Konza celebrates 40 years of help and friendship

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Konza celebrates 40 years of help and friendship

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New Zealand Ambassador to Korea Jane Coombs, right, presents a plaque of appreciation to Park Young-in, chairman of the Korea-New Zealand Association, at a celebration of Konza’s 40th anniversary last Friday. By Park Sun-young

About 45 years ago when South Korea was still reeling from the aftermath of Korean War, a group of talented young Korean students left their homeland for New Zealand, far away in the south Pacific, to study and help rebuild their devastated country upon their return.

They were on a government scholarship program named the Colombo Plan, part of an Asian economic and social development program established by British Commonwealth leaders in 1950.

After finishing their studies in New Zealand and returning to Korea, the Colombo Plan scholars formed a society to promote the relationship between the two countries.

They named this group the Korea-New Zealand Association, Konza.

This year the organization celebrated its 40th anniversary with an event jointly held by Konza and the New Zealand Embassy in Seoul at the Diplomatic Center in southern Seoul last Friday.

“As you all know, New Zealand began its relations with Korea first by participating in the Korean War,” Park Young-in, the chairman of Konza, noted in his opening speech at the event.

“The two countries opened diplomatic links in 1962, followed by the dispatch of Korean students to New Zealand under the Colombo Plan.

“And a group of ex-Colombo Plan students established a nongovernmental organization called the Korea?New Zealand Association in 1968 in an effort to promote the friendship and relationship between the two countries,” Park added.

“This was even [three years] prior to the establishment of resident embassies in Seoul and Wellington.”

Under the Colombo Plan, more than 250 Koreans studied in New Zealand between 1963 and 1988.

Many of them have now become leaders in Korean society, according to Park.

“As a Colombo Plan student at that time, I had two different postures: on the one hand, a rather negative, shamefaced feeling of being a man from a poor country where the per capita income was just $150.

“On the other hand, I had a positive, assertive attitude founded on my desire to gain advanced training to help make my country better in the future,” Park recalled.

“There was a time when I had to explain what kiwi fruit was to the Korean customs office since nobody in Korea had ever heard of it before. Now, not only do we grow kiwis in Korea, they are also quite popular.

“As I recall those days, it seems as if we were separated by an age,” he added.

“The story of Konza, in my view, is a model of how the government and people can work harmoniously for a common outcome and how the ‘personal’ and the ‘official’ interact and underpin each other,” New Zealand Ambassador to Korea Jane Coombs remarked in her congratulatory address at the anniversary event.

“In the years since the first Colombo Plan scholars from Korea visited New Zealand, the two countries have developed a vibrant bilateral relationship,” Coombs added.

“I’m grateful to Konza for the role it has played for the past 40 years to nurture the bonds between Korea and New Zealand,” she concluded.

The initial relationship between Korea and New Zealand, essentially that of a donor and a recipient, has greatly developed over the last four decades.

Now they regard each other as important trade partners.

Commodities trade, practically nonexistent in the 1960s, has grown to reach $1.9 billion.

People exchanges have also increased.

Every year, 120,000 Koreans and New Zealanders visit each other’s country, according to Lee Kang-kook, the director of the Southwest Asia and Oceania division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.


By Park Sun-young Staff Reporter [spark0320@joongang.co.kr]
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