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Northeast Asia Peace Initiative
Y.D. Kim: Love and Mercy as Forces of Change
Written by Yun Duk Kim, Government Minister, Republic of Korea
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Humankind has always dreamed of a happy, prosperous life in a free and righteous society. Despite such dreams, however, humanity has been suffering from minor and major wars, disputes, and conflicts. In the twentieth century, we lived through World Wars I and II as well as so many other confrontations and complications that prevented us from enjoying peace. So we all wished for the twenty-first century to be an era in which humanity can prosper and share happiness together.
Nevertheless, our wish came down together with the giant World Trade Center in New York, destroyed by terrorism in the very first year of the twenty-first century.
Even now, there are continuous disputes among people of different races, ideas, religions, and regions. Terrorism is rampant in many areas, centered on the Middle East. Hatred, conflict, and hostility deepen as people tremble in fear of sudden attacks of terror and nuclear warheads. Furthermore, people in developing areas, especially in Africa, are being violently abused or treated like animals in forced concentration camps by their tyrannical governments. Only people who have experienced the brutality and relentlessness of war can truly understand the preciousness of freedom and peace.
The Korean people have suffered an immense amount of pain in our past, and we even had to fight our own people during the miserable 6.25 [Korean] War. Also, our land and people are still divided into two, as a separated nation. Through our unfortunate history, I cannot see how the ongoing acts of war and terrorism can be justified. I believe we must put an end to this era of cruel violence with the help of the loving people around the world who desperately wish for peace. I hope for a new history and new civilization that dignify life and turn confrontation into harmony, hatred into love, disunity into tolerance and unity, and war into peace.
A historian once said that history is an empty sack that can stand up straight only after someone fills it with something. An empty sack cannot stand by itself. Now it is in our hands to fill the sack in the best interests of humanity. As a human community, our wish is to put an end to chaos, disorder, and struggle and turn them into a future of love and forgiveness.
The greatest force that can change this world is not physical power, a strong economy, or weapons, but acts of shining love and mercy. War and terrorism cannot soothe hatred. A war will induce a bigger war, hatred will beget bigger hatred, and we will find ourselves living in a more frightening world.
Let the power and ability of women bring about peace and light to this world. Women carry life through pregnancy, and we nurture that life with self-sacrifice and love. Women harvest love, and God exists, indeed, where love is.
Women, let us be dandelion seeds and spread ourselves around the world to cover whatever is tainted and make a world of beauty, warmth, brotherhood and sisterhood, and family spirit. Beginning as CEOs who administer the happiness and the success of a family, namely a mom CEO, let us become CEOs who manage the world and whose names sparkle in history. Let us become thinkers who design the future life of humanity, reformers who straighten out the chaos and corruption in our society, and doers who share and implement the values of freedom, peace, human rights, life, and a sustainable environment in order to bring stability to the world.
Like the Irish women who put on uniforms while their husbands slept and fired roses from their rifles towards English territory signaling their desires for a peaceful end to the war between England and Ireland, let us carry roses in our skirts and go to countries at war and talk about the cruelty and brutality of wars to the leaders who declared war. I firmly believe that the women leaders around the world are capable of achieving the peace that has not been attained before. They can build a world without war when they have the passion and the tears to persuade the leaders of war.
Let us as women show our potential and make this world beautiful and warm. Let us ignite the flame of life, the bright red candle that glows and illuminates life on earth!
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