by Frances Flannery
The following essay records some reflections from my visit to the Korean peninsula during the first week of September, 2023. I had been invited by the non-profit organization Okedongmu Children in Korea to represent BioEarth and the One Billion for Peace Pledge at several events, including a Peace Education conference in Seoul and a roundtable near the DMZ on Climate Change and Peacebuilding, which were funded by the South Korean government.
I jotted down these thoughts at the time, but I did not know how, when, or even if I should publish them. Because of my personal family history, which was profoundly shaped by wars on the Korean peninsula, this trip was so impactful and powerful for me personally that I felt the need to process this privately.
However, I have decided to share these reflections now on the ways in which climate crisis offers new possibilities for peacebuilding in the conflict-affected Korean peninsula because of the quickly evolving scope and implications of the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war, which has the serious potential to escalate into a regional and then a world war. Looking back now, I am struck with profound sadness that October 7 occurred exactly one month after my hopeful day in the DMZ, the so-called demilitarized zone between the two Koreas.
What also gives me hope, however, is that the One Billion for Peace Movement has grown in this year to almost 1.2 million signatories on six continents, and that we recently put into action the theory of change that I discuss in this essay on the Koreas. (Please see www.bioearth.org for updates on our efforts to prevent the sale of the Congo River Basin for oil drilling, a likely tipping point for the global climate system that would prevent our ability to secure a livable future for humanity).
At this hingepoint of history, in which the ability of humankind to secure a survivable future is at risk, we must do all we can to prevent war. We must change the prevailing models of international negotiation and work together as never before to arrive at shared, equitable solutions to the climate crisis. In reality, we have no choice but to do so.
Climate change knows no borders.
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On September 7, 2023, I spent the day near the DMZ, the neutral zone on the border between North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) and South Korea (the Republic of Korea or ROK). The day began with a drive to a CCZ (Civilian Control Zone) checkpoint where military guards perused my passport, face, and intentions, followed by a climb up a steep walkway lined by Rose of Sharon plants, symbolic of the tenacity and beauty of the South Korean people. At the top, our Korean hosts led me and two international colleagues who work on difficult peace processes, Dr. Duncan Morrow from Northern Ireland and Dr. Katerina Antoniou from Cyprus, to an observation platform from which we could take in an expansive view of North Korea, located across a thin river, a neutral zone of the Han River estuary, that was maybe a hundred yards wide.
We gazed at small white houses and their gardens dotted all along the riverbank, with lush, rolling mountains behind. It was lovely, peaceful looking, and not at all what I was expecting. The sunlight played on the river between the two nations, and I watched the water flow where it wanted to go, ignoring the imaginary dotted line down its middle. The birds also flew from one side of the river to the other side, unaware that they were switching allegiances between nations. In the middle of the river, we saw a tiny island that is considered “neutral” because it doesn’t belong to either country. A Korean friend told us a story about how, in a recent flood, a cow ended up stranded on that island and no one knew what to do at first. The farmers wanted to rescue the cow, but the rescue party could not involve any help from the military stationed all around us.
Looking at this tiny, gentle river that I could easily swim across, except for the fact that I’d be shot by snipers, I fully and completely took in how utterly imaginary the borders are that we draw between nations, yet how very real they are, simply because humans make them real. I also understood in a new way the pain felt by our hosts, the staff of the inspiring nonprofit organization Okedongmu Children in Korea. They want to get aid to children in North Korea, but they have been stopped from doing so for years and years. Now that I saw how close North Korea really was, so that I could even see the little yards of the houses, located across the invisible border that was impossible to cross, my heart ached too.
After this observation tower and orientation, we next spent some time nearby at a friend’s house, which was situated on the South Korean side of that tiny river. We sat at the kitchen table in his tastefully designed home, sipping coffee, listening to opera, while butterflies fluttered in his garden outside the windows. Somehow, this was the most mind-blowing part of my entire visit, because of the sheer normality of it. Everywhere that we gazed outside of his windows we could see across the river, from the far left to the far right, and the entire beautiful panorama of green mountains was all North Korea. It was my colleague and new friend Dr. Morrow who said it best, after we stepped outside into the lovely garden. He said, softly, “This is the strangest thing, to be sitting in the shadow of one of the greatest nuclear threats in the world, and to have it all be so peaceful.”
From there we traveled to Gyodong Island, which lies beyond the civilian control line, for an authentic Korean lunch with our Korean friends from Okedongmu (Side note: This was legitimately the best tofu and kimchee I have ever had in my life).
After lunch, we participated in a roundtable on Climate Crisis Responses and Peacebuilding, sponsored by the Incheon Metropolitan City Office of Education. There were many important insights we shared with the participants and staff, but first they wisely wanted to know how we felt about being near the DMZ and seeing North Korea. That is when I learned that my other new friend also had felt what I was feeling that day. When it was Dr. Antoniou’s turn, she simply wept. She also made comments, but honestly it was her tears that spoke the loudest, because we all wanted to weep (so then many of us did). It was just impossible to capture otherwise the pain we all felt at being so close to North Korea, and so divided.
Just the day before, the three of us scholars had joined many leading Korean intellectuals, leaders, and decision makers, as well as the Irish Ambassador to Korea, in the 2023 Korea Global Forum for Peace Education: International Conflict and Peacebuilding, funded by the South Korean Ministry of the Interior and Security. We had come at the invitation of Okedongmu Children in Korea (OKCK).
Pictured from left to right, Frances Flannery (Co-Founder, BioEarth), Dong Jin Kim (Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), Yong Chul Chung (Professor, Sogang University). Partially pictured: Jung Pil Lee (Director, Energy & Climate Policy Institute for Just Transition). At the 2023 Korea Global Forum for Peace Education. Photo by Dr. Katerina Antoniou, September 6, 2023.
I spoke on the imminent and devastating impacts of climate change and on the ways in which climate crisis is a gamechanger for peacebuilding processes that have typically relied on frameworks that utilize political and international relations lenses that prioritize state interests. Neither the drivers of climate change nor the impacts of climate change are confined within the borders of a state. Thus, decisions made by states in their own self-interest may create primary, secondary, and cascading effects to the entire planetary system, with rebounding effects on the state. From now on, the old peacebuilding models are no longer sufficient, given the scale and severity of our climate future.
New peacebuilding models must evaluate all future actions within the framework of climate crisis. We really have no choice now but to work for peace, given the rapidly closing window of 5 years left in which to cut global carbon emissions by half so that we can achieve global net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to secure a livable future for humanity. Not doing so will risk activating more catastrophic tipping points, irreversible, abrupt, wide-scale changes to regional climate systems, with a cascading and multiplying effect that could well make the future unlivable for most of humanity.[1]
In my talk, I also drew on evidence from peace studies,[2] conflict transformation studies, and systems dynamics to argue that one successful strategy for creating a new peacebuilding process is coalition building among organizations in civil society in a sustainable peace framework, such as the One Billion for Peace Movement, facilitated by a sustainable peace pledge.[3] I shared our theory of change - that as the number of signatories grows, such a coalition could function as a power base from the middle of civil societies, bringing the needs and concerns of the least powerful to decision makers, and demanding peacebuilding instead of conflict, which is necessary for global climate action to occur. Furthermore, a coalition such as the The One Billion for Peace Movement could also serve as a mechanism for spreading public climate change education, a network to connect and empower signatories in sharing knowledge and resources and in amplifying their messages. As the movement grows, it could also become a powerful voice to demand equitable solutions from policy makers and the technology sector, which currently does not center equity concerns.[4] Finally, becoming part of such a hopeful movement and community can help to address the ongoing toll of climate grief and climate anxiety we will all experience in this shared climate future. It helps us envision what we are working towards, and not just what catastrophe we wish to avoid.
I repeated some of these ideas at a Roundtable on Climate Crisis Responses and Peacebuilding at the Peace Education Center near the DMZ in Inje, just beyond the civilian control line, only 2.6km from North Korea. Several of the staff members had already read my paper from the conference, since it had been translated into Korean. Run by the Incheon Metropolitan City Office of Education, the Center has a dream to reunify the Korean peninsula. We were told that since last year has spread its message to over 7,000 people, mostly children, who attend workshops, spend time in a Peace Garden, and tour an exhibit on the history of the division between North and South and on prospects for their future peace. One innovative art exhibit was a blackened room with a moving film surrounding the audience with a series of white lines made of light, which shifted positions over and over. The point was clear: lines are movable, arbitrary, abstract creations. We can decide where to draw lines. Borders are imagined, and we can change our imaginations.
What I wish I had had more time to explain in the roundtable is the importance of teaching about the nature of trauma in peace education. As climate disasters continue to multiply in our collective future, the impact of increasing levels of trauma in our societies must be fully attended to, because trauma responses literally short-circuit rational decision making in our brains. Fresh conflicts are processed as past traumas, and we literally go into fight or flight mode in our nervous systems, which we can justify through clouded thinking. This is true for all parties engaged in peacebuilding, including decision-makers. As Resmaa Menakem explains, “When trauma . . . gets internalized and passed down over generations within a particular group, it can start to look like culture” (Menakem 2017).[5]
The Korean context of peacebuilding has repeatedly failed in part because negotiations are rooted in trauma, mistrust, and “fight” mode. The more isolated the two sides become, the more these conditions grow. Yet earlier suggestions of “contact theory” are not necessarily successful in promoting peace, given that mere contact itself without resolution of the root grievances will deepen prejudices, perpetuate conflicts, and lead to further mistrust. At the same time, rehearsing historical grievances is not always helpful as a starting point because the two sides view history so differently that this can mire peacebuilding in an impossible quagmire from the start.
Instead, strategic peacebuilding can be more successful when the process emphasizes a needs-based approach (expressed not as historical grievances, but as universal needs), on all sides. The peacebuilding process must proceed by imparting dignity to all parties, with attention to tone, power balances, and language, and by seeking a reciprocal exchange of benefit. The Korean peacebuilding process frequently fails on this very point. Having all aid flow unidirectionally from the more affluent South to the poorer residents of the North, suggests that the government of DPRK is failing its people, which is humiliating for the North, which then may understate the need for aid or extract aid by means of grandiose, threatening displays of power in an effort to restore its status and shore up its political power in the homeland.
Surprisingly, climate crisis may open new opportunities for peacebuilding in the Korean context as well as in other conflict affected zones. It is a harsh reality for highly developed nations to hear, but in the coming decades, we will all find that our food systems, energy systems, housing, and heating and cooling systems are highly stressed due to climate crisis. While at first wealthier nations will be the most able to adapt, it is also the case that the most highly developed nations, those which have built their wealth and technologies on the systems that created climate change, will by necessity have to undergo the most extreme changes in infrastructure and lifestyles. (Or, if we do not, then most of the earth will simply become uninhabitable within fifty or so years, which does not seem to be a reasonable choice).
Thus, ironically, those societies that have developed with less infrastructure, even some that struggle with the hardship of lower living standards, such as North Korea, owe their survival in part to the resiliency and ingenuity of their people in finding low-tech solutions to address their living needs. Conveying respect for the people of North as knowledge keepers can change the tone and effectiveness of negotiations, but only if the respect is genuine. For instance, the South would benefit from knowing what plants those in North have found are good for medicine, what crops they have found can grow best under stressed soil conditions, or what strategies they use in daily life with less or no electricity, or even what their favorite recipes are.
I want to thank again Okedongmu for facilitating this visit. As one of the few organizations to ever gain the trust of both North and South Korea at a level that allowed people from both countries to come together in person, the people of this organization grasp that treating those in the North with respect is the key to peacebuilding. They have built four hospitals for children in the North, as well as five soymilk factories, and from 2004-2008 they were allowed to take children from South Korea to visit children in North Korea four times. Until 2018, Okedongmu facilitated the visits of approximately 1,200 people from South to North Korea. From the footage that I saw, these were remarkable encounters that countered years of fear inducing propaganda within a few minutes of playtime. The children of the North sang for the children of the South, who so enjoyed seeing them perform, and feeling honored, trust was established. However, these cultural exchange visits have not been possible since 2010, and the staff at Okedongmu are often heartbroken over their inability to help the children of the North more than they can at present. While they cannot meet in person, the children of North and South have exchanged letters in which they have drawn their self-portraits, addressed to their “friends.” The exhibit of these children’s drawings (some of which I saw in person), toured the world and was shown, for example, in a gallery in Los Angeles.
I was told that the word Okedongmu itself implies something like “hugging each other side by side” with our arms around each other, which enables us to see face to face, “looking in one another’s eyes.” This is what the peacebuilding process requires, on any elementary level. In conflict-affected zones in which we are committing to peacebuilding, we must start by looking in one another’s eyes. We must understand that the other side loves their children as much as we love our own, and that the pain and trauma of past conflict and lost children lingers for generations. Such an understanding of trauma automatically instills an understanding of why any kind of violence – physical, material, psychological, cultural, or ecological –breeds more violence. However, recognizing we are all facing a devastating climate future unless we work together can bring us together in a shared global project that emphasizes our common humanity.
The trip gave me more faces to pair with the steps of my advice for building peace in conflict-affected areas in an era of climate crisis, including in the Korean peninsula.[6] That in and of itself – relationship building – is the key to peacebuilding. Hopefully the following steps will be helpful to those in conflict-affected areas, as a conceptual map forward. To begin, obviously, all sides must stop any acts of violence and aggression, including in their rhetoric, since this leads to further violence. Coalitions of organizations in civil societies can be effective advocates for calling for an end to hostilities, including by urging third parties to intervene. When trusted third parties are brought into a peacebuilding process, they must earn the trust of all sides and create a climate in which participants can calm their feelings of fight-flight. All sides must understand peace as a shared responsibility and as a dynamic, continual process, rather than a list of negotiated “wins.”
Real peace is also more than the cessation of hostilities. Each side must be willing to listen to the physical, material, psychological, cultural, and ecological needs (not the historical grievances, but the needs) of the other side. Only then will they recognize that those needs are universally shared and begin to humanize the other side. Peacebuilding requires demonstrating care for the other’s needs - not only by the policy makers involved, but also by the population on each side, which is why Okedongmu’s humanizing cultural exchanges are so important. The recognition of each side that the needs of the other side are reasonable and universally shared must then spur concrete changes in policy and actions to address those needs. Slowly and over time, this calms tensions and rebuilds trust and dignity. Recognizing that both sides have something to contribute to the other can also be key to restoring dignity. Working on a shared project, such as building climate resiliency together, can continue to deepen trust and respect.
However, with trauma being so fresh in conflict-affected societies, trust can easily be broken; thus, there must be accountability for all future actions in the peacebuilding process, addressed through mechanisms that are agreed upon ahead of time by all parties (this is especially critical when power is unequal). As the individuals on each side build relationships and as conditions improve and each population’s needs are met, over time there will be less identification of “sides” and greater stress on our common humanity and shared purpose. This is the space in which historical traumas, which are among the complex grievances to solve due to differing social memories, can at last begin to be authentically addressed and healed.
To see Korean children’s art and to leave a message of hope for reconciliation and peace, please see the Okedongmu Children in Korea website at: https://www.okfriend.org/eng; https://www.peaceon.org/vrgallery. For an article on the exhibit at the Shatto Gallery in Los Angeles, see “Drawing Hope: Children’s Art for Peace on the Korean Peninsula”: https://afsc.org/newsroom/drawing-hope-art-exhibit-comes-la; https://www.reconciliasian.org/programs/drawing-hope.
[1] IPCC AR6 SYR. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 6 Synthesis Report. (2023). <https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/.>
[2] See especially Kim, Dong Jin. The Korean Peace Process and Civil Society (Palgrave-Macmillian, 2019).
[3] See www.bioearth.org.
[4] Much of this approach is inspired by Kim (pp. 12, 14, 44, 222) and John Paul Lederach, e.g. in Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1997), pp. 40–45.
[5] Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (Central Recovery Press, 2017).
[6] See also Lisa Schirch, Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding: A Vision and Framework for Peace with Justice (Good Books 2005).
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