The European Union can play a crucial part in promoting peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia based on its experience of building peace and unity, experts said Thursday.

During a forum hosted by the HUFS-HRI EU Centre, a research institute run by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and Hyundai Research Institute, researchers and officials offered a positive outlook of a multilateral peninsular peace process similar to the European initiatives in the 1970s.

They dismissed skepticism that the EU’s role would only be limited due to different security conditions and strategic interests.

Under the main theme of the Korea-EU strategic partnership and trust-building process on the Korean Peninsula, the forum discussed future cooperation between South Korea and the EU in security and other regional and global challenges.

Ian Anthony, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the EU along with China and other third parties could help devise a more transparent verification process, noting Pyongyang’s discontent over what it perceives as a biased denuclearization process,

“To create the perception in Pyongyang that the U.S. can be an honest third party would be extremely difficult. But at the same time they should have much more confidence with the Chinese participation,” he said during the forum

“So if we can have a verification system that not only satisfies partners but also satisfies the EU, China and third party teams, this should be reassuring to the international community … whatever is agreed on or implemented in good faith.”

Anthony indicated that the denuclearization efforts here were not successful partly due to the distrust Pyongyang bore toward the way denuclearization was pushed.

“Given the nature of the political relationship (with the U.S.), it was perhaps reasonable for the North Korean leadership to have some doubts about the truthfulness of the U.S. statement and interpret the overall approach as an attempt to maintain a one-sided advantage in the nuclear field,” he said.

Pointing out that there are many areas of bilateral cooperation with the EU, Jun Hae-won, a professor at Korea National Diplomatic Academy, said the two sides need to develop more concrete concepts of their shared values to enhance mutual interests.

She added based on the Korea-EU Framework Agreement signed in 2010, both sides should strive to find shared principles and interests in specific issues and form common positions so that their strategic partnership would become more effective and meaningful.

“They should develop more concrete conceptions of their shared values such as human rights, democracy, prosperity and the rule of law, all of which are the backbone of global security issues,” she said.

“They should continue to search for those global security issues in which, as relatively distant actors in geographical terms, Korea and the EU have mutual, shared interests.”

A series of senior government officials, politicians and peace experts attended the forum, which was supported by the EU and Seoul’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Among them were Lim Sung-nam, special representative for Korean Peninsular peace and security affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Union Ambassador to Korea Tomasz Kozlowski.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)