Korea reunification
initiative
Advancing peaceful reunification through dialogue, diplomacy, research, and humanitarian engagement.
The world's most enduring experiment in negative peace
In 1953, the fighting on the Korean Peninsula stopped. Seventy years later, there is no reunification, no normalized relations, no resolution. The armistice ended the war. It did not build peace. That distinction is the foundation of this initiative — and the life's work of Dr. Han S. Park.
In collaboration with prominent scholars and activists worldwide, HPPI Korean Reunification Initiative is committed to multifaceted academic research and practical directions for global peace and the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
70+
YEARS SINCE ARMISTICE
8M
KOREAN DIASPORA WORLDWIDE
0
PROGRESS TOWARDS REUNIFICATION
About the korean reunification
On December 20, 2019, the Han S. Park Peace Institute Korea Reunification Initiative was established to draft a comprehensive blueprint for peace and reunification on the Korean Peninsula. Founded under the leadership of Professor Han S. Park, the initial foundation was laid by a dedicated group of scholars, including Yusun Chang, Hyunhwee Yi, Juntaek Kwon, Nagasawa Yuko, Changjong Kim, and Yeonjin Park. The Institute’s research capabilities were further bolstered by the arrival of Juseok Kang, Inyeop Lee, Jongdae Kim, and Youngsang Kim, leading to intensive collaborative research and publication efforts conducted through bi-weekly plenary sessions.
Following the passing of Professor Han S. Park in January 2026, the Institute honors his enduring legacy by preserving and advancing his philosophy of reunifying the Korean Peninsula in a variety of ways. From the "Three Governments, Two Nations, One People" blueprint for governance to the pioneering Kaesong Peace University as a global model for peace, this cornerstone initiative is committed to advancing multifaceted academic discourse and practical projects. By fostering solidarity with international scholars and activists, the Institute strives to realize the dual goals of global peace and the peaceful reunification of the two Koreas.
See hanparkpeace.org for more information on this Korean Reunification Initiative and the inaugural conference on June 25, 2026, at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
박한식 평화 연구소 (Han Park Peace Institute) 소개
한반도의 평화와 통일의 청사진을 마련하고자 2019년 12월 20일, 박한식 교수를 필두로 장유선·이현휘·권준택·요오코·김창종·박연진 등이 뜻을 모아 '박한식 평화연구소'의 초석을 놓았습니다. 이후 강주석·이인엽·김종대·김영상이 합류하여 격주 정례 회의를 통해 심도 있는 연구와 집필 활동을 전개해 왔습니다. 2026년 1월 박한식 교수의 타계 이후, 연구소는 고인의 유지를 받들어 같은 해 2월 미국 내 비영리단체(NGO)로 공식 등록되었습니다. 본 연구소는 박한식의 통일 철학을 계승·발전시키는 동시에, 국내외 석학 및 통일 운동가들과 연대하여 세계 평화와 남북 통일을 위한 다각적인 학술 활동 및 실천적 통일 운동에 매진하고 있습니다.
Dr. Park's voice on peace and Korea
"Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is harmony."
what this means in practice
Dr. Park taught that the accommodation of diversity and the cultivation of empathy are the active path to peace — not the elimination of difference, but its recognition and integration. This is the intellectual foundation of the Korea initiative.
A life built around this belief
Born in China to Korean parents and shaped by the Korean War, Dr. Park made more than 50 trips to North Korea — more than any other American — and was instrumental in averting what could have been military confrontations between the U.S. and North Korea in 1994 and 2010.
"Peace is not merely the absence of war — peace is an active state of harmony built through empathy, dignity, understanding, and the accommodation of differences."
This was not an abstract position for Dr. Park. It was the framework he carried into rooms with North Korean leadership, into Track II diplomatic seminars, and into 45 years of teaching at the University of Georgia. Donald Gregg, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, called him "the architect of US-DPRK relations" — a designation earned through decades of doing what governments could not officially do.
"The accommodation of diversity and the importance of empathy is the path to peace."
Applied to Korea, this means the path forward is not absorption of one side by the other, and not endless stalemate. It is the deliberate construction of shared institutions, shared understanding, and shared humanity — across a division that has lasted more than seven decades.
Two definitions of peace —
and why it matters
Peace scholar Johan Galtung identified a distinction that changes everything about how we approach the Korean situation. Most global peace efforts — and the entire 70-year history of the DMZ — have operated within one of these two frameworks. Dr. Park spent his career arguing that the world had been using the wrong one.
NEGATIVE PEACE
Absence of Conflict
Violence stops. Fighting ends. But nothing is built in its place — no healing, no trust, no structural conditions for societies to actually function together. The DMZ is its monument: 160 miles of enforced silence that produced nothing in seven decades.
POSITIVE PEACE
Active construction
The deliberate building of attitudes, institutions, and structures that allow peoples and societies to genuinely flourish together. Dr. Han Park spent over 40 years developing this framework — and the Korea Reunification Initiative is its direct application.
Korea epitomizes the trap of negative peace. It could become the world's most compelling demonstration of what positive peace actually produces — if the right structures are built.
Decades of thinking — one coherent direction
This initiative didn't emerge from a single proposal. It is the result of over decades of scholarship, applied diplomacy, and institutional design — each stage building on the last. Understanding that lineage is what distinguishes this work from standard peace advocacy.
2015
The foundation
2022
Applied to korea
now
the institute
Global Consortium for Peace & Sustainability
The theoretical ground
Dr. Park articulates Positive Peace as a formal research and institutional framework — establishing that peace requires its own discipline, its own language, and its own methodology, just as war and security have had for 70 years. This document is the intellectual root of everything that follows.
Korea 3.0 — Digital Conference
Korea as the Test Case
That framework is applied directly to the Korean peninsula. Scholars on both sides of the DMZ convened digitally to ask: what would Positive Peace actually look like here? Korea 3.0 named the Korean situation for what it is — the world's longest-running experiment in negative peace — and opened a rigorous conversation about alternatives.
Pan Korean Institute, Kaesong
The idea gets an address
The concrete result of that thinking: a designed institution with a specific location, four interdisciplinary schools, a governance structure, and a target community — the 8 million members of the global Korean diaspora. This is where the theory becomes something you can walk into.
What the initiative would create
The Pan Korean Institute proposal envisions four interdisciplinary schools, each designed to draw on distinct traditions from both sides of the peninsula, and each oriented toward producing graduates equipped for real-world peacebuilding. This is what the Han Park Peace Institute is working to see realized.
Health studies
Integrating Eastern medicine as practiced in North Korea with Western clinical practice from South Korea, with particular focus on long-term chronic conditions.
Sustainable agriculture
Traditional and innovative strategies for ecological sustainability and food production, drawing from agricultural knowledge on both sides of the peninsula.
Business & leadership
Entrepreneurship and enterprise development as tools of community stability and economic peace, drawing on models from both market and planned economies.
arts & creativity
Grounded in Korea's long history of traditional music and visual arts, a shared cultural foundation that predates and transcends the division.
in the media
globisctr
Dr. Han S. Park on North Korea, January 2013
Gandhi King Ikeda Award - Dr. Han S. Park
North Korean leader's death raises security concerns. Dr. Han S. Park. CNN
This work moves forward because people believe it should
Seventy years of the security paradigm has been well-funded. Building a serious alternative — grounded in scholarship, diplomacy, and concrete institutional design — takes the same commitment. Your support makes it possible for the Han Park Peace Institute to advance this vision.
