By Tony MacGregor
Contributing Writer


South Korea is still an unknown country. There are many cases that lend credence to the view that South Korea is not understood or known overseas.

Chang Se-moon, a U.S.-based columnist for The Korea Times, is disappointed in how little is known about Korea in the U.S. He pointed out that the latest issue

of the Business View, the monthly magazine of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce in Alabama, published a map showing the flags of all the countries that invested in the area. To represent South Korea, the map depicted the flag of North Korea. Hyundai Motor has built a plant in the region.

In the recent economic essay contest organized by The Korea Times, an African student referred to the division between North and South Korea as the division between South Korea and East Korea.

The CIA Fact Book describes the East Sea as the Sea of Japan.

A BBC radio report last year described dog meat as standard fare in the Korean diet.

A Web site on animal rights claims that South Koreans boil cats alive and routinely torture dogs.

Probably alone in the world, Korea has a volunteer organization that struggles to inform an under-informed or misinformed world about Korea.

Started in1999, VANK or the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea, aims to use the Internet to build friendships, bridge cultures, establish the image of Korea abroad and correct international misperceptions of Korea. All of VANK’s 15,000 members from elementary school first-graders to housewives have volunteered to introduce Korea to foreign nations through pen-pal friendships, e-pal friendships or visits. VANK sees itself as a two-way channel for overseas Koreans and foreigners to understand Korean culture, language, history and politics and for Koreans to communicate with the world.

VAMP, which keeps tabs on foreign media descriptions of Korea, and finds that Korea is often described in a negative way – an insecure, divided country full of short-tempered people or an affiliate country of Japan that produces cheap products whose lawmakers grab at each other’s throats.

VAMP has also found that some foreign textbooks misinform students about Korean history, describing the country as originally a colony of China. Other textbooks claim Korean culture originated from Japan and Japanese rule over Korea greatly contributed to Korean development instead of the reverse. Often the books describe Korea’s East Sea as the Sea of Japan.

Have the recent successes of Koreans in international sports had an impact on the world’s perception and understanding of Korea? World famous footballers like Park Ji-sung of Manchester United or Lee Young-pyo of the Tottenham Hotspur are household names in Europe. Korean baseball players entertain millions of Americans each year _ Park Chan-ho, Jae Seo, Kim Byung-hyun,

Their fame has helped but somehow these sports figures haven’t cracked the international ignorance barrier about Korea. Why? Perhaps because the public focuses on their skills rather than their backgrounds. Perhaps because they rarely play at home and are seen as international rather than Korean figures.

What about the much-vaunted Hallyu or Korean Wave _ the Asian enthusiasm for Korean pop culture? Has it dispelled some of the world’s ignorance of Korea of Korea? It has definitely helped, at least in Asia.

The wave, beginning as a small swell when Korean soap opera was introduced to China and Taiwan in the 1990s, has swept over countries such as Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand and now includes Korean pop music, movies, computer games and fashion items. Some describe the wave as a social phenomenon rather than a passing trend, which has had an effect on the demand for Korean products and increased tourism to the peninsular.

How has tourism affected the world’s perception of Korea? In 2003, 694 million tourists flooded into the country. That number of people seeing the country for themselves first-hand – and generally enjoying their visits – has an impact on how Korea is perceived in foreign lands _ and will continue to do so.

Immigration is also affecting the world’s knowledge of Korea. The alien work force in South Korea totals somewhere between 378,000 and half a million, most of whom come from South Asian countries, such as India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and the Philippines but also from the former Soviet Union countries and Nigeria. The figure includes about 11,000 English teachers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. These migrants in their letters and emails home, and after they return home, spread the word about Korean culture.

The number of Koreas traveling and living abroad is also having an impact. In 2003, some 8,300 Koreans went abroad to permanently settle in foreign countries, mostly to the West. According to government surveys, the most popular countries are the US (28.4 percent), followed by China (16.8 percent), Japan (12.6 percent), Canada (10.0 percent), and Australia (5.1 percent). The Korean foreign-born population was over 860,000 in 2000 according to the US Census Bureau.

The friendships the Korean migrants make overseas and the generally favorable impression they have created in the West have had an impact on the world’s impression of South Korea. The impact of the Korean migrants, along with all the other factors _ the country’s economic and sports successes, its cultural exports, tourism, immigration and the shrinking of the globe because of new communications technologies _ are chipping away at the mountain of ignorance surrounding Korea. As the world evolves into a borderless global village, the fog that surrounds Korea and its place in the world is dissipating, and soon Koreans may no longer feel the need for an organization to correct international misperceptions of their country, once described as the Hermit Kingdom.