Recently, the Northeast Asian countries (Korea, China, and Japan) have had controversial issues between one another. On one point, they have begun to increase their economic interdependence on one another and have helped each other’s economies to strengthen and grow. Consequently, political issues between these three countries have been gradually intensifying, making it harder for complete peace and cooperation to be created between these three Asian powerhouse countries. One example is the struggle of ownership of Dokdo. Currently, Japan is still claiming sovereignty over Dokdo, when historically the island had belonged to Korea up till World War II.

Because of all the distortions in history written in some textbooks, a group of Japanese students began to travel by boat to other countries to gain a better understanding of other Asian countries to first person perspectives and also to help promote peace. Their boat was known as the “Peace Boat” and ever since 1983, they have been operating and voyaging around the world to learn more about other countries.

VANK, the world’s largest non-governmental organization for public diplomacy has also taken action to promote peace around the world. One of their goals to help peace is the promoion of unification of North and South Korea. They are helping to promote this by distributing maps that they produced which talks about the effects that Korean unification can have. With the unification of Korea, Asia will be able to achieve co-prosperity, peace, and also be the foundation to solving other issues. Since 2005, VANK has been distributing these maps and in 2013, more than 100 thousand maps have been distributed worldwide.

Join VANK and others in helping promoting peace and prosperity for future of the world!