Building a Northeast Asian Economic Community

The Northeast Asia Economic Forum (NEAEF) is a regional nongovernmental organization created in 1991 to sponsor and facilitate research, networking, and dialogue relevant to the economic and social development of Northeast Asia. The Forum is also committed to promoting understanding and relations among the peoples of Northeast Asia, North America, and Europe. The main objective is for NEAEF to conduct research and conference activities aimed at functional economic cooperation such as cross-border energy, transportation and logistics infrastructure development, and capital mobilization. The Forum holds annual conferences, workshops, and seminars for planning, facilitating, coordinating, and implementing international and interdisciplinary solutions to common policy problems. It is the only nongovernmental regional organization in which all the nations of Northeast Asia and the US are consistent and active participants. In collaboration with the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), in 2015 NEAEF carried out activities on building a Northeast Asian Economic Community based on lessons learned from NEAEF’s previous work on financing cross-border functional economic cooperation. For the first year of this collaborative project the focus was on regional cooperation and strategies in Northeast oriented toward North Korea ― this work focused on functional economic cooperation in cross-border resources, energy supplies, infrastructure construction, capital mobilization, and institutional development.