From August 31 to September 1, 2016, the Sejong Institute held the ‘Gyeongju Forum’ on the subject of “Strategy to establish public-private network on Northeast Asian Peace and Cooperation Initiative” at Hyundai Hotel Gyeongju.

Beginning with welcoming remarks by Deputy Minister for Political Affairs Hyoung-zhin Kim of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and keynote speech by former Foreign Affairs Secretary Chul-ki Ju, the forum consisted of three sessions. In the first session, Professor Sang-Yoon Ma of Catholic University of Korea participated as the presenter and the participants discussed the achievements of the last three years and directions for further developments regarding the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI, hereafter). The second session, with the current status of public-private network in each field of cooperation and further tasks as the agenda, Jang Min Chu (Head of the Environmental Policy Research Group at the Korea Environment Institute), Young Eal Lee (Head of the Department of International Cooperation at Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety), and Chi Hun Lee (Researcher at the Disaster Prevention Research Division at the National Disaster Management Institute) presented on the status and tasks in environment, nuclear safety, and disaster management respectively. Professor Taehwan Kim of Korea National Diplomatic Academy presented on the detailed plan for 2016 NAPCI Forum scheduled in October and further implementation strategy for NAPCI at the third session on the second day.

For this Gyeongju Forum, eleven experts including Sang Hyun Lee (the Sejong Institute), Du-Hyeogn Cha (Korea Institute for National Unification), Byung-woo Bae (Kookmin Ilbo), Shinhwa Lee (Korea University) participated as discussants and shared opinions on the future of NAPCI.