Training Peacebuilders for the Region: Experiments of the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI)
Okumoto Kyoko and Lee Jae Young
Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute
Background: Northeast Asia
In Northeast Asia, peace training or conflict resolution/transformation is a new concept as a preventive methodology for violence — whether direct, structural and/or cultural, despite the fact that military tensions among countries in the region are much higher than in other regions. Throughout history, Northeast Asians have observed that wars and military conflicts began with misunderstandings, misguided hatred, or political propaganda. It is now time to educate and train coming generations about the fact that weapons have failed to bring harmony and peaceful coexistence in Northeast Asia. War and military confrontation have only created long-lasting animosity and mistrust among nations and peoples. Thus, transforming the culture of militarism into the culture of peace and coexistence should become a key focus for the future security and prosperity of the region.
Compared to the military preparation it has undergone, however, the history of peace training or education in Northeast Asia is rather short and weak. If Northeast Asia wants peaceful coexistence and sustainable development, it needs to teach and learn how to live together peacefully. It is a very simple idea that peace needs to be taught, trained and shared if people want to have it. In other words, ultimate peace cannot be achieved through military measures or economic sanctions, but is possible only through training or educating people to live for peace, live in peace, and live by peace.
Like other regions, therefore, Northeast Asia needs an institute, such as the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI), in which the concepts of peace are discussed; the ideas of implanting peace are brainstormed; and the experiences of peacebuilding are shared. The idea of NARPI was born from the discovery of the need for and demand from activists and students working in the field of peacebuilding. NARPI is a place for the further training of students, NGO activists, professionals, scholars, religious leaders and government officials who are interested in deepening their knowledge of peace and sharpening their peacebuilding skills. Peacebuilding can be achieved by people who undergo peace training and respond to needs in their communities. This is real peacebuilding, something which governments in Northeast Asia have limited power to achieve.
Again, it becomes clear that a peaceful future in Northeast Asia is not possible without raising and nurturing people of peace. One day Northeast Asians will offer an alternative to “In order to make peace, prepare for war,” a phrase commonly used in international diplomacy. Instead, without fear or doubt, they will say “Prepare for peace, in order to achieve peace”. The time of change is imminent as Northeast Asia is set to be a center for the transformation towards peace.
Background: The Stories of NARPI’s Creation and Development
Lee Jae Young: Ironically, it was during my military service in the early 1990s when I became interested in peace. I had been a Marine for 26 months of mandatory military service, required of all young Korean men. My daily mission was to watch the North Korean side through a telescope at the western border of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). When the first leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, died, the fate of the entire Korean Peninsula was suddenly thrust into uncertainty including the prospect of potential war. I had to spend an entire week in a trench with heavy weapons along with thousands of soldiers at the border to carry out the mission of shooting anybody attempting to cross it. During that week, I began to realize that true peace could only be possible through non-military approaches. No one can achieve peace by pointing a gun at another’s head.
Soon after my military service, I attended the Canadian Mennonite Bible College (CMBC) known as a “pacifist school”. After struggling for a while to understand the concept of Christian Pacifism, I finally came to agree with the Mennonites’ belief. I chose to study more about peace at another Mennonite school in the US, the Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), where there was a Master’s degree program offered by the Conflict Transformation Program (now the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding).
After experiencing both military training and peacebuilding training, I came to firmly believe that peacebuilding training is the more practical way to make peace. As I studied at EMU, I became one of three founding members of Korea Anabaptist Center, as its peace program coordinator. After witnessing the fragile peace maintained by North and South Korea at reciprocal gunpoint, and realizing that many of the peacebuilding organizations in Northeast Asia were ill-equipped in conflict resolution and peacemaking skills, I wrote a working paper in 2006 outlining my vision for NARPI. A version of this would be formally accepted and funded by the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Peace Desk in 2009.
With MCC’s first grant in 2009, I traveled to Japan, mainland China, and Taiwan to meet people who shared a similar vision; to start a regional peacebuilding institute in Northeast Asia. Okumoto Kyoko was one of them.
Okumoto Kyoko: I was then (and still am) working for some peace NGOs voluntarily, as well as teaching at a women’s university in Osaka, Japan, full-time. For me, Japanese imperialism was and remains a main cause of so many conflicts in the region. Even after the Asia-Pacific War, Japan has not been brave enough to face up to and overcome its own history of patriarchal colonialism. Transforming Japan’s mentality from the inside was a challenge worth pursuing, and yet it felt like an impossible dream. I gradually came to understand that approaching Japanese civil society from the outside could be a way of fostering hope.
Representatives of several civil society peace groups from all over the Northeast Asian Region met for the first time in 2009 to brainstorm together about what the NARPI project could look like. All these like-minded people formed the steering committee later. At the first three NARPI Steering Committee Meetings in Seoul (April 2010), on Peace Boat (October 2010), and in Taipei (April 2011), the NARPI steering committee (then 12 members from five countries in the region) planned its first Summer Peacebuilding Training. The steering committee has continued to meet each summer during the NARPI Training and continues to plot the direction of NARPI collaboratively.
In addition to this, I also experimented with a pilot project consisting of peacebuilding workshops held over five days and four nights in Hiroshima, Japan in August 2010. I asked all NARPI colleagues based in Japan to get together to make this small project happen. I also asked numerous facilitators from the region working in the realm of peacebuilding and conflict transformation to conduct peace training of different forms. I then called on to my peace networks in Japan to come together in Hiroshima, to jointly try out this experimental project and to provide feedback on it. This way, I could see how at least Japanese participants could actually put this idea into practice, rather than just discuss the big dream.
Mission and Vision of NARPI
Northeast Asia is a region of historical, territorial, military and nuclear tensions. Today many human and financial resources are dedicated to the militarization of Northeast Asian nations. Transforming the existing culture of animosity and militarism into a culture of peace and reconciliation can be possible through education and a fundamental paradigm shift. However, a void exists in the area of education and training opportunities to empower people with the skills, knowledge and resources needed to bring about this change. NARPI is working to strengthen and empower people in Northeast Asia by providing peacebuilding training and building cross-cultural networks. During the summer, participants from Northeast Asia receive training in the areas of peacebuilding, conflict transformation, restorative justice, mediation and more. Within these training programs we also seek to build relationships between people from different parts of Asia and to practice transformative approaches to conflict and cultural differences. The idea of NARPI was inspired by the needs and demands of activists and students working in the field of peacebuilding. NARPI is led by a Steering Committee of partners from Northeast Asia and trains people primarily from this region.
The vision of the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute is for Northeast Asia to be a region of active non-violence, mutual cooperation, and lasting peace.
The mission of NARPI is to transform the culture and structure of militarism and communities of fear and violence into just and peaceful ones by providing peacebuilding training, connecting and empowering people in Northeast Asia.
Annual Summer Peacebuilding Trainings
NARPI, as its name implies, was created specifically to address regional concerns in Northeast Asia, particularly militaristic and nationalist tensions remaining from the Cold War era. In addition, the Cold War structure and mindset still remains, even though there have not been any direct military conflicts since the Korean War ended in 1953. As a result, historical, territorial, military, and nuclear tensions and disputes continue throughout the region. Also, the region maintains a very subtle balance among “powerful” countries and marginalized countries and peoples.
The first Summer Peacebuilding Training of NARPI was held in Seoul and Inje, South Korea, in August 2011. After a successful first summer training, NARPI has continued its summer peacebuilding training programs in Hiroshima (2012), Inje again (2013), Nanjing (2014), Ulaanbaatar (2015), Jinshan and Taipei (2016), Okinawa (2017), Jeju (2018) and Nanjing again (2019). The participants of NARPI come mainly from South Korea, Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. We also had some participants from East Russia, and beyond Northeast Asia.
The NARPI annual summer peacebuilding training is a 15-day program. After a restful first day during which the participants arrive at the training venue, they are divided into three (or four) courses for five full days, from morning to late afternoon. In the evenings, sometimes participants conduct mutual learning sessions. For the next three days, all participants spend time together on field trips. They have traveled together to a DMZ observatory, to peace memorials and museums, a ger (a traditional Mongolia dwelling in the form of a tent covered in skin and felt), sites of historical massacres and also sites of hope. Finally, during the second week of training, participants continue to learn, divided into three (or four) courses, before departing for their homes.
NARPI advocates the creation of a new type of community. Rather than forming individual communities of objectors who stand apart from mainstream culture, NARPI seeks a regional solution to militarization. The primary focus of the training is building a regional network and community throughout Northeast Asia. NGO workers, university students, professors, teachers, religious workers and community leaders with a commitment to peacebuilding, build trust during the trainings and field trips. They also nurture deep friendship that last long.
Participants need to have the ability to participate in workshops conducted in English. NARPI tries to provide some language support, but they unfortunately need to have a certain level of English. Courses cover the topics of peacebuilding, conflict transformation, restorative justice, trauma healing, arts-based approach, mediation and communication skills, and peacebuilding through art and media, among others. They are co-facilitated by expert facilitators from the region and beyond.
Over the past nine years, NARPI Summer Peacebuilding Trainings have had an impact on the lives of the nearly 350 people who have joined trainings as participants, facilitators and volunteers. NARPI participants often express gratitude for the unique opportunity NARPI provides to meet friends from around Northeast Asia, as well as the safe space available for discussing sensitive subjects like history, identity and nationalism. The experience of learning history first-hand through NARPI field trips in different parts of region that have been affected by violence is powerful, creating a common regional understanding of history, with the voices of victims at the center. Many NARPI participants also share that their coursework has equipped them as peacebuilders in their families, communities and work. Each year a growing percent of people are returning to NARPI for continued training, demonstrating the deepening impact of NARPI on their lives.
Even though NARPI has not yet reached its 10th anniversary, we are starting to see the impact of NARPI beyond the individual level, as well. Early this year, a NARPI repeat participant and 2017 local host, Fukuda Nobuya, opened the Okinawa Bridge Builders Institute, with a vision of providing peacebuilding training for the people of Okinawa. It is our dream to see the development of more peacebuilding institutes in Northeast Asia. We believe that one day there will be more peacebuilding institutes than military academies in this region
For the future: Celebrating its Tenth Anniversary in 2020
NARPI will be celebrating its tenth anniversary in the summer of 2020. We will hold a Strategic Planning Meeting, involving around 30 NARPI stakeholders, to create a vision for the next ten years of NARPI. This gathering will replace the annual Summer Peacebuilding Training next year, and then the annual trainings will resume in 2021. We hope that many important discussions and dialogues will take place at the Strategic Planning Meeting so that NARPI can make progress in regional peace and peacebuilding processes.
LEE Jae Young
Director of the Korea Peacebuilding Institute and the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (NARPI).
Lee Jae Young graduated from Eastern Mennonite University with an MA in Conflict Transformationfocusing Restorative Justice. He began his career as a peacebuilder at Korea Anabaptist Center where he was a peace program coordinator for 10 years (2001–2010). Then he founded the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (2010) where he currently serves an executive director. He also founded the Korea Peacebuilding Institute (2012), a leading organization for the Restorative Justice movement in South Korea.He has conducted various workshops and lectures on restorative justice, mediation and peacebuilding for schools, legal system, government, NGOs, and community organizations in Korea. In addition, he has facilitated at the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI) in the Philippines and Christian Forum for Reconciliation in Northeast Asia. Currently he lives with family and staff together as a small community called the Peace Building Community near Seoul.
OKUMOTO Kyoko
Chairperson, Northeast Asia Regional Peacebulding Institute; Professor, Department of International & English Interdisciplinary Studies, Osaka Jogakuin University; a board member of the Peace Studies Association of Japan; Board Member, Transcend Japan; Regional Convener for North East Asia, Transcend International; Board Member, Nonviolence Peaceforce Japan; leader, ACTION-Asia
Dr. Okumoto Kyoko works in the fields of Peace Studies, Conflict Transformation, Nonviolent Intervention, and particularly focuses on the Arts-based Approaches to Peacework. She teaches and facilitates peace workshops held mainly by civil society groups, and universities/schools. She tries to expand and deepen the network among North East Asian CSO/NGO people, and between NE Asia and South East Asia, and also with South Asia.
