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Welcome to the International Advisory Board (IAB) Newsletter

 

The International Advisory Board (IAB) Newsletter is designed to help Gale International communicate a sampling of the many activities our IAB members regularly perform.  These activities have a positive impact upon our Songdo project, both directly and indirectly. This newsletter contains constantly updated summaries of these activities and links to more complete text, pictures and other content as well as biographies of our IAB members.

To understand the newsletter it is important to understand the purpose of the Gale International Advisory Board. Our IAB is made up of International leaders from government, business and academics that are able to understand and communicate the many challenges and opportunities related to the Songdo project. IAB members have reputations which raise the image and credibility of our project and the diplomatic skills to explain the project from a variety of perspectives. Their backgrounds and reputations greatly enhance our ability to create awareness of  Songdo at the highest levels of business and government.

As the project continues expanding and attracting even more global business and investment interest, we envision adding a second Korean member and 2 non-Korean Asian members.

On another level and perhaps even more importantly our IAB helps Gale International maintain perspective in bringing the Songdo Project to fruition. Our IAB Chairman, Ambassador Thomas Hubbard, has always shared this goal with the owners and executives of Gale International and has brought these key values into the selection of the IAB members.  This deep sense of responsibility is from the perspective of proper stewardship of our project and this in turn also helps ensure that the project has the maximum appeal both within Korea and to international interests.

A few of these values include:

• Delivering ‘Quality of Life'
• Providing enhanced communications and the best technologies
• Helping Korea successfully compete
• Creating new world-class job opportunities in and around Songdo
• Creating a global business environment of growth and opportunity
• Maintaining a sense of environmental responsibility
• Demonstrate goodwill through establishment of a charitable foundation
• Making Songdo the best it can be
• Creating an unprecedented success story and positive image for Songdo

 

Our IAB newsletter will be a living document that is added to regularly and consistently. Please make it a part of your regular reading.

 

Carl G Seaholm Jr.

Executive Vice President, International Relations

Executive Director International Advisory Board

 

 

Creative and Imaginative Dubai Gives Songdo City Recipe for Global Hub

On the second day of the World Knowledge Forum 2007, Dubai Government Chairman Habib Al Mulla; Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) CEO Nasser Al Shaali; and U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Thomas Hubbard participated in the special discussion session "Creation and Imagination of Dubai & the Vision of Songdo City."

 

Dubai which has experienced fastest growth in the world for the past few years is regarded an excellent illustration that nation`s growth can be well directed and successfully executed by its government. Here, Dubai Government Chairman reveals the secret and process of Dubai`s growth and challenges along the way.

"Innovation" is the keyword of Dubai`s record growth, according to Al Mulla. He explained, "Innovation is about two things: it is about building something that wasn`t there before, but it is also about being creative enough to meet the challenges that arise as a result of growth. In Dubai, innovation happens on both fronts - generating growth and meeting the challenges that growth creates."

He continued, "However, fast growth accompanies problems involving systems, infrastructures maintaining pace with investment and human welfare. You cannot grow at the pace that Dubai is growing without confronting such problems. But we see them not as problems, but as challenges that can be surmounted with innovation."

The forte behind Dubai`s success are trade, professional services, tourism and finance, according to the chairman of Dubai government: "First, for trade, Dubai is the world`s third-largest port operator and one of the most important re-export markets in the global trade landscape; second, for services, the challenge is to maintain pace with growth as Dubai`s supply of new services almost always raises new demands for professional services; Dubai`s tourism industry is indeed exploding, consequently followed by fast growth of the service sector; and lastly for finance, the Dubai International Finance Center (DIFC) is gaining credibility as a global investment and financial services center second to none in the world."

He then emphasized the crucial role of the government in creating a whole new world of Dubai: "Dubai`s brilliant growth was enabled by decisive guidance from the public sector. Dubai`s view on the government as a growth-driver is a truly innovative one. What is noteworthy in Dubai is that the public and the private sectors are totally aligned in terms of value, interest and objective."

Thus, Dubai`s future planning will also be guided by the government, which has been envisioned in Dubai`s Strategic Plan for 2015" that is directly designed by Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, according to chairman of Dubai Government.

DIFC CEO Al Shaali also stated, "Dubai is playing the role as an international hub linking countries around the world. What makes it possible for Dubai to become a major global hub is its imagination and ambition."

"Furthermore, trust between business players and support from the government has been crucial. The importance of infrastructures should also be highlighted. But the most important thing is the government`s execution. Government should be responsible for not only in vision, but also in execution. The government should support and help the private sector and the market," he added.

Finally, U.S. Ambassador (Thomas) Hubbard gave a presentation of Songdo International Business District Project, in which he has participated. His speech after the two Dubai officials have presented the story of Dubai`s growth seems effective as the Songdo City aspires to become the "Dubai of the Asia."

He said, "The New Songdo City Project is a private one that is solely based on investment from private companies including Korea`s No.1 steelmaker POSCO. The Korean government has come up with the scheme to develop Incheon (Songdo) as a new hub for South Korea and Asia...and why wouldn`t global private companies be interested in such an attractive project? Incheon has the international airport and has been designated as a free economic zone; it has strong potential to become the Dubai of Asia."

The Songdo International Business District construction project led by Gale International Co. will have fascinating international facilities including the International School, the Convention Center, the Northeast Asia Trade Tower and the First World Tower, Hubbard conveyed.

He added, "The Songdo International Business District project will provide the best concept of city planning ever in history."

[Sun-young Park / KHS]

The Lasting Impact Of The 2000 Pyongyang Summit

My purpose in these brief remarks is to suggest an historical context for President Kim Dae-jung's unique contributions to the development of democracy and the promotion of long-term economic and political stability on the Korean Peninsula.

 

Seventeen years ago, in October 1989, former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt made his first and only visit to South Korea. As the U.S. ambassador to Korea at the time, I met with Chancellor Brandt during a dinner held on the day he had visited the DMZ. Clearly appalled by what he had seen in Panmunjom, Brandt referred to the DMZ as a "time warp" and predicted that Koreans would face far greater difficulties in reunifying the Korean Peninsula than Germans would face in reunifying their country when the Berlin Wall finally came down.

 

Chancellor Brandt was immediately asked when he thought the Berlin Wall would collapse. He replied without any hesitation "not in my lifetime." In fact, the Berlin Wall came down less than 60 days later, and the Germans were catapulted into a reunification process for which they were poorly prepared. Some very ill-advised major decisions pertaining to currency exchange rates and wage levels were made very quickly and the consequences of these decisions made the reunification process politically difficult and economically burdensome during the ensuing years. In fact, many problems still remain to be resolved and some predict that it will take at least a generation to overcome the consequences of an unplanned and precipitous reunification.

 

Of course, reunifying any country that has been riven by war is bound to be a long and difficult process. Remember the boat people that for years fled Vietnam after the collapse of the Saigon regime. Think of the tensions between Taiwan and China that have persisted for more that fifty years. When you think about it, even the United States illustrates the long-term consequences of national division as we are still dealing with the racial aftermath of our Civil War. And this conflict ended in 1865, 146 years ago. So I believe it would be naïve and totally unrealistic to expect that North-South reunification on the Korean Peninsula, though an eventual inevitability, will be any less difficult. Until it is finally accomplished, therefore, the process of Korean reunification will remain what might be referred to as "heavy lifting."

 

The historic event that led directly to President Kim Dae-jung being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just six years ago - the 2000 Pyongyang Summit - was a priceless gift to all the people of Korea, North and South. A window to future relations was briefly opened, and looking through that window the people of South Korea were able to place North Korea in a clearer perspective than they had ever had previously. For the first time, a faceless, implacable enemy came to be glimpsed in more human terms, and the South Korean people began to appreciate after the summit just how decisively they have surpassed their impoverished cousins to the north by reaping the fruits of their remarkable successes in building a free and democratic society that respects and nourishes human capacities in all fields of endeavor.

 

President Kim has wisely made it clear that, given the widely diverging social and political structures that have developed in North and South Korea, the reunification process needs to be slow and well considered. In the North-South contacts that have developed since the summit meeting, especially in the Kaesong industrial zone, invaluable lessons are being learned about economic collaboration with North Korea as it is today, and slowly, a framework for eventual reunification will emerge from efforts of this kind.

 

I know that in South Korea today there is some skepticism, or even cynicism, about the lasting value of the Pyongyang summit and the "sunshine policy" that paved the way for it. For many, in recent months, such feelings of antipathy toward North Korea have become more pronounced than ever before because of the missile launches last July, and the recent underground nuclear test that Pyongyang claims makes it a nuclear power.

 

Major events that bring about paradigm shifts in a long-standing crisis situation are always hard to judge in the short run. The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, for example, was totally misjudged by the United States. Instead of seeing it for what it was - as the end of the colonial era in Southeast Asia - Washington saw it only through the prism of the Cold War and lurched into the disastrous Vietnam War.

 

In 1972, while I was serving in the war near Saigon, I was astonished to learn of President Nixon's opening to China. We considered China to be our enemy in Vietnam, just as it actually had been in Korea. Nixon's strategic move, now seen as the crowning diplomatic achievement of his presidency, was tremendously controversial for some time, enraging the vocal and influential Taiwan lobby, and confounding most neoconservative commentators.

 

And so it also has been with the 2000 Pyongyang Summit. Some in South Korea point out that its financial costs were too high, that Chairman Kim Jong Il has not made good on his promise to hold a return summit, and that South Korea has given much to North Korea and received little in return. Others tend to assign blame to President Kim's "sunshine policy" for somehow allowing, or even causing, North Korea to continue with its nuclear weapons development plans, which culminated on October 9 with an underground nuclear test.

 

I believe that all these charges are misguided and unfair. President Kim has had little or no way to directly influence, much less control, policy decisions made in Pyongyang, Washington, or any other foreign capital. The inner policy dynamic that has led Pyongyang to continue its drive to become a nuclear power is rooted in North Korea's fears and suspicion of the U.S., not its attitude toward South Korea.

 

President Kim's hopes that Washington and Pyongyang would continue to move toward reconciliation following the U.S. presidential election of 2000 were dashed early in 2001 at his first meeting with President George W. Bush. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 literally changed America's outlook on the world, and led to North Korea being included by President Bush in an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran.

 

So how should we look upon the "sunshine policy" today, and how should we evaluate its creator, President Kim Dae-jung?

 

I believe that there is an apt parallel between President Kim and the "sunshine policy" on one hand, and George F. Kennan and the concept of "containment" on the other. In 1948, when he was head of the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State, Kennan wrote an article that subsequently became famous in which he stated his belief that the U.S. would eventually win out over the Soviet Union simply by containing it. This was a winning strategy, he argued, because the inner contradictions of the USSR would eventually cause it to collapse. In 1989, the Soviet Union did collapse, and the Cold War ended without a shot being fired. But in the interim, Kennan and his policy were periodically subjected to severe and scathing criticisms by those who felt that containment would not work, and that a more severe, pressure-oriented policy was required.

 

These criticisms were particularly prevalent during times of crisis between the U.S. and the USSR, such as the Korean War, when American and Soviet pilots engaged in aerial combat; the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when President Kennedy rejected advice from his military advisors that might have precipitated a nuclear conflict; and, in 1978, when the USSR invaded Afghanistan. Even in times of crisis, "containment" was a concept that retained its validity, at least in the eyes of America's more astute strategic thinkers, and provided an umbrella under which other policies could be carried out, such as the prolonged nuclear arms negotiations that eventually contributed to the ending of the Cold War. In the end, George Kennan came to be acknowledged as America's leading strategic thinker during the Cold War. He died earlier this year at the age of 101.

 

The "sunshine policy" is also in its way a concept under which the long-term goal of North-South reconciliation can be pursued in a variety of ways, such as the Mt. Kumgang resort project, and the Kaesong Economic Zone. The Pyongyang Summit remains the high point of North-South reconciliation so far, and its long term significance must be recognized.

 

Professor Charles K. Armstrong of Columbia University has just published a book entitled The Koreas. This is how he evaluates the meeting in Pyongyang:

 

...the symbolic value of the North-South summit was enormous, if only for signaling that North Korea was rejoining the wider world. Beginning with the normalization of ties with Italy, North Korea launched an unprecedented diplomatic courtship of Western countries. Within two years, Pyongyang had established diplomatic relations with all but two of the European Union member states. ...After a decade of inward-looking crisis management and confusion, North Korea - with South Korea's help and encouragement - had made a significant turn outward.

(The Koreas, Routledge, p. 85)

 

On the day he was inaugurated as president of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung urged me to "plant the flag of The Korea Society in North Korea." This I have sought to do, largely through an information technology exchange program between Syracuse University in upper New York State, and Kim Chaek University in Pyongyang. I believe that this project can play a part in bringing North Korea out of its isolation into more normal relations with its neighbors.

 

Tonight, I am truly honored to have been asked to speak on this great occasion. I believe that Kim Dae-jung and George F. Kennan are cut from the same cloth. They are both visionary leaders who believe in the value of concepts. Kennan's concept of containment has already proved its value in ending the Cold War peacefully. I am certain that President Kim's concept of the "sunshine policy" will eventually play a similar role in bringing reconciliation to all of the Korean people.

Donald P. Gregg is the current President & Chairman of The Korea Society.  He is also a former US Ambassador to the Republic of Korea from September 1989 to 1993.