Now is the time that Northeast Asia needs an early warning that everyone sounds together against a war. The current military and security shifts in Northeast Asia pose seriously threats to the safety and wellbeing of everyone. South Korea (ROK) declared to actively cooperate with the US Indo-Pacific strategy, and Japan announced to equip itself with counterattack capabilities, revised three major security policy-documents, and declared a rapid increase in defense spending. The ROK-US-Japan triangular military alliance is conducting unprecedented large-scale joint military activities, and North Korea (DPRK) is launching missiles “once every two days” in response. Military tensions are rising to a serious level amid the manifested confrontation between the Western and ‘Eastern’ blocs. The increase in military expenditures, arms trade, military exercises, and military alliances, too often said to prevent armed conflict are de facto actual preparations for war that put us all at greater risk. 

Recognizing the risk of armed conflict in advance and making it possible to respond to it in advance are not likely to happen through the initiative of the state. This is even more so in these days when state actors willfully engage in rivalry and force-build-up and thus heighten military tensions. Armed conflict can be warned and prevented only when citizens living their daily lives act to share its early signals with their fellow citizens. If more people recognize the crisis and join in sounding the crisis warning siren, the states will find more difficulties in doing the war preparation. 

Currently, humanity is facing an existential threat, widely called the climate crisis. Due to the destruction of earth ecology, natural disasters, diseases, inequality, threats to human rights and democracy are intensifying day by day, and signs of complex, irreversible crisis are appearing everywhere. All acts of preparing for and doing war are not only emitting huge carbon and other toxic materials, but also wasting resources and time to respond to the climate crisis. The complex crises we are facing cannot be resolved at all with the existing militarized security discourses which is based on the ‘friend’ or ‘foe’ distinction. Rather, it is the militarized security approach itself that creates crises. The current complex crises can only be responded to by recognizing how one’s life is connected to all other human/non-human beings and restoring those connections. This is the way to building peace. We need everyone's voice to make peace everyone's. Those voices will be a strong warning to stop war and a powerful practice that expands the conditions for coexistence for all of us. 

Therefore, gathered at the Commons: Peace and Security for All 2023 Conference, we are launching the “Northeast Asia Conflict Prevention and Early Warning Platform (NACEP).” As a grassroots network and platform in Northeast Asia that makes peace everyone's, we will resolutely stand against all actions that will bring about another war in this world. And we will sound an ‘early warning’ together with the participation of citizens in the region. Raising the early warning with the voice of citizens is to resist the existing militarized security system that excludes citizens and monopolizes decision-making about safety and peace. At the same time, this is to strengthen citizen surveillance on military-security sanctuaries that are out of the democratic control – thus to actualize democracy that has been delayed and suspended in the name of security. 

Our early warning is to warn the shadow of war in Northeast Asia. W earnestly call for preventing another war. Conflicts and disputes always occur in mutual interactions, and we know that preventing them before they happen is a much wiser response and better for everyone. Therefore, when we become more mutually connected to be in solidarity, our early warning will be a powerful action to prevent war. In this regard, with the Northeast Asia Conflict Prevention and Early Warning Platform (NACEP), 

- We will share and accumulate information about mutual provocations and escalating tensions found in Northeast Asia and give a wide warning. - In particular, we will warn with a common voice against the arms race, the military buildup, and the escalation of hostile language and actions of national leaders. 

- In particular, we will warn with a common voice against the arms race, the military buildup, and the escalation of hostile language and actions of national leaders.

- We will organize citizens’ common voice to warn policy makers of the possible occurrence of and escalation into violent conflicts, for recognition of the nature and impact of violent conflicts. 

- We emphasize that the current military tension in Northeast Asia is not a matter between South and North Korea alone, but a militarized conflict in which all countries in Northeast Asia are involved, centered on the US-China rivalry, and stress that diplomatic efforts are needed to help all countries resolve the militarized tension. 

- We will closely monitor the increase in military expenditures and military activities that heighten military tensions in Northeast Asia and call for a cessation of military activities and reduction of arms. For this, we will highlight the fact that there is no international conflict prevention mechanism in the North Asia and urge and work for the establishment of conflict prevention mechanisms and procedures.