Special Lecture by Global Scholar Guy Sorman World-renowned French scholar Guy Sorman, who is also an international consultant of President Lee Myung-bak’s government, visited Yonsei on September 13th to give a presentation entitled “What Can Koreans Gain from EU’s experiences?” He has also recently published a Korean version of his new book Diary of an Optimist. In his presentation, Mr. Sorman noted that EU’s past and present experiences can provide helpful lessons and visions to Northeast Asian countries that are in dispute over territory and history issues. While promoting a stronger EU integration, he pointed out the greatest benefit of EU to be the decrease in regional conflicts and in threats of war, which was possible due to the mutual interdependence of economic integration among EU nations. He added that this approach will be applicable in many ways to Northeast Asian countries as well. Furthermore, he explained that the reason for the fiscal crisis of European countries is directly linked to the crisis of welfare conditions, also arguing that countries must be on the alert against excessive expands of welfare finance. About Korea’s conditions of welfare policy, Mr. Sorman diagnosed that an expansion is in need considering the fact that welfare constituted only 7% of the gross domestic product (GDP). His ideas were based on the status of other countries. For instance, in France 50% of the GDP is redistributed and employed in public welfare; while in the United States 30% is operated for welfare. Highlighting the need to avoid populism, he advised that Korea should carefully increase its welfare, at the same time formulate a creative welfare policy that is not grounded on a specific model or case. As for the largest problem in the Korean society, Mr. Sorman pointed out the country’s stagnant population growth and aging population. He added that a hurried expansion in social welfare could become a burden to the future generations. For welfare policies, requirements including economic growth and immigration policy changes, such as fulfilling welfare budgets from immigrant employment policies, must be taken into consideration. In any case, the welfare policies in Korea should not emulate those from Western countries but rather devise welfare models that are grounded on Korea’s situations.