By Kim Se-jeong
Staff reporter
It will take a visionary leader and his or her willingness to overcome conflicts to achieve Asian integration, said a comparative regional study expert from Belgium.
Kuk Van Langenhove, a scholar and the director of the United Nations University in Belgium, said there's no process that doesn't get challenged by conflicts, referring to the Cheonan crisis.
"But states with good leaders will look beyond conflicts," he said during a lecture held at Yonsei University in Seoul.
His comment denounced European Union Ambassador to Korea Brian McDonald, who viewed the regionalization discussion in Northeast Asia as not inappropriate due to the Cheonan crisis.
The North Korean torpedo attacked the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan in March this year, raising tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.
Although slow, the regionalization process is taking place in this part of the world. South Korea, Japan and China have been running the trilateral cooperation for more than a decade. Last October, leaders of the three countries celebrated the 10th anniversary of the cooperation. At a summit in May this year, the three leaders went further, having agreed to establish the trilateral cooperation secretariat.
North Korea, however, is a potential threat to the integration effort, which was demonstrated in the wake of the Cheonan crisis
Can any state choose to stay alone?
Langenhove said it is no longer a matter of choice. In times when exchanges between regional institutions are so active, acting individually will hinder a single state from a normal function.
The lecture was one of the Asian lecture tour series, organized and sponsored by the Asia-Europe Foundation. The speaker had given the same lecture in Singapore, Bangkok and Manila before coming to Korea, and was headed for Shanghai for the last lecture afterwards.
He added although the EU integration has the longest history of the regionalization process, Asia "shouldn't just copy it," because of large differences in their circumstances.
He also said that he was encouraged by the interest in integration shown by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
"The Secretary General of ASEAN came to meet me when I was in Bangkok, and we discussed regionalism.