Japan. North Korea. South Korea. China. The United States. Women for Peaceful Asia. What do all of these have in common?
They were represented by delegates in a summit meeting in ‘Beijing’ on Saturday, Dec. 2 by delegates (participants) of the inaugural Northeast Asia Peace Games Simulation (NAPGS). This hypothetical negotiations simulation was developed for this first-time pilot by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) branch of the Quaker-affiliated American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and was conducted in the JAMAR classroom in the Sadie Hartzler Library. 20 participants attended, including EMU undergrads, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) students, and visitors from the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), Quaker United Nations (QUNO), and AFSC offices.
While many political science simulations exist (and have been taught in Associate Professor of Political Science Ji Eun Kim’s classes!) the NAPGS was unique for focusing on peacebuilding rather than war: “There’s a lot of preparation for war, and we wanted to imagine, what about peace?” explained DPRK Program Director Jennifer Deibert. “What are we doing as civil societies to prepare for peace? How do they practice negotiation?”
Kim, who assisted in the moderation of the game and had advised the implementation, was “very pleased” to hear that the games would be focused on peace: “many think tanks and organizations run war/conflict scenarios for Northeast Asia, but there is a clear lack of more peace-oriented modules.”
Austin Headrick, DPRK Program Consultant, agreed, adding, “tThe Northeast Asia Peace Games simulation is important because it (hopefully) helps us highlight cooperative solutions and processes of dialogue and exchange rather than preserving the status quo.”
The NAPGS event was formatted similarly to pre-existing political science simulations, in that participants were assigned a delegation team to represent and were given background information on their country or group’s history and desired outcomes. After several rounds of various types of negotiations in which participants could consult with other groups, everyone voted on propositions suggested by each delegation.
Headrick, who wrote the bulk of the material for the simulation, had high hopes for the event: “Negotiations between real countries are often hard. This is because the people on each side making decisions often have deeply different needs, perspectives, and priorities. If participants leave having experienced the difficulty of that difference, and get a glimpse of the “World Viewing” going on under the surface, then the simulation will have achieved a lot of what I’ve personally hoped for.”
CJP student Selena Sherzad certainly experienced this: “I really felt that the most valuable part of the simulation was being challenged to re-negotiate ideas and practices that I thought were fair and just towards achieving peace, but being met with opposition from other countries. It was challenging to come to an agreement, especially being assigned as a North Korean delegate.”
Though the material was challenging, participants agreed that simulating the summit made the negotiations more digestible, with undergraduate senior Sophia Sherrill sharing that the low-stakes simulated environment made the “complicated and/or difficult topics easier to process.”
As junior Ella Brubaker noted, “The event was also helpful for exploring potential career options and had many skills that would be applicable for other opportunities.” Students in Dublin, Ireland, and Seol, South Korea, will have the opportunity to practice in this way, as the AFSC plans to hold simulations at universities in those locations. While the DPRK program has no specific plans to hold additional sessions in the US, groups can contact DPRK@afsc.org to get involved.
