Peace Road Initiative

The Peace Road and the World Peace Road Foundation are global goodwill projects of the Universal Peace Federation. The project dates back to 1981, when the late Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon proposed an international highway that will physically connect all people of the world. The Peace Road initiative promotes two projects in particular: an undersea tunnel between Korea and Japan, and the Bering Strait Project to connect Alaska and Siberia.

Until today, there has never been a road or highway specifically conceived and built as a highway to world peace. The International Peace Highway epitomizes Rev. Moon’s conviction that humanity is one family under God and that if people could meet each other in daily life, through culture, trade, and travel, the historic fears and misunderstandings that often divide us from our closest neighbors would break down.

• Peace Road Programs and Reports
  
• Backgrounder on the Peace Road
• History of the Peace Road Initiative

BACKGROUNDER

Trade routes and infrastructure have been vital to the growth and stability of civilizations since the dawn of human history. Until roughly 9,000 BCE, a land bridge connected Siberia and Alaska, allowing humans to cross from Afro-Eurasia into the Americas. Around 114 BCE, the Han Dynasty of China expanded its Central Asian trade network, creating the “Silk Road,” which contributed to the economic and cultural interconnectedness of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania for millennia thereafter. The Romans built a massive network of roads throughout their Empire, connecting Western Europe to the Middle East and North Africa, many of which are still in use today, after thousands of years. President Dwight Eisenhower, a former general, concerned about the United States’ ability to mobilize in the face of military attack, advocated for the building of the interstate highway system, which was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. In 1994, the Channel Tunnel or “Chunnel,” was completed, creating the first-ever fixed link between the island of Great Britain and continental Europe. In 2013, the People’s Republic of China launched the Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious global development involving infrastructure development and investments in 152 countries.

The vision of the Peace Road Initiative goes beyond the materialistic desire for the economic and political benefits of an international road, and champions the spiritual dimension, which aims to tear down the walls that have historically divided us – racism and cultural differences, prejudice and fear – and bring humankind together as one family under God.

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HISTORY OF THE PEACE ROAD INITIATIVE

The Peace Road Initiative seeks to continue this legacy with two major projects: the Bering Strait project, which will reconnect the Americas to the Eurasian continent for the first time in eleven thousand years; and the Korea-Japan tunnel, which will unite two nations, which once were enemies, but which now share a strong economic and political bond.

1981: UPF founders Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon and Rev. Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon suggested the construction of a highway between Korea and Japan, two former enemy nations, at an international science conference in Seoul.

2005: At the UPF Inauguration, the founders began advocating for the building of a “Peace Tunnel” across the Bering Strait, to connect North America and Asia. Rev. Sun Myung Moon made the following statement:

“This tunnel can help make the world a single community at last…Think of how much money the world is wasting on war. The time has come for nations to work together, pool their resources and, as the prophet Isaiah taught, beat our swords into plowshares and pruning hooks.”

2008: The Foundation for Peace and Unification (FPU) was established, which sponsors an international thesis competition on the topic, “The Significance of the Bering Strait Project and the Korea-Japan Tunnel Project from a Providential Viewpoint and Ways to Pursue These Two Projects.”

2009: FPU sponsored the Bering Strait International Ideas Competition. The first-place winner is submitted by Taller 301, an architecture firm based in Bogota, Colombia. They propose the creation of a series of artificial islands by dredging and land reclamation at the narrowest point between the Chukchi Peninsula, Russia and the Cape of Prince of Wales, Alaska — a distance of about 52 miles.

2012: The first Peace Road Forum was held.

2014: The World Peace Tunnel Foundation (WPTF) established the Peace Road Academy, for university students.

2015: The Peace Road initiative began with an event at Las Vegas, Nevada, followed by programs throughout the world along the course of the proposed international highway. Teams of participants walked, bicycled and drove, with all teams converging in the Korean town of Imjingak, on the 38^th parallel.