President Park Geun-hye on Wednesday underscored the need for a multinational security mechanism in East Asia, saying it would help bring about not only a unification of the Korean Peninsula but also lasting peace and stability in the region.

In her keynote speech to the Seoul Defense Dialogue, she pointed to what she called the Asian paradox as a threat to global peace -- regional instability stemming from the perennial standoff on the peninsula and persistent territorial and historical spats between neighbors, despite growing economic interdependence.

“There have been efforts to promote closer exchanges among the countries in the region with a focus on the economy, but still not in the making is a mechanism for security cooperation that could help tackle tension and establish peace and stability,” Park said.

“Today we cannot achieve peace and stability with the efforts of some countries, but only through international cooperation built on trust.” 

In a bid to resolve the challenges, Seoul has been seeking to foster global partnerships, chiefly on emerging unconventional security issues such as climate change, health, nuclear nonproliferation and antiterrorism. The drive is in line with its Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative, a long-term confidence-building process among neighbors including North Korea, envisioned to deal first with nonpolitical matters and ultimately progress to hard security cooperation.

But the division of the peninsula and persistent cross-border threats remain the biggest stumbling block, highlighted once again by a recent flare-up in tension.

“A unification of the two Koreas will mark a fundamental solution to North Korea’s nuclear and human rights problems, end the history of the Cold War in the 20th century and provide a groundbreaking growth engine for global prosperity by making it possible to link Northeast Asia and Eurasia,” Park added, calling for multinational security cooperation to realize the vision. 

Launched by the Defense Ministry in 2012, the vice-ministerial conference brought together Some 250 senior defense policymakers, military executives and academics from around 30 countries and four international agencies for a three-day run.

Under the theme, “70 years of the Post-WWII Era and the Division of Korea,” the participants will explore the prospect of the peninsula’s unification and its potential impact on regional security, as well as unabated historical and territorial tensions in Northeast Asia and ways to defuse them.

They are also forecast to analyze emerging cybersecurity challenges and the outlook for global cooperation, while addressing constant regional maritime conflicts such as over islands in the East China and South China Seas, exclusive economic zones, continental shelf delineation, and air defense zones.

“Reunification would set the conditions for an enduring peace on the peninsula by removing a source of potential regional conflict,” David Helvey, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, said in a speech summary released ahead of the event.

“(Following Korean reunification) the emerging security architecture might be a hybrid mechanism designed to promote cooperative solutions to nontraditional or transnational threats existing alongside/on top of a more traditional, self-help and alliance-based architecture for managing hard security adapted to the new realities of Northeast Asian security dynamics.” 

Lim Jong-in, President Park Geun-hye’s special adviser on security and dean of Korean University’s Graduate School of Information Security, stressed the rising need for states to beef up their cybersecurity capabilities while fostering international cooperation for better responses.

“As one of the most serious threats that most states face, cyberthreats are getting more sophisticated and targeted,” he said.

“To deter the rapid growth of cyberthreats, it is important for each state to build its own capacities and yet cooperate internationally.”

Other attendees include Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yong, former Japanese Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto, Edmond Mulet, assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations at the U.N.; and Martin Libicki, a professor at the RAND Graduate School in the U.S. Han Min-koo, Seoul’s defense minister, also delivered an address.

Three special sessions are scheduled to take place to discuss defense cooperation for global health security, violent extremism, and nuclear nonproliferation, respectively. On the sidelines, working-level officials from the 30 countries plan to hold separate talks on cybersecurity, while another meeting on Northeast Asia will bring together six countries -- South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and Mongolia.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)