Era of Universal Globalism Dawning

This is a reprint of the late former President Kim Daejung’s exclusive contribution to The Korea Times on Nov. 5 for the occasion of the English daily’s 48th anniversary. It was the first time that the incumbent head of state had contributed an article to a Korean daily.

By Kim Dae-jung

President of the Republic of Korea

The world is witnessing the dawning of an era of “universal globalism” in the 21st century as we move away from the selfcentered period of nationalism which has dominated the world for the past 200 years.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the fever of nationalism has gripped the minds of all nations across the globe. Before the Industrial Revolution, there were nation-states but there was no nationalism. It was after the Industrial Revolution that nationalism emerged as an idea and a political ideology that functioned as the bulwark of economic interests.

Through the Industrial Revolution, all nationstates in the world sought to preserve national destiny by pursuing their own economies, with the nation-state as the fundamental basis. It was so-called Western imperialism that sought the self-centered and selfish path to ensure the survival of Western nations, even at the risk of sacrificing other states.

These imperialists conquered, exploited and trampled upon weak nations mercilessly while the weak countries struggled desperately against their oppressors in order to safeguard their own interests and rights.

The past two hundred years have been the history of a life-or-death struggle between two opposing forces, namely, ruling nationalism and resisting nationalism.

Nationalism emerged at the very time when it was most effective for a country to run its economy as a national unit in tandem with the development of transportation and communication.

But the world is now changing. We can no longer adapt ourselves to the fast-changing global economy by running the national economy as a unit. Over the past several decades, tremendous changes have taken place in transportation and communications.

The most decisive change has been the coming of the era of informationization. An enormous quantity of information can be transmitted worldwide in a matter of seconds.

Wherever you may live, you can have immediate access to virtually any kind of information on any of the nations of the world. Indeed, the world has become a single unit, replacing the nation-state.

Amid such rapid changes, no single nation, wherever it is in the world, can develop and run its own economy without being inextricably linked with the rest of the countries. It is today’s reality that led to the creation of the World Trade Organization system (WTO).

In a few years, the world will become borderless economically. Even the smallest Korean rural village will have to compete with farmers across the globe. A small factory in a back alley in Korea will have to engage in competition with the same types of plants in every corner of the world.

We will advance into the world and the world will move into our country. Both competition and cooperation will take place simultaneously. It is a path we cannot avoid. Only when each nation embraces and puts into practice methods that acknowledge this reality positively and aggressively, will it be able to avoid falling behind other nations while protecting and developing its right to live.

The world has now become one market, integrating each of the nation-state economies. It has become essential for all countries to devote themselves to producing and selling the best and most economical goods and services to the world. Korea must introduce the world’s finest and most competitively priced products and services and sell them to domestic consumers.

In this connection, it is not necessarily patriotic for Koreans to use only products that were made in Korea. Domestic products that are not competitive in the world market must be weeded out.

With this principle in mind, cultural information has been exchanged worldwide. The 21st century has been dubbed the century of culture.

Culture is no longer a medium that simply enriches the quality of life of a nation and its people. The culture industry is spreading throughout the world as one of the most fundamental industries. The culture industry, which encompasses movies, databases and computer games, has a huge market which now dominates the globe.

The 21st century will be an era of information, knowledge and culture. In the 21st century, any war aimed merely at protecting the interests of a nation will be meaningless, since land and natural resources are no longer sufficient elements of wealth.

In the 21st century, no nation will be able to solve its pressing problems as long as it maintains a selfish attitude by seeking to be well-off alone. In the new millennium, the nations of the world will have to strive to achieve and maintain both cooperation and competition with one another.

Nationalism is now in a difficult situation as it has been widely recognized as a symbol of exclusionism and selfishness. It has become imperative for each nation to accommodate and pursue universal globalism simply to protect and promote its national interests.

Recent revolutionary changes in world civilization dictate that mankind move even more rapidly toward universal globalism, embracing Earth as one community.

But the world is still in the throes of strife and conflict for nationalistic, religious, economic or ideological reasons.

In a nutshell, now is the time to debate universal values that will work as the supports and pillars of universal globalism. When there emerges a broad consensus and understanding of universal values, they will serve as forces that will contain confrontation, tension and schism.

In my view, freedom, human rights, justice, peace and efficiency are the universal values that mankind must accommodate and strive for under the principle of universal globalism.

It may not be an exaggeration to say that human history is the history of struggles to protect and promote freedom and human rights. Even in the 20th century, under the banner of democracy, mankind has not abandoned its struggle for freedom and human rights.

Until the 1970s, there were only a few dozen countries in the world that practiced democracy. Today, we know very well that waves of democracy are sweeping across Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Asia and Africa. Significant strides have been made in the worldwide promotion of freedom and human rights.

New light must be shed on the concept of efficiency from the perspective of universal values. This does not simply mean economic efficiency. The value of efficiency must be given new weight based on the notion that mankind must now strive for a better quality of life with limited resources and space.

The values of justice and peace cannot be emphasized enough as the guiding principles in our efforts to usher in an era of coexistence and co-prosperity in the 21st century. We, who are living in an era of limitless competition, must embrace justice as the basis for freedom, and human rights and peace as the basis for peaceful coexistence, in order to avoid making the history of the 21st century a period of struggle between men and men.

Only when these universal values take root as the norm in the competition that keeps the global economy functioning, and as the standard in the coexistence that binds global society together, will universal globalism become the guiding principle that moves the world in the truest sense of the word.

Finally, I would like to point out that the East and the West have the cultural and traditional foundations to absorb and develop universal values that are the backbone of universal globalism.

We can find doctrines consistent with universal globalism in the teachings of all religions ― the universal love of the Lord in Christianity, benevolence to all things in the universe in Buddhism, and the teachings of peace in the universe in oriental philosophy.

I believe that the spirit and moral norms of humanity and benevolence of Confucianism and Buddhism developed in Asia will give us the impetus and vitality to deepen the freedom and human rights that have made big strides under democracy.

The teachings of the great teachers of mankind can throw light anew on our thinking as we resolve to live by pursuing universal globalism.