As the two Koreas join hands to forge lasting peace on the peninsula, achieving security and peace is impossible without dialogue, said former Romanian President Emil Constantinescu in Seoul, urging the two sides to communicate about how the people can take ownership of society.

“It is impossible to achieve peace without dialogue. It’s important for the two leaders of North and South Korea to sit down at a table and communicate,” he said during a lecture titled “Korean Peninsula’s Peace and Vision of Unification” at Sejong University in Seoul. “They should have a common goal of securing peace, and discuss ways to make their peoples owners of society.”

Constantinescu, the third president of Romania, who served from 1996 to 2000, came to Korea to speak about peace on the invitation of a United Nations Department of Information-registered nongovernmental organization. Some 2,000 people, including foreign dignitaries, students, scholars, politicians and journalists, participated in the event on Thursday. 

The NGO said the lecture is part of its three-day event aimed at building peaceful society through "Declaration of Peace and Cessation of War" crafted by the organization and global experts in international laws.  

He is currently the president of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy Academy -- Europe’s largest international nongovernmental organization, established in 1999 for the purpose of contributing to global cultural exchanges and peace through diplomacy. 

Constantinescu presented his vision of peace on the Korean Peninsula based on his career in both communist and democratic Romania. Romania, which had the most authoritarian and oppressive brand of communism across Eastern and Central Europe, had intimate ties with North Korea during the rule of former President Nicolae Ceausescu, who was a close friend of North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il-sung.

Born in 1939 in Tighina, now in the Republic of Moldova, Constantinescu is credited with stabilizing Romania’s economy and improving social welfare as well as enhancing international relations, particularly with Hungary. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Constantinescu became a founding member and vice president of the Civic Alliance, and also the acting chairman of the Democratic Romanian Anti-Totalitarian Forum.

Despite Constantinescu’s dream and his actions to realize Romania’s democracy, unshackling the chains of the corruption that has plagued Romania since its communist years has proved difficult, a grim harbinger of what’s to come in international efforts to democratize North Korea.

The Eastern European country remains the third most corrupt nation in the European Union, according to Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index last year. Corruption in Romania exists in politics, military apparatuses, health care and private businesses, and poses concerns for foreign investors, last year’s Romania Corruption Report said. “Although there have been improvements since the fall of the communist regime in 1989, corruption remains a problem in Romania as it is especially found on all levels of public office, in the police force as well as in the judiciary system,” it added.

The last two years in Romania especially have been rocked by nationwide protests against malfeasance by the ruling Social Democrats, including attempts to decriminalize several corruption offenses for public servants via an emergency decree.

By Joel Lee (joel@heraldcorp.com)