar last semester on a plan of the EU in 2008, the Union for the Mediterranean, initiated by France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, then the EU president.

Its motive was for the EU to have stronger ties with the Mediterranean countries, where cheap labor and wanted resources are. The EU would get cost leadership using cheap labor there, and it was good for the Mediterranean countries that would get more investments from the EU and have more local people employed.

It was another beautiful story of economic union, which could bring peace and prosperity to the region by satisfying the interests of both sides. It’s true that there are problems within the European Union.

According to a survey conducted by Eurobarometer in 2006, Europe is evenly divided between support for and opposition to the EU. No matter how many people are satisfied with the economic unity, the European Union has brought peace and prosperity to Europe.

The EU might be able to deliver it to its neighbors in the Mediterranean areas through the Union for the Mediterranean, hopefully greatly reducing tensions in the Middle East. It is idealistic rather than realistic, but better tried than left as a fantasy.

The thought lead to my first question at the seminar: “Would it be possible to build a union as strong as the EU in Asia?” There is ASEAN Plus Three, comprised of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the three East Asian countries of China, South Korea, and Japan.

Would it be possible for the ASEAN Plus Three to develop itself as a strong union block? Someone asked a similar question: “If the answer to your question is ‘Yes,’ wouldn’t there be any conflicts arising between those big economic groups such as the EU or ASEAN plus three?”

If conflict arises between those big economic blocks, it could be a huge problem. My last question was “What would be the way to bring peace and prosperity to every country on Earth without conflict?” A person in the seminar brought up an interesting theory, naming it “Alien theory.”

He said, if aliens try to attack Earth, all the nations will be united against the enemy. It sounds like a joke, but it could be a scenario as real and serious as the one the world faces now.

The aliens can be regarded as “natural disasters” such as rising sea levels or a water shortage crisis. Countries will lose some interests in keeping trade surpluses, or some countries will lose incentives to attack neighbors when much more severe and harsher problems face all of them.

If the crises the world faces helps countries cooperate, it would be God’s blessing in disguise. One thing is certain: We have no time to lose to prepare ourselves against the crisis in the near future.

okjacky@empal.com

[출처 : 코리아타임스]