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닛케이 심포지움 기조연설<영문>

  • 작성자 : 김진옥
  • 등록일 : 2009.05.26
  • 조회수 : 2862
I. Introduction

Chairman Sugita Ryoki,
Excellencies,
Distinguished participants,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great honor for me to be invited as a keynote speaker at the 15th International Conference on the Future of Asia. As you know, the Future of Asia has been hosted by the Nikkei Newspaper since 1995 and has become one of the most renowned international conferences in Asia. Fifteen years on, the Future of Asia has provided an excellent platform for Asian leaders to share their wisdom for a better future of our region.

Personally, I am particularly pleased to be back here, since I had the opportunity to attend this conference twice in the past. I would like to thank Chairman Sugita for once again extending to me his kind invitation to the Future of Asia. As today’s keynote speaker, I earnestly hope that I will be able to make some contribution to charting a new path for Asia’s future as other distinguished participants have done thus far.

I believe that the theme of this year’s conference is aptly entitled “Asia Confronting Challenges – Pursuit of New Frontiers.” Today, not only Asia but also the international community as a whole is in the midst of cascading crises. The global financial crisis, so-called “once-in-a-century credit tsunami,” has been spilling over into the real economy. We are also faced with the global challenge of climate change which could bring on catastrophic environmental crises and thus threaten the future of humanity.

As a major trading bloc with deep linkages to the world economy, global challenges are at once Asia’s challenges. Facing common challenges along with the rest of the world, Asia cannot afford to be by-standers. Ensuring a more prosperous and sustainable future of the world, including that of our region, calls for opening up “New Frontiers” – or paradigm shifts within and among nations.

Against this backdrop, I am pleased to have this opportunity to share with you my thoughts on Asia’s New Frontiers, with particular reference to regional integration of Northeast Asia.

II. Emergence of Northeast Asia

As major actors in the Northeast Asian region, Korea, Japan and China have closely interacted with each other, throughout the region’s long history. A number of commonalities, such as culture and moral values deriving from Confucianism, have been cultivated and shared among three countries through those exchanges. However, from the late 19th century until the mid-20th century, conflicts, colonization and brutal wars devastated the whole region and the bitter memories of the tragic history have left the trilateral relations defined as “so near and yet so far” during the second half of the 20th century.

Within a span of some two generations, the political and economic contours of Northeast Asia have changed to a great extent. As you are well aware, Northeast Asia has risen from the shadows of war and poverty and become one of the most dynamic and fastest growing regions in the world. Branded respectively as “Miracle on the Han River,” “Japan as No.1,” and “China as a World Factory,” Korea, Japan and China, one after another, have become one of the principal economic engines of the global economy. Indeed, the region has been rapidly catching up with the other two pillars of the world politics and economy, Europe and North America.

Here are the numbers. Korea, Japan and China together account for 16 per cent of the global GDP. Korea, Japan and China’s share in world trade volume is also 15 per cent and the three countries’ foreign exchange reserves amount to 3 trillion US dollars, accounting for 47 per cent of the world’s reserves.

In addition, high technology, cutting-edge products, intensifying entrepreneurship, and accelerated globalization of Northeast Asia’s most educated generation have contributed not only to the rise of the region but also to deepening economic interdependence among three countries, expanding intra-regional trade and investment.

For Korea, China is the largest trade partner and Japan is the second largest. In 2008, its trade volume with Japan and China surpassed 257 billion US dollars, which accounted for 34 per cent of Korea’s entire trade volume. For Japan, China is the largest trade partner and Korea is the third largest in trade and the second in foreign direct investment. In a word, the three economies are closely tied to one another.

Despite the growing economic interdependence among three countries and increasing transnational issues calling for collaborative action, the path to establishing and consolidating a sustainable institution for cooperation in Northeast Asia is strewn with a host of obstacles.

Low level of confidence among countries, lack of common identity in the region and conflicting views on historical issues are but a few of these obstacles.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that three countries in Northeast Asia should strive to move forward to build a common future of peace and prosperity of the region, with accurate perception of past history.

In this light, I believe that taking a close look into the European experience of integration will demonstrate to us how a history of conflicts and rivalry can be molded into cooperation to build a peaceful, prosperous and advanced society in harmony with neighbors.

III. European Experiences of Integration

Europe provides a shining example of reconciliation, confidence building, and cooperation which led eventually to integration. European experiences of regional integration have drawn attention from people of East Asia, including myself.

I have had a great personal, academic interest in issues of regional integration. I arrived in England in early 1960s for my post-graduate studies when the UK's entry into the European Economic Community had just been rejected by General Charles de Gaulle. Since then, the idea of European integration and every stage of its gradual realization have made a deep impression on me.

In the hope that Asian leaders would emulate the European experience someday when the time came, I was motivated to study the process of European integration more in-depth and to write my doctoral thesis on the European economic integration.

What are the lessons that Northeast Asia should learn from the experiences of the European integration?

We have to remember that the European integration had basically gone through two stages. The first was to prevent any future potential conflict among the member states and the second was to promote mutual development and harmony in the future.

They postulated that without the first, the second was difficult to obtain. Thus the first was viewed as a necessary condition to fulfill the second.

This European approach was manifest in the Treaty of Paris of 1951 creating the European Coal and Steel Community. Jean Monnet, the senior French civil servant, inspired the idea and Robert Schuman, then French Foreign Minister, in his famous declaration of 9 May 1950, proposed that Franco-German coal and steel production be placed under a common authority in which other European countries could participate. The ECSC came into force in July 1952.

This choice was not only economic but also political, as these two raw materials were the fundamental of industries, and at the same time, indispensable to supplying war materials. Cooperation for common control of coal and steel through the ECSC contributed to strengthening solidarity among original six member states, banishing the specter of war and eventually opening the way to European integration.

In the next phases, Europe expanded its cooperation horizons step by step by establishing the European Atomic Energy Community and European Economic Community which eventually created common market and monetary union. Cooperation in the economic sector generated a spill-over effect, enabling the corresponding cooperation in ‘high politics’ and successive enlargements of the European Communities. These processes, based on the concept of ‘functional approach,’ finally led to the birth of European Union by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993.

These developments of European integration attracted great political attention from all over the world and encouraged countries in other regions to form diverse regional groups. Asia in general and Northeast Asia in particular can not remain unaffected from this trend of regional integration.

Unlike Europe, however, Northeast Asia has yet to establish even a free trade area, the lowest minimum form of any international or regional economic integration. Northeast Asia has been fraught with security uncertainties for a long time and the remnant of the Cold War era and lack of confidence have been obstacles to any kind of integration in the region. Moreover, many scholars and politicians have remained skeptical about the possibility of Northeast Asian integration.

However, during the past decade, we in Northeast Asia began to witness some positive signs of closer cooperation among the countries in Northeast Asia.

IV. Developments of Trilateral Cooperation in Northeast Asia

It was within the framework of the so-called ASEAN plus 3 and the East Asian Community (EAS) that tripartite cooperation in Northeast Asia took shape and quickened towards institutionalization.

In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the ASEAN in 1997, the ASEAN invited Korea, Japan and China to hold the first ASEAN plus Three Summit. It was right after the Asian financial crisis started to sweep over the whole region. In the united efforts to overcome the financial crisis and deal with its aftermath, cooperation among the ASEAN, Korea, Japan, and China was accelerated and consolidated to a great extent.

Tripartite cooperation which originated as a loose form from the ASEAN plus Three has seen a marked and diversified development around the turn of the century. Today, governments of Korea, Japan and China have more than 40 trilateral consultations and dialogue channels in various realms spanning trade, investment, finance, energy, environment and education to name a just few.

Through a set of joint endeavors over the past decade, three countries came to see the crucial need to step up their cooperative momentum with a view to further promote the tripartite cooperation.

In this vein, the Korea-Japan-China summit which was held in Fukuoka last December was a milestone in the history of Northeast Asia. It was the first time in the region’s long history spanning several millennia that highest leaders of the three countries came together within the region and held their own summit. Up until then, the leaders of Korea, Japan and China always met at the margins of international or regional summit meetings.

Furthermore, leaders of three countries reached an agreement that they would continue to hold the summit on a regular basis. It was a trailblazing event which opened a new chapter of tripartite cooperation and would bring trilateral relations to an even higher level in the years to come.

In the Joint Statement for Tripartite Partnership announced at the Fukuoka meeting, the three leaders declared that the Korea- Japan-China summit would pave the way for a new era of tripartite partnership, leading to peace and sustainable development in the region.

In order to embody the vision which the three leaders came up with, we need a new paradigm for trilateral cooperation and pragmatic ability to put this vision into action.

V. Charting a Future Course of Trilateral Integration

More than half a century ago, Europe began its long journey towards integration which began with “coal” and “steel” by materializing the ideal that Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman delineated.

Europe’s functional approach, which first went for cooperation in the economic sector, still holds significant lessons for those who are contemplating cooperation and integration of their own region. However, many problems of the 21st century cannot be solved with the formulae of the past and thus today’s paradigm for regional cooperation might not be necessarily the same as that of the past century.

In modern world history, the Industrial Revolution and on-going Information-Age Revolutions have significantly expanded the economy and enriched society across the globe. Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil-fuel has been the main driving force behind the continuous economic prosperity we have enjoyed.

However, impacts of carbon dioxide emissions via fossil fuels on the environment have long been
neglected. That is why the world is embarking on a “low-carbon revolution” in the face of global challenge of climate change and environmental crisis.

Personally, I have been heavily involved in the global issue of climate change and water. Before I was called back to public service last year, I served as Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General on Climate Change together with Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and Ricardo Lagos, former President of Chile.

I also served as a Member of the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation as well as Chairman of the UN High-Level Expert Panel on Water and Disaster.

Traveling widely to urge the world leaders to proactively tackle these critical issues, I witnessed an increasing number of countries turning their focused attention toward these issues and developing appropriate responses in order to strike a balance between economic growth and environmental sustainability.

Surely, there is growing international awareness that the conventional economic approach of ‘Grow First, Clean Up Later’ should be replaced by a new approach which enables continued economic growth, prevents environmental degradation, and enhances quality of life.

Against this backdrop, I believe that “coal” and “steel” in Northeast Asia’s integration will be “Green Technology” and “Clean Energy.” Given that the three economies’ greenhouse gas emissions is even weightier than their share of the global GDP, it is more imperative for countries in Northeast Asia to change their growth paradigm from the traditionally quantity-oriented, fossil fuel-dependent one to a quality-based growth paradigm that involves utilization of energy saving technology and new, renewable energy sources.

VI. Towards Green Integration of Northeast Asia

Ladies and gentlemen,

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Korea on August 15th, 2008, President Lee Myung-bak proclaimed ‘Low Carbon, Green Growth’ as Korea’s new national vision. This was to follow his announcement a month earlier in Japan that Korea would become an early mover in the issue of climate change on which the future of humanity so critically depends.

During the 2008 G-8 Outreach Summit Meeting on Climate Change in Toyako, Hokkaido, Japan in early July, President Lee announced that Korea would like to play a bridging role between developed and developing countries, and to refine the Kyoto Protocol’s market-based mechanism as well as to make use of the Bali Roadmap in order to encourage the non-Annex 1 countries to reduce their carbon emissions voluntarily.

He also informed the G-8 leaders that Korea would launch the East Asia Climate Partnership, which will carry out climate change programs in the amount of approximately 200 million US dollars over the next 4 years, to support the countries in East Asia to make their economic growth compatible with nationally appropriate climate actions.

Early in January, Korea launched the Green New Deal policy as a part of the efforts to put the new national vision of ‘Low Carbon, Green Growth’ into policy action. The Green New Deal policy is an amalgam of a long-term policy of expanding growth potential through “green strategy” and a short-term stimulus policy of creating jobs and revitalizing economy through "new deal." We are spending 50 trillion won, roughly 40 billion US dollars, in the next 4 years, creating 960,000 jobs.

An important part of Korea's Green New Deal policy is to build fresh water infrastructure. To this end, the Korean government is energetically implementing a Four Major River Restoration Plan. It is a 14 trillion won, roughly 11 billion US dollars, multi-purpose project aiming at securing sufficient water supplies, upgrading water quality, preventing damages and destruction from natural disasters as well as creating 280,000 new jobs. The areas surrounding the four major rivers will be transformed into large ecological parks.

In order to successfully carry out the Green New Deal Policy, the Korean government announced a blueprint mapping out 17 “new engines of growth.” These include six projects in green technology industries such as renewable energies, low-carbon energies, water management, LED applications, green transportation system and state-of-the-art green city; and another six in state-of-the-art fusion technology industries including IT fusion system, robot applications, new materials and nano fusion, bio-medicine, and high value-added food industry. An additional five projects finally make up the high value-added industries which are global healthcare, global education services, green financing, contents and software, and MICE and the tourism industry.

I strongly believe that the most important factor of production in the quality-oriented growth paradigm is technology, innovation and new ideas. Technology will play a major role in sustaining green growth in Korea in the future.

With the expectation that these industries will drive the national economy now and over the next few decades, the Korean government plans to induce private sector’s active participation in these industries by linking them with the “Green New Deal.”

Through the new paradigm of ‘Low-Carbon Green Growth,’ Korea is hoping to catch three birds with one stone. These birds are, so to speak, creating new engines of growth returning to the higher growth path, while ensuring environmental and climatic sustainability, and actively contributing to the process of international negotiations to fight against global warming.

Japan and China share with Korea the same views on the perils of climate change and the potential benefits of a low-carbon society.

Even before the Japanese government presented the “Innovation of Green Economy and Society” plan last April, Japan has been actively introducing various domestic measures, including the “Cool Biz” campaign, and announced international initiatives such as “Cool Earth 50” and “Clean Asia Initiative” to combat climate change and shift to a low-carbon economy.

China, one of the largest energy consumers and fastest growing economies in the world, is no exception. The Chinese government has set various targets regarding energy efficiency in its Resource Saving Society Initiative and National Climate Change Program.

However, in an era of accelerated connectedness, we are reminded constantly of the necessity of a shared vision and policy coordination among three countries. Every single issue that we confront today and every single policy we are implementing is affected by changes that occur beyond our domestic controls and national boundaries. In particular, climate change is one of the best examples of external diseconomies on a global scale. How to internalize the external diseconomies is the major task that every nation on earth is currently faced with and in the absence of united resolve, will never be tackled successfully.

When Korea, Japan and China agree on the common vision of Green Growth and closely collaborate, all domestic policies and actions will have a powerful synergy effect. The importance of tripartite cooperation in this field cannot be overemphasized. This is why Korea, Japan and China as a major climate subset of the world have to cooperate closely to find the ways to turn climate danger into growth opportunity.

In this regard, I believe that it is worth considering promotion of low-carbon green growth as one of the priorities for regional cooperation and accordingly, creation of channels for dialogue and consultation in the form of a Northeast Asia Green Growth Network.

With Korea, Japan and China sharing the common goal of low-carbon green growth, the Northeast Asia Green Growth Network will be an excellent mechanism where policymakers and experts of three countries can gather and explore areas of green cooperation. Development of “Green Technology” and “Clean Energy” should be one of the key objectives of green cooperation.

Additionally, the three countries will be able to utilize the Network to work together and share experiences in areas such as green urban planning, renewable energy, forest management and water issues.

In particular, trilateral cooperation in water issues should be given a serious consideration to prepare for the coming century of water as “blue gold.” As securing access to safe water and effectively responding to water-related disasters are gaining significance on the global agenda, I am convinced that it would be meaningful to pursue tripartite cooperation on water through various fora such as the Northeast Asia Green Growth Network.

The Network can, of course, be extended to the ASEAN countries, Mongolia and further beyond. Until now, the urgency of taking low-carbon action is not widely recognized in those countries as much as in three Northeast Asian countries, each of which belongs to a group of 10 major carbon economies in the world. However, I am confident that in the very near future the ASEAN and other developing countries in Asia will tackle this issue even more seriously and play a major part in regional efforts to realize the vision of Low Carbon Green Growth.

Once areas of cooperation are agreed among the three countries, we should encourage the business and the private sector as well as the academia to invest in green technologies and clean energy and provide necessary support for them.

By doing so, Northeast Asia’s best and brightest can become "Green Pioneers" and pave the way for new discoveries and for qualitative growth in the world.

VII. Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen,

We stand at the critical juncture in the history of mankind. In a world marked by unprecedented progress but also by equally pervasive threats and challenges, we must not be afraid of crises.

Indeed, the word crisis (危機) in Chinese characters is composed of two meanings; peril(危險) and opportunity(機會). Faced with the global economic crisis and the climate crisis, we must do our utmost to turn those economic and environmental perils into opportunities. And our answer to those challenges should be a paradigm shift towards Green Growth at the national level and towards Green Integration at the regional level.

Like Korea’s ‘Low-Carbon Green Growth’ vision, ‘Green Integration’ can accomplish several goals: enhancing cooperation and prosperity in Northeast Asia, contributing to the global efforts to combat climate change, and promoting a new model for sustainable development and regional cooperation that other parts of the world will follow.

I sincerely hope that Korea, Japan, and China will embark on a pioneering effort to explore the New Frontier of tripartite cooperation towards Green Integration and, in doing so, present viable solutions to the challenges confronting Asia and to a road map for a better Future of Asia.

Thank you.