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J. Rogers: Address to Summit 2022, Session III
Written by Jim Rogers, Senior Advisor, UPF International; Chairman of Beeland Interests, Inc.
Friday, August 12, 2022
Address to Summit 2022 and Leadership Conference,
Seoul, Korea, August 11-15, 2022
I am delighted to be here once again. Before I start, I do want to say what happened to Mr. Abe in Japan, to the ex-prime minister, was a tragedy for all of us. There is never an excuse to murder someone. Never, ever. And yet that’s what happened. I mourn the loss and I hope all of you do too. I hope that we do not have murder, assassination, any other attempts like that to change history and to change the future of the world.
I also am always astonished when I come to find out Rev. Moon and Mother Moon are probably the only people in the world who could get together a lot of people in the name of peace. A lot of people talk about it, but Rev. Moon and Mother Moon have done it. Here we all are, hundreds of people from all over the world, but they’ve done it more than once. This is not the first time this has happened, and it will not be the last time. So they act on it and get it done.
I was a little bit astonished this week in Korea that a Korean politician actually acted and said no. We all have to say no if we’re really going to get peace and change the world. We had an American politician who went to Taiwan and poked the Chinese in the eye. The Chinese said, don’t do it. She did it anyway.
She came here to Seoul and the President of Korea, Mr. Yoon, said, I will not see you. I don’t want to be part of your war. I don’t want to be part of your poke, poke, poke. So, I hope that all of us have the strength and courage to say, no, we’re not going to have a war. We’re going to change things.
I heard a lot of people today talk about deterrence. Sure, deterrence is great, but what is even better is engagement. If we engage with other people, if we don’t shoot ex-prime ministers, if we talk to them, we can probably change the world. The North Koreans say they want to talk to us. We say we want to talk to them, but nobody will do it. Mr. Yoon did it, started doing it anyway. Mr. Trump started doing it.
I hope that all of us can act instead of just talking about it. And since we’re talking about Korea, if a Martian landed in Korea and looked around, he would say, what is this? You all speak the same language. You all use the same chopsticks. You all eat the same rice. You have the same ancestors. Five hundred years ago, on the Korean peninsula a Korean general defeated an invading foreign army. They were all Koreans. The battlefield happened to be in what is now North Korea. But nobody said, wait a minute, this is someplace else. This is going to be North Korea someday. The soldiers all got together in what is now North Korea and defeated an invading army. Korea became and remained independent 500 years ago. And nobody was fighting about whether it was north or south.
They were fighting because we were all Koreans. We all had the same ancestors. And Koreans today have the same ancestors. This can be done and should be done. And if it is done, or when it is done, this peninsula can be the single most exciting place in the world.
If you look at the globe, you will see there are 80 million people on the Chinese border. It could be an astonishing economy and society. The Russians want it. Many Chinese want it. Many people in North Korea want it. Many people in South Korea want it. The Japanese are against it, but almost everybody else wants it. So, if the South Koreans and the North Koreans say, listen, we don’t want this madness anymore. We don’t want to spend billions of US. dollars and Korean won on defense every year. You know how much North Korea spends on defense? You know how much South Korea spends on defense? That is billions and billions and billions of won. If you had that won, you could spend it on schools or highways or hospitals or who knows what else.
Hanbondo, the Korean Peninsula, can be and will be for 10 or 20 years, the most exciting place in the world once you stop spending all that. And by the way, I’m an American. We’re spending a lot, too, on the Korean peninsula. Can you imagine if we had all of that money that we could spend on other things?
This will be an extremely exciting place. In the north, they have a lot of labor, educated, disciplined labor, cheap labor, and lots of natural resources. In the south, you have unbelievable management ability. You have unbelievable capital-raising ability. You put those two together, the 80 million people on the Chinese border. What an exciting and wonderful country this could be with lots of extra money.
I don’t use the word unification because for some reason that scares some people in South Korea. I much prefer to say open Korea. If you open the DMZ, can you imagine what an unbelievably exciting country, an exciting peninsula, this is going to be? Korea has been here for a few thousand years. Once you open the DMZ, Korea will figure out what to do. Don’t worry. The Korean people will solve this problem, and we will have peace again and the Korean Peninsula will be an extremely exciting place and an unbelievably prosperous place. And all of you can come here and sing and dance and buy stocks or open businesses or whatever you want to do, because this will be the most exciting, peaceful place in the world. I hope there comes a time when we can have this conference a few kilometers north of here, and we can all sing and dance with other Koreans and other citizens of the world. Thank you.
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