Asan Plenum 2012

“Leadership”

Hahm Chaibong
President, The Asan Institute for Policy Studies

Welcome. This year’s theme is leadership. And I’m very happy to report that we have 22 think tanks and research institutions officially participating as partners. That is, 22 of your institutes have actually organized a panel, each on a specific theme. Then there are, of course, at least 150 of you, last count, from abroad. We also have a group of young scholars in their graduate programs, who are also participating, 33 of them, as official rapporteurs. None of this includes, of course, the audience of experts from within Korea. And also we have a very large participation from the diplomatic corps in Korea.

I would like to give a special thanks to all of you, but especially to Dr. Chung Mong Joon, our founder and Honorary Chairman, who is here and will be with us for most of the conference, and to Prime Minister Lee Hong-Koo, who will soon be giving us the keynote speech. But a special word of thanks to many of the National Assembly members. You know what season it is this time of year in Korea, and it means a lot to me that they made the time and effort to come and join us.

Thank you very much.