Peacebuilding Across Parallels: Korean-Irish Nonprofit Collaboration for Peace and Disarmament

Winner of the 2025 Hesburgh Library First Year Student Research Award. This project examines international peacebuilding through the unique collaboration between South Korean and Irish nonprofit organizations working toward denuclearization and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula. Motivated by firsthand observations from the Demilitarized Zone and grounded in disciplines like peace studies and international security, the researcher investigates how Irish organizations—drawing on Ireland’s historic neutrality and experience with civil conflict resolution—share effective peace strategies with their South Korean counterparts. The central research question explores how these collaborations shape South Korean movements’ strategic approaches to peace and disarmament.

Through a mixed-methods framework, the project employs interviews, surveys, textual analysis, and ethnographic observation to assess both the form and outcome of such international partnerships. A codebook was developed to track collaboration depth, strategy adoption, and expectation versus outcome. A pilot study analyzing five published reports revealed a high rate of strategic adoption across organizations, particularly in short-term but intensive partnerships.

By highlighting how shared approaches and context-sensitive strategies can transcend cultural and geographic boundaries, this research contributes to the growing literature on grassroots peacebuilding and the role of civil society in international conflict resolution. It also advances our understanding of how local movements in post-colonial nations can draw strength and insight from cross-cultural partnerships in their efforts to influence national and global policy. The project was completed as part of undergraduate research at the University of Notre Dame.