As the international community becomes more interconnected, cooperation with all relevant actors is critical to resolve such complex and transnational global challenges as nuclear security, terrorism, natural disasters and climate change.
For Korea, there are four priorities in addressing international crises. First, it is im-portant to mobilise resources and capacities across the globe to prevent and address crises effectively. Second, preventive diplomacy should be strengthened to ensure that crises do not happen in the first place. In this regard, it is important to introduce and strengthen early-warning mechanisms across the board, from disaster management to conflicts. Third, in order to be fully prepared to respond to crises, it is important to un-dertake training programmes and strengthen rapid coordination and cooperation with all stakeholders, domestically and internationally. And finally, it is important to assist developing countries to enhance their capacity to respond to crises.
Under the Administration of President Park Geun-hye, Korea is more than ever com-mitted to promoting global prosperity, and accordingly designated global happiness as a major policy objective. Thanks to the international community’s assistance, Korea has been able to rise from the ashes of war to become a fully-fledged democracy and donor country in the span of a generation. After joining the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 2010 as a middle power, Korea is now committed to similarly as-sisting developing countries.
As part of such efforts, the Korean government is pursuing preventive diplomacy in northeast Asia, where tensions have been on the rise. More specifically, Korea is pursu-ing a policy called Trustpolitik to promote reconciliation and cooperation in the region.
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Crisis rooms: towards a global network?
Trustpolitik is implemented through the Korean Peninsula Trust-Building Process and the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative.
In recognition of the fact that building trust is indispensable for cooperation, the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative aims to promote a culture of regional cooperation grounded in trust. It focuses on establishing habits of dialogue and coop-eration starting with softer issues, such as climate change, natural disasters and nuclear security.
To address international crises in other regions, Korea has been participating in UN peacekeeping operations (PKO) and reconstruction efforts and anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia, as well as stepping up humanitarian assistance. More specifi-cally, Korea currently has 629 personnel working in 8 UN PKO missions, including UN-MISS (South Sudan) and UNIFIL (Lebanon). To date, Korea has participated in 18 UN PKO missions, since it first dispatched personnel to Somalia in 1993.
Korea has also been actively engaged in post-conflict reconstruction efforts to secure peace and security in countries such as Afghanistan, where it set up a Provincial Recon-struction Team (PRT) in Parwan province in 2010 and pursued projects in education, agricultural development and training the Afghan police. Korea’s PRT premises were transferred to the Afghan authorities in 2012. Today, Korea runs a hospital and a voca-tional training centre, disbursing the $500 million committed in 2011.
Korea has also increased its humanitarian assistance to countries affected by natural disasters and conflicts, such as the Philippines, Mali and Syria. Most recently, to help the Philippines recover from the devastating typhoon that hit in November 2013, Korea provided $5 million in humanitarian assistance and $20 million in untied aid, and dis-patched disaster relief teams to carry out relief and recovery operations, as well as army medics and engineers.
Since Asia is prone to devastating, large-scale natural disasters, collective action and rapid coordination by the international community is critical. In this context, Korea co-hosted the 3rd ASEAN Regional Forum Disaster Relief Exercise (ARF DiREx) with Thailand in May 2013. ARF DiREx represents a paradigm shift in humanitarian assist-ance from a reactive response to more proactive management of natural disasters in the region.
1,600 disaster relief experts from 8 international organisations and 28 ARF member countries participated in the exercise. In a simulated large-scale disaster involving an
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The management of international crises: the roK’s contribution
earthquake and subsequent tsunami, the civilian and military sectors of participating countries had to cooperate and coordinate to carry out relief activities promptly and ef-fectively. The Exercise comprised three main components: a Table Top Exercise (TTX), a Field Training Exercise (FTX), and an After Action Review (AAR). In the Table Top Exercise (TTX), participants shared ideas and experiences on the operationalisation of existing frameworks and coordination mechanisms for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. The Field Training Exercise (FTX) focused on seven scenarios: the Emer-gency Operation Centre (EOC), rock-slide, collapse of structure, maritime rescue, medi-cal relief, chemimedi-cal leakage, and an air rescue operation. The After Action Review (AAR) focused on an overall assessment of lessons learnt and made appropriate recommenda-tions.
The DiREx exercise contributed, first of all, to strengthening international coopera-tion in disaster response; second, to building the necessary capacity of participating countries to respond to disasters; and, third, to laying the groundwork for a rapid and effective disaster-response mechanism.
Indeed, as a direct result of the DiREx training exercise, countries in the region were able to cooperate and coordinate very effectively in responding to the crisis in the Phil-ippines, reaffirming the great importance of these exercises. It is thus clear that carry-ing out such traincarry-ing exercises more periodically with a larger number of stakeholders would be extremely useful.
European External Action Service - EEAS