Seoul Peace Prize

The Seoul Peace Prize was established in 1990 as a biennial recognition with monetary award to commemorate the success of the 24th Summer Olympic Games held in Seoul, South Korea, an event in which 160 nations from across the world took part, creating harmony and friendship. The Seoul Peace Prize was established to crystallize the wishes of the Korean people for peace in the Korean peninsula and the rest of the world. The nominating group, the Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, consists of 500 Korean nationals and 800 internationals. The awardee receives a diploma, a plaque and honorarium of US$200,000.

Past Seoul Peace Prize recipients have gone on to be nominated and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, including Médecins Sans Frontières (1996 SPP, 1999 NPP) and Bangladeshi Dr. Muhammad Yunus (2006 SPP, 2006 NPP), the founder of Grameen Bank which pioneered the concept of microcredit for supporting innovators in multiple developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and also inspired programs such as the Infolady Social Entrepreneurship Programme[1][2] of Dnet (A Social Enterprise).

Recipients
Year Recipient Country
1990 Juan Antonio Samaranch  Spain
1992 George Shultz  United States
1996 Médecins Sans Frontières   Switzerland
1998 Kofi Annan  Ghana
2000 Sadako Ogata  Japan
2002 Oxfam  United Kingdom
2004 Václav Havel  Czech Republic
2006 Muhammad Yunus  Bangladesh
2008 Suzanne Scholte  U.S.A.
2010 José Antonio Abreu  Venezuela
2012 Ban Ki-moon  South Korea
2014 Angela Merkel  Germany
2016 Denis Mukwege  Democratic Republic of the Congo
2018 Narendra Modi  India

Controversy

There was controversy in 2018, when Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was awarded by the Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, which claimed that his economic policies "reduced social and economic disparity between the rich and the poor" in India. This decision was protested by 26 Korean non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Korean civil society groups, who held a press conference in South Korea. They cited his divisive Hindu nationalist politics, and accused him of being allegedly complicit in anti-Muslim violence in India, notably the 2002 Gujarat riots where over 1,000 people were killed. They called the decision to award Modi a "disgrace" to the Seoul Peace Prize, and compared Modi to former South Korean military president Chun Doo-hwan, who was accused of the Gwangju Massacre which killed over 600 people in 1980.[3]

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References
  1. "Internet rolls into Bangladesh villages on a bike". www.asafeworldforwomen.org.
  2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-03-17. Retrieved 2014-05-22.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. Herald, The Korea (October 26, 2018). "Korean NGOs protest Indian PM winning Seoul Peace Prize". www.koreaherald.com.
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