Special Lecture with the Mayor of Seoul, Park Won Soon

Park Won Soon will speak on ‘Easing Tensions and Building Peace on the Korean Peninsula’
This special Asian Studies Centre Lecture is convened by Professor Rosemary Foot and co-hosted with the Blavatnik School of Government, and in collaboration with the Oxford University Korea Society.

Registration is required: mayorpark.eventbrite.co.uk.

The Korean peninsula is entrapped in a never-ending arms race, with the North continuing to expand its nuclear capacity and the South arming itself to counter the North. Mayor Park asks how can we break this vicious cycle and build peace on the Korean Peninsula? He argues that what is needed is a ‘grand transition’, where the North and the South lead an international dialogue for stability and economic cooperation, their synergy stretching far beyond the Korean peninsula to embrace regional security in East Asia. Mayor Park also argues that the European peacebuilding process provides a useful example of what can be achieved.

Park Won Soon was elected as the Mayor of Seoul in October 2011. He was reelected for a second term in June 2014. Mayor Park majored in history at Dankook University in 1979, passed the Bar Examination in 1980, and studied law at the London School of Economics in 1991-92. He worked for many years as a human rights lawyer and played a key role in Korea’s democracy and human rights movement. Mayor Park founded the Beautiful Foundation to spread a culture of philanthropy in Korea, and he founded the Hope Institute, a private think tank, to promote social innovation in Korea.