I want to explore some of the efforts that people living on small islands on this Island Earth have used to manage peace in their often remote places, distant from state government as all of us know it and very immediate in consequences. At the end of my conceptual survey, I propose that a space for peace could be created on Jeju Island, the Peace Island, and that an appropriate mechanism could be something we might call the “Jeju Peace Island Peace Bultuk” where interested parties can come to discuss in cultural calm and natural beauty their seeming diffculties. I give my reasons throughout the paper why I have selected Jeju Peace Island as a place for peace not only for its conditions today, but owing to features of its special cultural history. Looking at a map again, Jeju is quite separate from its neighbours in East Asia. Whilst being politically a part of the Republic of Korea, it is an autonomous region where constitutionally it could create special conditions that would permit it to assume a global role in peace negotiations. That crucial location in East Asia is a symbolic shift from the European Atlantic to the Asian Pacifc as the new locus of world power, culture and economy. Jeju’s location is very much in accord with Asia’s growing importance in world affairs. By establishing a World Peace Tribunal or “Bultuk” on Jeju Peace Island it would acknowledge this power shift as the reality that it is.
On 27 January 2005, the Government of South Korea declared Jeju “Peace Island” laying the foundation for this proposal. A little over a year later, on 1 July 2006, the Republic of Korea advanced even further by declaring Jeju Peace Island an “Autonomous Self-Governing Province”, providing the basis for the place to assume an international and independent role in world affairs.
Unlike existing European focused places of peace, Jeju is a small island with a small population, without global commercial, economic or political interests as is the case with The Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA, respectively. Apart from being an island with restful scenery and many pleasant places where such a World Peace Tribunal could be established, there are characteristics of the ancient Jeju culture that I think make it an appropriate place for the twenty-frst century experiment in world problem solutions.

• Grant McCall(Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney, President, International Small Islands Studies Association)