Exhibition of children's paintings

Background

From our association with the Korean peninsular thus far, we have come to believe strongly in the need for dialogue in the north-east Asian region. In order to develop a trusting relationship between the Japanese people and the North Korean people, we have been cultivating relationships with South Ko-rean NGOs and Korean people living in Japan.

Summary of activities

1. Cultural exchange activities: "Exhibition of work by children from North Korea, South Korea and Japan"

Every year, we hold an exhibition of paintings by children from Japan, South Korea and North Korea in cooperation with a South Korean NGO and elemen-tary school in Pyongyang, North Korea. By means of this cultural exchange project, we have been able to portray an image of North Korea as seen through the eyes of NGOs, as opposed to the image that is com-monly portrayed by television and newspapers.

In 2005, we held exhibitions in Tokyo (July), Py-ongyang (August) and Seoul (December), and we also held a traveling exhibition around Japan. In Py-ongyang, children from a Korean school in Japan and the elementary school children in Pyongyang worked together to produce life-sized self portraits and also completed work that will link to the next exhibition.

In 2006, we based our efforts on the exhibitions in Tokyo, Seoul and Pyongyang, and furthermore in-creased our exhibitions in Japan to cover every region of the country.

2. Solar energy

We are supporting solar energy generation in rural areas of North Korea. In 2005 we carried out repairs on an electricity generator that we installed in 2001. In 2006, we replaced the battery for the generator.