TOPIC: ASEAN-Korea Educational Cooperation for Mutual Understanding
1. Introduction
Within the international community, it has been becoming ever more significant to attain a sufficient degree of mutual cooperation as well as to realized the deep mutual understanding harmony. To put relations with each other on a stable basis, it is essential to deepen mutual understanding and friendship among the nations through the expansion of cooperation. In November 1989, ASEAN and the Republic of Korea established dialogue relations http://www.aseankorea.org/eng/ASEAN/ak_overview.asp. Within these few decades, the relations between ASEAN and the Republic of Korea have been broadened and deepened. It is an invaluable task for ASEAN and the Republic of Korea, which are following the principle of peace diplomacy to establish cordial relations based on close heart to heart contacts with each other.
Cooperation needs constant efforts for mutual understanding, thus, it is grateful to ASEAN and the Republic of Korea for taking the principal initiative in promoting this efforts. To achieve these efforts, the Korean Government and ASEAN need to work at their best to step up cooperation. Among all the cooperation means, education cooperation is the process that acknowledges diversity of people within the region, while simultaneously seeking to create a common of understanding. All of the countries in ASEAN and the Republic of Korea in a supra-national context have a very different cultures, religions, languages and educational. This diversity must develop through many means especially through education cooperation that it can increase a higher level of understanding, a sense of shared purpose within this stage of globalized world. With the active of education cooperation across the frontier, there will create a constant process of mobility for people, students, faculty members, talents, and individual.
Education sector is in a respect for the core values of culture as the essential foundation for viable cooperation and partnership activities based on mutual understanding. Despite the acceleration of globalization, culture remains as the intrinsic element to understand every country’s identity. Trough education cooperation, it could helps to increase the wider understanding of value, norms, believes, the way of thinking, the way of life, science, arts, crafts, and other aspects of Korea and ASEAN to obtain understanding. Thus, the education mechanism would play a very essential role in promoting the diversity of cultural in the international community.
The Korean Government and ASEAN have been working together very actively on various project and policies to achieve mutual goal that is to promote mutual understanding and meaningful interaction with each other. The exchange of persons including dispatching scholars, artists, sports leaders and others from Korea to ASEAN countries and inviting scholars, and artists interested in Korea from ASEAN countries to Korea, exhibitions of works of art, promotion of studies abroad, and cooperation and assistance for the diffusion of the language, are all the current working area between ASEAN and the Republic of Korea. There were 5.83 million Korean people visited the ASEAN countries, and approximately 1.6 million ASEAN citizen visited Korea in 2015 http://www.aseankorea.org/eng/ASEAN/ak_overview.asp. Building mutual understanding in international management is thus a challenging process and requires a lot of effort, with associated strategies, in order for it to be achieved effectively. The following chapters is devoted to informing on cooperation in education sector in the republic of Korea and the wider ASEAN countries which have been implemented and are being implemented under ASEAN-Korea collaborative networks to promote the mutual understanding. It will also figures out the obstacles that pose as challenges for a successful cooperation, and also recommend the necessary measures and solutions that could make the cooperation better to foster better understandings.
2. The current works
2.1 Youth exchange
The developing of global cooperation in the youth sphere has been undertaking many years and is still a work in progress. Youth exchange is believed as the project that allows groups of young people from different countries to share experiences, and discussing issues, or living together. Throughout the youth exchange program, youth participants often able to learn about debates, simulations, exercises, and also field activities. More importantly, youth would get engage to explore new cultures as well. Thus, the youth exchange project has become the great opportunity to young people to establish favorable interaction with young people from all around the world. Youth are the key community assets within societies and also the future player of decision-making of the world.
Promote education exchanges and people-to-people contacts, particularly among the youth, in the public and private sectors to deepen mutual understanding and friendship is very important for ASEAN and Korea. In the area of youth, many activities have been conducted between ASEAN and Republic of Korea since 1998 http://asean.org/?static_post=asean-republic-of-korea-dialogue-relations. There are many program such as the ASEAN Korea Youth Exchange and Cultural Community Building Program; the ASEAN Korea Frontiers Forum; the ASEAN Korea Youth Square; the ASEAN Korea Forum and Advanced Seminar; and the ASEAN Korea Future-oriented Cooperation Project: Youth Exchange Program http://asean.org/?static_post=asean-republic-of-korea-dialogue-relations. These program aim at strengthening closer relations and promoting better understanding for the future generations.
2.1.1 Benefit of youth exchange program
The conducting of cross-border and intercultural dialogue through youth exchange would allow young people to exchange view among the youth from all over the world, and motivate communities, societies, and nations to be more supportive and more cooperative to each other. Therefore, it is important to build regional cooperation through the conducting of youth exchange in education, culture, arts, sports, volunteerism, and so on and so for. There are wide ranges of justification that the youth exchange could build a strong regional cooperation. Thus, why the youth exchange program is salient to strengthen cooperation and understanding among societies, and nations.
The youth exchange in education could develop positive peace. It encourages young people to expand initiatives and construct regional networks of partnership. The youth exchange programs could provide the spaces for the youth participants to become more consolidated and to get to know one another better. This could helps strengthen relations between different nations and promotes harmony and cohesion in terms of society, language, culture, custom, people, institutions, values, and traditions that are significant to reduce historical misconception. For instance, the youth exchange program that includes the hosting family exchange experience let the exchanged youth to learn about communication and cross-border cultures and language. Moreover, when exchanged youth returning home from exchange program, youth participants could absorb the new perspective that has a more favorable viewpoint with open- minded and tolerant towards the other nations. These would results in the eliminating the negative stereotypes between cultures, religious, people, and countries that youth participants had before their exchange experience. For example, the sharing of experience, culture, and languages with others especially through youth volunteerism significantly helps promoting acceptance of others, enhance intercultural understanding and preserve cultural traditions across the world. In addition, regional cooperation also possible thought disseminating of goodwill and the establishment of reciprocal confidence among youth within the education exchange program. Youth exchange would raises awareness about the necessity to strengthen regional cooperation, and especially extend youth’s understanding of world and region issues particularly, climate change and environmental sustainability, gender-based violence and human rights etc. Different points of view from other cultures would also helped youth to think about different ways for solving a problem or handling a challenge.
Education cooperation through youth exchange definitely could contribute to a successful and simultaneous pursuit of regional cooperation. Increasingly, the geography boundary is no longer become the obstacle or barrier for mutual cooperation and integration among young people. Even though people do have least in common, but through youth exchange they could come together to the fight for the dream of regional cooperative society and culture.
2.2 Bilateral education cooperation mechanism
Bilateral education partnership is progressing well and a number of projects have, thus far, has been implemented between ASEAN and Korea. The republic of Korea has provided funding for many scholarship opportunities for many ASEAN students to get to learn and study in Korea. For instance, the ASEAN-ROK Scholarship for Korean Studies Program coordinated by the ASEAN University Network (AUN) through the ASEAN- ROK Future Oriented Cooperation Fund http://asean.mofa.go.kr/english/as/asean/Programmes/Cooperation/index.jsp. Furthermore, the republic of Korea has convened seven Training Projects for ASEAN children’s librarians from 2010-2016 http://asean.org/storage/2012/05/Overview-ASEAN-ROK-Dialogue-Relations-As-of-8-March-2017.pdf. In June 2009, ASEAN and the Republic of Korea also established the Cyber University http://www.aseancu.org/pr/contents/acu/history.acu. In this program, the both parties agreed to create the E-learning centers in a range of institutions in a number of ASEAN member states including, the Institute Technology of Cambodia, National University of Laos, University Technology in Myanmar, and Hanoi University of Science and Technology in Viet Nam http://aseancu.org/pr/contents/acu/eLearningCenter.acu
3. Challenge of diversity
The establishment successful education cooperation is not an easy task, and it requires a lot of effort. Particularly, it is not always easy without challenges. Barriers to language and communication, territorial constraint, curriculum incomparability, and cultural diversity must be overcome with serious efforts to cut down these constraints. However, among theses challenges, the differences in languages post a great barrier for inward and outward in deeply mutual understanding. ASEAN countries and Korea are rich in culture, diverse in language and religion but have one main common goal, to be cooperated. Generally, the language barrier has always been a constant problem among the people of the Korea and ASEAN countries. This is a great challenge to the ASEAN and Korea cooperation to further create programs and cooperate with each other in a more high level. Moreover, territorial constraint, whereby each country hopes to safeguard the uniqueness of their educational programs, which in turn, may ultimately constrain the implementation of cooperation efforts.
The mutual trust and confidence between different systems have to be developed. Without the expanding of knowledge sharing about each other’s education, languages the development of mutual understanding within ASEAN and Korea will be difficult.
4. Recommendation to improve
4.1 Expansion of Interchange and Cooperation
The expansion of the cooperation and interchange would increase play an effective role to establish the understanding between the nations and create the world with peace and prosperity. For instance, the established of Korea Foundation is also a current crucial step that the Seoul government has conducted in order to effectively carry out cultural interchange with foreign countries in a systematic and stable manner http://en.kf.or.kr/?menuno=3775. Government contributions to the Foundation have to gradually increase and expand. The development of foundation would help to promote a much more better understanding of Korea within the international community and to increase friendship and goodwill between Korea and the rest of the world. The foundation would helps to increase the engagement of activities, promoting knowledge and understanding of Korea within the ASEAN community. ASEAN and Korea also should increase their cooperation that incorporated with the recent environment of communication. The new ways of technological connectivity enabling people around the world to communicate with one another through many networks such as the Internet, could serve as a key tool for inter-educational dialogue. The expansion of cooperation abroad would effectively promote Korean language education to ASEAN countries, and increase mutual understanding more and more over time.
4.2 Promotion of cultural interchange
It is important to promote broader mutual understanding among peoples in the international community. Indeed, an effective education cooperation to establish of true peace is in needs of cultural interchange to deepen mutual understanding of other societies as languages, customs, and cultural traditions. It is from this perspective that the Government of ASEAN and Korea have to further promote cultural interchange activities in various fields through governmental and government-related organizations conducting a broad range of activities. In undertaking cultural interchange, it is also essential to try to understand the cultures of other countries as well as to carry out diverse activities to actively introduce the way of thinking, the way of life, science, arts, crafts, and other aspects of Korea to ASEAN countries, and from ASEAN countries to Korea in order to obtain their understanding. The cultural interchange, included such as the exchange of persons including dispatching scholars, artists, sports leaders, scholars, artists, exhibitions of works of art, sharing of dramatic and musical performances, cooperation and assistance for the diffusion of the language. A well-balanced and effective program of cultural interchange is a necessary means to assist the furtherance of cultural interchange programs.
In promoting these cultural interchanges it would helps to endeavor to understand the cultures of other countries as well as to obtain the understanding between Korea and ASEAN through such activities as introducing to each other about the language, mores, cultural heritage, and other underlying aspects of society.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion, cooperation with the idea and concept of education, in Southeast Asia and Korea is a critical step towards the implementation of a meaningful and effective cooperation through education sector in the region to mutual respect and partnership. The drive toward education cooperation of ASEAN and Korea seems to be on track, and are determined to move forward. The increased cooperation in education evidenced by all of the combined means provides an important development for the creation of the community with peace and mutual understanding of each other. The task of creating effective education cooperation is not an easy task that could complete within a short term. Admittedly, we need to promote the youth exchange, increase the bilateral education cooperation mechanism, expansion of interchange and cooperation, and promotion the cultural interchange in the first instance before attempting a region wide initiative. More importantly, the determination to realize this idea of education cooperation, the Southeast Asia and Korea government should directives begins with the political masters. Thus, the role of Korean and ASEAN Ministers of Education is very critical to a successful implementation of this idea of harmonization of the higher education systems. Although other regional bodies such as ASEAN University Network and Korea Foundation also play important roles to determine the progress of the idea of education cooperation in the region. Equally important, any prejudices and suspicions need to be if we are to cut away out of the track of cooperation in order to realize regional aspirations and goals.