About us
The Han Park Peace Institute advances human-centered approaches to peacebuilding through interdisciplinary dialogue, global collaboration, and the exploration of peace as both an inner and societal condition necessary for long-term human flourishing.
The Institute explores peace as a multidimensional human process, one that extends beyond the absence of conflict to include human dignity, cultural understanding, reconciliation, ethical leadership, and long-term social transformation. Rooted in the legacy of Dr. Han S. Park, the Institute brings together scholarship, dialogue, public engagement, and international collaboration to advance more human-centered approaches to peacebuilding in an increasingly interconnected world.
Through interdisciplinary exchange and global partnership, the Institute works to foster meaningful conversation across cultural, political, and ideological divides while exploring practical pathways toward cooperation, conflict transformation, and sustainable peace. This includes ongoing engagement with issues of Korean reconciliation and reunification as part of a broader commitment to international peacebuilding and global understanding.
Core Pillars
Research
Define and expand multidimensional peace through interdisciplinary scholarship, systems thinking, and global collaboration.
Education
Developing peace-centered education fellowships, trainings, and public learning experiences that cultivate future peacebuilders.
outreach
Build public engagement through cultural exchange, dialogue, partnerships, community initiatives, and international collaboration.
In Loving Memory — Dr. Han S. Park & Wonie Park
Dr. Han S. Park (1939–2026) lived by one conviction: that peace is not something you wait for, it is something you actively build. A scholar, diplomat, and bridge-builder, he crossed political and cultural divides that most considered uncrossable, making more than sixty trips to North Korea in pursuit of dialogue over hostility.
Behind every one of those crossings stood Wonie Park (1940 - 2025), the steadiness that made the journey possible. Her strength was the kind that doesn't announce itself. It simply endures, supports, and holds the ground beneath something larger than any single moment.
Together, they were a complete picture of what peace looks like in practice, one reaching outward into the world, one anchoring it from within. Both necessary. Both irreplaceable.
They will be deeply missed, and deeply remembered.
Korean Unification initiative
For over 70 years, the Korean Peninsula has been frozen in what peace scholars call negative peace: the absence of war, but nothing more. No reunification. No normalization. No resolution. The Han Park Peace Institute is advancing a different framework, one built on the life's work of Dr. Han S. Park, who made more than 50 trips to North Korea and spent four decades arguing that peace is not a condition you maintain. It is something you actively build. The Korea Reunification Initiative is where that thinking becomes action.
Pictured: Dr. Han Park & Jimmy Carter