Distinguished guests, participants, and ladies and gentlemen,

It gives me a great pleasure to welcome you to the “International Freedom Network 2024 International Conference.” It is an honor to invite world-renowned speakers, diplomats, journalists, and distinguished guests to this conference.

First, I would like to talk about the meaning of this year’s conference. Last summer, the Hansun Foundation held its first academic conference on the topic of Chinese political warfare. It aimed to address the Chinese Communist Party’s hybrid threat to liberal democracy.

I believe that the last conference made a real contribution to Korean democracy because it received a lot of publicity. Both the government and civil society are now paying more attention to protecting Korea from the threat of new totalitarian regimes.

Thanks to such achievements, the Hansun Foundation, in conjunction with the Korean Association of Area Studies, the Korea Research Institute for National Security, and the Institute for National Security Strategy, comes to hold a larger international conference this year. Today’s gathering is the world’s first international conference in terms of addressing new types of hybrid warfare and China’s political warfare.

Furthermore, the Hansun conference is evolving into a platform for an international freedom network that confronts totalitarian hybrid threats. Many prominent speakers will attend this conference. It is my honor to introduce former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, General Wallace “Chip” Gregson, General Osamu Onoda of Japan, and General Yu Zheng-chi of Taiwan. Today, we also have some of the world’s leading experts in this field.

I would like to take this time to introduce the Hansun Foundation. The Hansun Foundation was founded in September 2006 to contribute to the development of Korea as a leading advanced country based on communitarian liberalism and to reunify the Korean Peninsula. The Foundation has published a series of policy books and numerous research reports. By consistently publishing Hansun Brief, a periodical that analyzes and proposes in-depth various current issues, we are solidifying our status as the best private policy think tank in Korea.

The Hansun Foundation continues to set substantive themes that reflect the new challenges facing modern democracy. We are witnessing bitter and bloody wars in Ukraine and Israel and rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait. All of this is caused by the enemies of open democracy. In particular, we face serious challenges from China. China has been threatening liberal democracy and the rules-based international order through a new type of hybrid warfare. This presents us with unprecedented challenges.

Based on these concerns, the Foundation is seeking to form a coalition of think tanks to address the challenge. The conference today is one result of that effort. It is to deliberate on “Free Democracies Countering Hybrid Threat & China’s Political Warfare.” The Hansun Foundation believes that the 2024 International Conference provides a platform for interaction between hybrid warfare experts, China specialists, policy practitioners, diplomats, professors, journalists and researchers from all over the world.

I expect distinguished speakers and prominent discussants to address the specific topics of hybrid warfare and China’s political warfare, and to provide insightful comments and suggestions for dealing with new types of threats. By doing so, I am confident that today’s conference will make a substantive contribution to maintaining liberal democracy and the rules-based international order.

May God’s blessings and protection always be with you in the holy march of liberal democracy.

Thank you.

Jaewan BAHK

President, The Hansun Foundation