Trilateral Retreats: Towards New Regional Relations in Northeast Asia Introduction Over a two-year period (2002-04), a diverse group

of intellectual leaders from China, Japan and South Korea came together for a remarkable series of workshop retreats aimed at improving the historical divisions of their region. The project, entitled the Trilateral Retreats: Toward New Regional Relations in Northeast Asia, took as its core thesis that the demons of history hampering regional relations are multidimensional in naturespanning cultural, political, societal and commercial spheres. Project participants were therefore drawn from a wide range of fields, including art historians, journalists, foreign policy experts and NGO leaders, with the expectation that these participants would send a ripple effect of improved understanding across their societies. After five workshops from October 2002 to September 2004, the project culminated with an extraordinary achievement: a consensus statement by all 19 of the participants on the need for regional reconciliation, followed by a concrete list of recommendations for improved understanding based on their expertise across political, economic, media, civil society and cultural sectors. This statement and accompanying recommendation list is published here. It stands as a powerful testimony that, despite deep-rooted differences, citizens from all three nations can come together and develop serious proposals for improving regional ties. It should also be noted that although the Trilateral Retreats were organized by three U.S.-based organizations the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, The Asia Foundation and the Pacific Forum CSIS the U.S. sponsors took a strictly supporting role in facilitating the workshop meetings. As a result, it can be truly said that the achievements of the project are due almost entirely to the hard work and dedication of the participants from China, Japan and South Korea. We hope that dissemination of this report will allow others to get a glimpse of the remarkable progress achieved by the Trilateral Retreat participants. More importantly, we hope that this list of recommendations will serve as a road map for leaders in all three societies who share the recognition that improved understanding is vital for future peace and prosperity in the region. Organizers: The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, Pacific Forum CSIS, The Asia Foundation With additional support from: The Sasakawa Peace Foundation and The Korea Foundation

Statement We, the participants of the Trilateral Retreats, recognize the significant progress that has been made in the integration of our three countries: China, Japan, and South Korea. We understand the importance of that integration and cooperation to the realization of our respective national interests in promoting regional security, stability, and prosperity. It is recognized that there are obstacles to further integration, including disputes over history and territory, competition for resources, negative stereotypes, and strategic anxieties. Underlying all these obstacles, however, is a fragile sense of trust, good will, and common identity among our three countries. Without launching a constructive process to overcome these obstacles, regional integration will be hampered and restricted. These challenges to regional reconciliation pervade political, social, economic and cultural spheres. Therefore, wea diverse group of concerned citizens from China, Korea, and Japan representing a variety of fieldsconvened over the course of two years to discuss these issues and respond to them. This statement of concern and the recommendations that follow are the results of this process. We propose the following measures, organized by groups representing three broad sectors, to help overcome the obstacles that we have identified and create the conditions for increased cooperation and integration. Recommendations from Politics and Economics Experts: 1) Hold a regular trilateral summit meeting - Issue a joint communiqu on the shared history of the three participating countries. - There should simultaneously be a central bank governors/finance ministers meeting, a foreign ministers meeting, and possibly a defense ministers meeting for policy coordination. - A hotline should be established. 2) Establish an academic research committee to analyze history and ultimately produce a textbook of common history. 3) Establish an East Asian History Information Center in Hawaii, funded by an American think tank. 4) Conduct additional trilateral exchanges for bureaucrats (in agencies involving finance, economy and industry, health and welfare, environment, and law), military officers, and politicians. 5) The Japanese Emperor should visit South Korea by 2010. 6) Resolve the controversy over visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by establishing a stateowned Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which will serve as a place of official worship in Japan. 7) Expand the resources directed towards control of drug trafficking, piracy, illegal immigration, and human trade.

8) Standardize Chinese characters to facilitate the better use of computers in communication. 9) Establish alternative television channels to show programs and movies from the other countries, to be sponsored by each government. Occasionally, make a cosponsored movie or TV documentary on regional history. 10) Establish a Free Trade Board (FTB) to discuss potential Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) for economic union in the region. 11) Set up a disease control center on epidemic disease such as SARS and AIDS in East Asia. 12) Establish an annual intellectual forum, tentatively named Concerned Intellectuals for Trilateral Cooperation, which will work as a vision group for community building.

Recommendations from Media Experts: 1) Make full use of the Internet Most of the news organizations in the three countries have a homepage on the Internet. Some have direct links with the homepages of foreign media. For example, Asahi Shimbuns homepage has Japanese translation links to The New York Times, CNN, and the Peoples Daily. We strongly encourage these kinds of cyber connections among media so that the respective audiences can easily access, and compare, various angles of events in Chinese, Korean and Japanese translation. 2) Institutionalize the exchange of media people and news sources - We strongly recognize the importance of providing access to government sources for foreign journalists, and are working to alleviate these problems internally. - There are various kinds of journalist exchange programs among the three countries. We recommend not only short-term visits but also periodic mutual exchanges of staff, including editors and producers. In addition to these exchange programs, we recommend holding media conferences to compare the different angles of reporting in each country, and analyze their contexts. - To improve the quality of Asian journalism and share the common spirit among us, we could establish an Asian version of the Pulitzer Prize. 3) Catch the readers of the next generation There are many foreign students who are eager to study the languages of each country. Given the common cultural background (such as the use of Kanji, Hnz and Hanja), newspapers are one of the primary sources for advanced students. Many newspapers have already started the Newspaper in Education program to encourage students to read papers as class materials. We should include foreign students in this program, and offer them a special discount rate. 4) Create an Asian History Baccalaureate The issue of history remains a serious obstacle in building mutual trust in the region. Interpretations and opinions regarding historical events can vary, but we believe a basic common knowledge of modern Asian history should be composed

for the coming generation. For this purpose, we should produce a European Baccalaureate-style examination of modern Asian history, which would be adapted not only by Chinese, Japanese and Korean universities but by distinguished American educational institutions. Given the number of Asian students who want to study in American universities, these requirements will be an effective way to disseminate the basic common history knowledge among the future generations in the three countries. For this purpose, the advice of American historians and scholars is required to create a standardized modern history curriculum. Recommendations from Civil Society/Cultural Experts: 1) Establish a foundation for joint research on Korean and Chinese cultural properties in Japan, including provenance research, in order to understand the shared history among the three nations through tracing the trajectory of these objects. 2) Organize special exhibitions on past cultural exchanges among the three nations that were mutually enriching and beneficial. 3) Promote exchanges among curators and art historians in the three countries. Tokyo National Museum, for instance, currently has a curator exchange program with Korean museums, where one scholar from the TNM visits Korea for research for two weeks every year, while a curator from Korea visits TNM for two weeks. We should start a similar exchange program with Chinese museums as well. The closer the relationship between the curators of museums of each country becomes, the easier it will be to organize joint exhibitions based on such research. 4) Establish an Artist-in-Residence program between the three countries. 5) Display art from all three nations in interactive exhibitions that encourage viewers of the host nation to recognize common cultural linkages. 6) Change tax laws in Japan to promote loan or donations of artwork from private collections to museums in order to widen access to the artwork. (Ninety percent of artwork and cultural properties is supposedly in private hands and not accessible to the public.) 7) Organize an Asian biennale on contemporary art and Asian film festivals. The host of such events should rotate among the three countries. 8) Compile personal stories of the citizens of each country who have had cross-cultural experiences in order to promote mutual understanding on a personal level. We can produce documentary films or programs based on such stories. 9) Establish a youth summit between the three countries on pop culture. Young generations are most likely to overcome bias and prejudice and pop culture is a universal language for people-to-people linkages. 10) Launch an NGO exchange on domestic social issues between the three countries. The NGO community in China has grown rapidly in the past five years in response to serious social problems caused by aging society, HIV/AIDS, migrant issues, and other problems. Japanese and Korean NGOs are addressing the same problems in their countries as well. Through a regional NGO exchange program, the three countries would discover more common ground to work together. 11) Compile a recommended canon of literature and film to create a shared understanding of each others classical heritage and enhance understanding about each others ancient and modern history. Novels such as Lost Names might provide a more compelling

story of our shared historical experience than matter-of-fact historical accounts in textbooks. We recognize that the question of history constitutes one of the major obstacles to furthering cooperation among our countries, and we have developed three principles for approaching these sensitive issues: 1. Contain historical issues from damaging other aspects of regional relations. 2. Depoliticize contentious disputes. 3. Institutionalize the process of resolving historical disputes through the creation of joint historical research committees, intellectual leaders forums and other consensus building institutions. We call upon governments, corporations, civil society, and individuals to be active in coming up with their own suggestions and solutions to these problems. Signed Korea HAN Seung-Mi (Culture/Civil Society) KIM Sangwoo (Culture/Civil Society) KIM Sun-Duk (Media) KWON Cheeyun (Culture/Civil Society) PARK Cheol Hee (Politics/Economics) Japan HAYASHI Yoko (Culture/Civil Society) HONDA Masatoshi (Politics/Economics) KONDO Motohiro (Media)

MIZUNO Takaaki (Media) OZAWA Kazuhiko (Politics/Economics) SAKAMOTO Takashi (Media) TANAKA-SHICHINOHE Yoshiko (Politics/Economics) SHIMBORI Satoko (Media) UEKI Hiroshi (Politics/Economics) China LI Fan (Culture/Civil Society) QU Xing (Politics/Economics) WANG Qinghong (Politics/Economics) ZENG Qi (Politics/Economics) ZHU Xingfu (Media/Politics/Economics)

Honolulu, Hawaii September 24, 2004