The Daejeon Provincial Assembly (Vice-chairperson: Park Seong-bae) held a "Lecture of National Sympathy with Unification in the Daejeon Area" last March 20 at the Daejeon City Hall, with 420 attendants including NUAC members in the city and Daejeon citizens.

• Hyun Kyung-dae, Executive Vice Chairperson of NUAC, delivered a special lecture under the theme "Let's Open the Era of Bonanza of National Unification." Presenting satellite photos taken by NASA Earth Observatory showing South and North Korea at night, he noted that the economic situation in the North is extremely poor. “We should help North Koreans enjoy freedom and prosperity as soon as possible," he stressed.
  He also explained the results of promoting the policy of the Korean Peninsula Trust-Building Process. According to him, the North Korean regime has been used to the system of challenge-negotiation-compensation, but Pyeongyang is now aware that such compensation system no longer works since Park Geun-hye's administration tries to recover trust based on a firm principle. The reunion of separated families last Feb. was held without giving any compensation to the North, showing that the policy of the Trust-Building Process in the Korean Peninsula is working, he says.

"Every one of us is well aware that the cost of managing the division of the country is much higher than the unification cost. A Korean peninsula without nuclear arms, where all the citizens of the South and North can lead their life freely and peacefully, should be accomplished; it should advance into the world with the prosperity of a unified Korea beyond Northeast Asia, as what the 'Eurasian Initiative' pursues," he stressed.

In his special lecture, Prof. Emeritus GwonYeong-min of Seoul National University noted that culture in North Korea has been used as a political tool to build a socialist country, and that is why they insisted on a political propaganda event when we proposed cultural exchange with the North. Nonetheless, cultural unification should be achieved to unify the country, he says. According to him, as a precondition for cultural unification, "Hangul (Korean characters) Uni-Code," being the basis of computer documentation, should be unified to recover the language homogeneity of the South and North, and it will prevent chaos when building a cultural material database after national unification is achieved.

• "National unification cannot be achieved only by the efforts and strong will of the president and the government; what is more important is our attitude and determined will toward national unification," Park Seong-bae, Vice- Chairperson of the Daejeon Provincial Assembly, said in his opening speech.