We are gathered here in Korea due to the fact that my father started the Youth Federation for World Peace twelve years ago. This is a crucial era, when the world is embroiled in tremendous conflict. We are at a historical inflection point that will determine the course humanity will go. In which direction should we go? What vision do we have? These are the fundamental questions that young people, especially must ask because they will inherit this twenty-first century world. When we look at the world today; who is it that is fighting and shedding blood in the war against terror? It is kids from the ages of eighteen or twenty-one.

Also, who has the biggest stake in the future? Most people who reach their thirties are starting their families. As a young parent looking into the eyes of your children, what legacy do you envision leaving behind for them? While you are still young, what will you fight for? What will you live for? What will you die for? What legacy will you leave behind? These are the fundamental questions that should be stirring in your hearts as you start your own family and enter into the age of maturity and settlement beyond the years of your twenties when you could focus more on yourself.

What about when you enter your forties and you reflect back on your life? Already half of my life has past. How have I lived my life and what am I going to do with the precious remaining half? As I look to the future and, also, into the eyes of my growing children, I ask myself, "What am I going to leave behind for them?" This should be the common question asked and answered collectively by the young people of the world. It has to be the mission of the Youth Federation to raise young people. The fundamental question is, "What world -- centered upon what vision and what dream -- will you create?"

As we enter this historical inflection point of the twenty-first century, a time that has begun with tremendous difficulty, tremendous violence, and tremendous conflict, we can say that the world is more dangerous today than it was during the cold war twenty or fifty years ago. At least then you had two superpowers that were run by rational secular governments that thought a nuclear catastrophe was unthinkable. What kind of world do we live in today? Hatred is emboldened by religious faith. Tensions arise based upon national, ethnic and religious ties that divide, shatter, and scatter humanity into fractionalized groups. With the possibility of nuclear proliferation, some states consider selling nuclear weapons to fundamentalist states that are driven by religious fervor and conviction to do the most horrendous or horrific acts.

The call for a world where we rise above national, ethnic and religious divisions, that has been made through my parents' world tours, is the pertinent message for this age. It is the significant vision for this age. [Applause] This message calls out to the conscientious citizens among humankind who recognize that God is the one divine parent. If we do not rise to this call, if we are idle in this age of tremendous travail and tremendous conflict -- this time that is more dangerous than any before -- then we stand negligent in front of history and our future generations. [Applause] We have to rise together as one, centered on the vision of peace, by creating one worldwide family that transcends the barriers of race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and so forth. Aju! Aju! [Applause]

The world says that the cold war finished with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, but it has not yet ended here on the Korean Peninsula. The world says that this is a time when brothers come together as one, but that is not the case here on the Korean Peninsula. The world says that we are building a safer world, but this is not happening for the sons and daughters, families, mothers and fathers, and citizens of the nation of Korea and North Korea. The conflict that pervaded the world, this nation, culminating in the cold war, has not been resolved on the Korean Peninsula.

How can we build a bridge to peace in this nation? Through military power? Through economic power? Through political negotiation or diplomacy? Or do we have to plead to a more fundamental essence to bring these two nations together? We're of the same root. We're of the same lineage. We speak the same language. Even though one might be called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and the other might be called the Republic of Korea, beyond the political pretensions or economic pretensions, fundamentally; the citizens of these two nations are the same. We have to find that core once again, the core that brings us together as one, as one nation, starting with the idea of one family. We are one family. We are a family without a parent. We are a family without a root. We are a family without an identity. We are two siblings fighting with each other without any sense of identity or core. We need to make that root. Where can we find that root?

I have had the chance to meet many high-level people and many distinguished Korean leaders, but there is only one Korean person I know who has the worldwide foundation that straddles the political, economic and religious spheres, and who can move in the halls of the Capitol and the White House. There is only one Korean I know who also has the capacity to be able to genuinely move the hearts of those in power, even in North Korea, despite our ideological differences. On an interpersonal level, however, no one that has met my father ever said that he was insincere. I have had the chance to meet many leaders who say, "You know, I might not agree with your father on this point or that point, but among all the men that I've met he is the biggest, in terms of his spirituality. Because, regardless of how much I might disagree, he still loves me and I can feel that. Because of this, if there were only one person that I could trust in this world, it would be Rev. Moon." [Applause]

The amazing thing is that not only Christian ministers feel that. The ministers that had originally united with my father's vision went to Palestine for peace initiatives and service projects and worked with the Jewish and Muslim leaders. They became brothers in arms, brothers in a cause to build peace in the region and attributed this bringing together of the brothers of Abraham to the work of my father, Rev. Sun Myung Moon. [Applause]

One of my many responsibilities is as acting chairman of News World Communications at the Washington Times. I am not boasting when I say that the State Department recognizes the efforts of our movement in the region of Palestine. Among the religious communities, they realize that the only one that truly has spearheaded the interfaith movement in its truest form is Rev. Sun Myung Moon. [Applause]

 Download entire page and pages related to it in ZIP format
Table of Contents
Information
Tparents Home