Australian Ambassador to Korea Jeff Robinson provides a chat for Royal Asiatic Society Korea in central Seoul, Dec. 2. Korea Occasions picture by Jon Dunbar
Australian Ambassador Jeff Robinson delivered a lecture hosted by the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) Korea on Dec. 2, giving an unscripted discuss Australia-Korea ties, in addition to his personal connections with Korea going again 4 a long time.
Whereas finding out at Australian Nationwide College within the early Eighties, Robinson, a former member of RAS Korea, entered Australia’s first university-level Korean language program, which had begun in 1981.
“There have been 5 college students, and I used to be one in every of them,” he recalled. “As a result of I used to be finding out Korean, I met a number of Korean college students who had been finding out in Australia,” underneath what was referred to as the Columbo plan, which “paid for lots of people from primarily Asia to come back to Australia to study abilities that they may take again to their very own nation.” In early 1984 he got here to Korea to review “on the encouragement of my Korean buddies.”
His buddies launched him to Korean “suljip,” or consuming institutions, and likewise afforded him the chance to expertise the kindness of Koreans. “When you get previous the language and cultural obstacles, I really assume that Koreans are similar to Australians,” he stated.
His expertise of residing in Korea at the moment was resulting from “people-to-people hyperlinks” between the 2 international locations — hyperlinks, he famous, that return over 130 years.
The primary recorded Australian customer to Korea — “earlier than Australia was Australia” — was a Protestant missionary named Joseph H. Davies, who arrived in Korea in 1889 and “received on a donkey and rode from Seoul to Busan and promptly died.”
Undeterred, the mission board despatched extra missionaries to Korea — greater than 100 in the course of the subsequent few a long time — and centered on the southeast nook of Korea, significantly Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, the place “they did issues like set up maternity hospitals, orphanages and the like,” Robinson stated.
One of many earliest missionaries to come back right here within the Eighteen Nineties was Isabella Menzies.
“I first grew to become conscious of Isabella Menzies and two of her colleagues,” Margaret Davies and Daisy Hocking, “once I was requested by the Korean Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs final 12 months to just accept awards on behalf of the households of those three girls as a result of that they had been formally designated by the Korean authorities as Korean patriots,” he stated.
The three girls, Robinson defined, had been instrumental in establishing the primary fashionable highschool for women in southeastern Korea, particularly Busanjin Ilsin Ladies’ Faculty (now Dongrae Girls’s Excessive Faculty). Through the March 1st, 1919, motion, they “inspired the Korean academics and college students to protest in help of Korean aspirations for independence. Plenty of them had been detained, together with these Australian girls. They later had been launched, and so they ended up staying in Korea till 1942, when Japan and Australia went to warfare after Pearl Harbor.”
Different notable missionaries included James and Mary Mackenzie, who arrived in Busan in 1910 and established a hospital for individuals with Hansen’s illness and an orphanage to show life abilities to the sufferers’ kids. Their daughters, Helen and Catherine, studied drugs in Australia and returned to Korea in 1952 to ascertain a maternity hospital and prepare Korean midwives, staying within the nation till the late Nineteen Seventies.
Robinson stated that when the Korean Battle broke out in 1950, Australia was the second nation after america to commit navy forces to the Korean Peninsula. Even earlier than the warfare started, Australia had deployed quite a lot of navy personnel to the peninsula underneath the U.N. Momentary Fee on Korea, together with two Australian officers who did a survey of navy deployments alongside the border in Could 1950. This report was instrumental in confirming to the U.N. Safety Council that it was actually the North that had attacked the South first.
In the end, 17,000 Australians fought right here, together with James Patrick Daunt, who “was by all accounts a little bit of a tearaway,” or rebellious younger particular person, when “he determined to hitch the military utilizing his older brother’s identification.” Barely 17 when he joined the Australian military, “his mother and father had been frantic to know the place he went. By the point they tracked him down, he had already been deployed to Korea, and he was killed a few weeks after arriving right here,” Robinson stated.
In 2006, after it was found that he was the youngest soldier buried within the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, the cemetery named a stream on its grounds the Daunt Waterway after him.
Because the finish of the warfare, Australia has constantly had navy deployments to the U.N. Command.
Australia additionally performed a task in Korea’s financial rise. When Park Chung-hee determined to ascertain a metal business in Korea — one thing worldwide financial observers thought-about ludicrous — “no overseas firm would take care of them, besides two Australian firms, BHP and Hamersley Iron, who took a danger and signed the primary sources contract with Pohang Iron and Metal Firm (the precursor of POSCO) to produce coal and iron ore, and likewise offered technical help.”
The gamble paid off. “POSCO is now, these a long time on, Australia’s largest single business buyer on this planet. Final 12 months it purchased $18 billion price of sources from Australia.” The ambassador added that whereas in Korea to attend the Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation summit in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, in late October, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took the chance to go to POSCO.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, left, poses for a photograph with President Lee Jae Myung throughout a dinner occasion in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, Oct. 29. AP-Yonhap
Australia additionally had an embassy in Pyongyang within the mid-Nineteen Seventies. Among the many members of the small crew of Australians despatched to Pyongyang was Adrian Buzo, who later went on to steer excursions for RAS Korea within the early Eighties. The North Koreans had hoped Australia would shift its votes within the U.N. in its favor, however when this didn’t occur, Buzo, who died earlier this 12 months, “received 48 hours’ discover from the North Korean overseas ministry to go away, and he stated it was the happiest day of his life.”
When Robinson joined the Division of International Affairs in 1987, his first posting was to South Korea. At the moment, “the first aims of the Australian Embassy had been to advocate on behalf of employees’ rights and human rights,” and to open the Korean market to Australian exports. A milestone in that space was the free commerce settlement negotiated in 2014. Since then commerce has successfully doubled.
“Korea has been Australia’s third-largest export marketplace for a long time,” Robinson famous. “Australia was a key participant in offering the sources and power that underpinned Korea’s financial improvement. It has been a vastly precious relationship for each international locations. However sadly, in a means, it did not trigger any issues, which implies it did not actually get a number of consideration,” significantly in Australia.
Issues have modified lately, nonetheless, as Korea is now one the preferred postings for younger Australian diplomats.
Robinson lauded Koreans’ efforts to modernize their nation. “Over time I’ve seen how dedicated the Koreans are. There is a saying: Koreans are likely to over-promise after which ship. They’ve finished it time and time once more, creating the metal business, auto business, shipbuilding, EVs (electrical automobiles), semiconductors,” regardless of the reservations and the doubts of the worldwide group.
“I am actually happy, in my very own private case, to have seen the event of Korea and in a small means Australia’s function in supporting that, the place Korea is now an incredible nation. … Every time I’ve come again to Korea I have been amazed at the way it has developed.”
Matt VanVolkenburg has a grasp’s diploma in Korean research from the College of Washington. He’s the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr, and co-author of “Referred to as by One other Title: A Memoir of the Gwangju Rebellion.”
