Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen. Mr. Chairman, Dr. Gupta, Dr. Tong, Mr. Speaker. First of all, thank you very much for this invitation to talk at the Inaugural Sunhak Peace Prize Ceremony.

We all need peace. Everybody needs peace. All religions start with expressing greetings of peace. Muslims say “Assalam Alaikum,” meaning “I pray you have peace.” Christians say “Syaloom,” which also means “may you have peace.”

But how can peace be achieved? For us, peace means harmony; harmony with people, harmony with the state, harmony with everybody, and as with the case today, harmony with nature and the earth. It is easy to talk about harmony, but how do we achieve harmony within relationships? Harmony with nature is an important theme because without harmony, we will cause terror to each other. Climate change is one theme that everybody can connect to, and we need a solution of harmony with nature.

Conflict and terrorism mean we need harmony with each other: harmony within the state and harmony between states. My country has had independence for nearly 70 years, almost the same as Korea. We’ve had 15 big conflicts within the country since then. They came about because of inequality; inequality in politics, economy, and society. There is no harmony among different people, resulting in conflicts because of inequality. Inequality between religions is causing conflict in the country.

Now in the world there are so many regions without peace, which means people are suffering every day. We see refugees in many regions of the world in the Middle East and Africa and so on.

Why did that happen? It is because of inequality, and lack of harmony among each other. Conflict can be made worse if it includes ideologies and religions. 

This should be resolved between good ideologies and leaders. This happens everywhere and we still witness conflict and terrorism between countries because people need something that can give them a better life.

Today everybody is talking about IS, and before they used to talk about Al Qaeda. What is happening? Because the country is being destroyed from the outside, the government failed to protect the people in the country. Other people come to protect them but teach extreme and radical ideologies.

Why are countries destroying each other? I can name some reasons why. Economic problems, political problems, and natural resources. These things that we need to solve to improve the lives of people throughout the world, because without harmony one country can easily destroy another and spread radicalism, leads to terrorism and makes war.

War is the end of peace, as peace is the end of war. But peace is better than any war, so we should work together, everybody joining hand by hand. In any country that does not have stability, there are wars or people who are suffering, especially women and children. That is why we have come here, to put our minds together, stopping any effort that blocks harmony in our life, destroys each other, and makes our lives more difficult.

Today, we are here to congratulate the Sunhak Peace Prize laureates, Dr. Gupta and Dr. Tong, for their work to make things more productive and harmonious between people and nature, because without harmony, productivity declines and the poor will become poorer, creating disharmony, and disharmony creates conflict. That is why I again thank you so much for this occasion, and I hope that peace and harmony will be our target objective.

Thank you very much again.