In a time of globalization, national boundaries are becoming increasingly redundant and losing their original significance which has practiced an essential part of nation-building and the creation of the security space. We therefore need to think of alternative ways to understand security and thus the security border, especially since the end of the Cold War. Nevertheless, many countries of Northeast Asia still continue to be locked in seemingly intractable territorial and maritime disputes with their neighbours. Traditional exclusionist and armed and military supervised borders in Northeast Asia have served as obstacles to many potential benefits in the region.
The Nordic region is often described as stable, peace has been successfully consolidated and today actual borders between the Nordic countries have been promoted. The Åland Islands, Morokulien Peace Park, the Euro city of Haparanda-Tornio and Oulanka-Paanajärvi transboundary national park are examples in this context in terms of environmental, economic and security cooperation. The Nordic examples provide valuable lessons for cross-border cooperation as their experiences of the softening of borders through practical approaches, all of which could be utilized in the Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula, the most visible site of confrontation and hostility between North and South Korea. In particular, it provides useful ideas on recent proposals to create a peace park in the DMZ, whose thin sliver of land has inadvertently been turned into a haven for wildlife harbouring endangered species, untouched since the end of the Korean War.
This project will provide new and lateral thinking to all parties concerned. It will facilitate the exchange of knowledge between Europe - the Nordic countries in particular - and Asia. Values over conservation, sustainable economic development and conflict resolution, and the intermarriage between all three will be analysed. Given the relative lack of knowledge in Northeast Asia of the Nordic experience, a deepening of knowledge and imparting of lessons learned from territorial disputes and transboundary environmental cooperation in the Nordic countries could prove beneficial to implementing conflict-reducing, environment-enhancing mechanisms, such as peace parks, in Northeast Asia. In the long term, this project will continue to examine other cases of potential "cross-border cooperation" in Northeast Asia centring on different disputes or points of tension: South Korea and Japan over the Dokdo (Takeshima) Islands, between Japan and Russia over the Kuril Islands and between China and Japan over the Senkaku (Diaoyudao) islands are a case in point.
Primary Researchers
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