As President of the Republic of Korea, I will live up to the will of the people by achieving economic rejuvenation, the happiness of the people, and … - Park Geun-hye

A genuine era of happiness is only possible when we aren’t clouded by the uncertainties of aging and when bearing and raising children is truly considered a blessing. No citizen should be left to fear that he or she might not be able to meet the basic requirements of life.

Historians in Japan as well as historians across the world have been calling on the Japanese leadership to come clean about what they have done in the past so we can move forward. But denial and efforts to gloss over what happened have stymied our ability to make progress. As for the comfort women, we only have 52 surviving victims. It behooves Japan to bring healing to their wounds and to bring honor to them before another comfort woman passes away.

Throughout the vortex of our turbulent contemporary history we always prevailed over countless hardships and adversities. Today, we are confronted anew with a global economic crisis and outstanding security challenges such as North Korea’s nuclear threat. At the same time, capitalism confronts new challenges in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The tasks we face today are unlike any we have confronted before. And they can only be overcome by charting a new pathway by ourselves.