Australian ambassador reflects on Korea and Australia’s long-standing relationship
Australian Ambassador to Korea Jeff Robinson gives a talk for Royal Asiatic Society Korea in central Seoul, Dec. 2. Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
Australian Ambassador Jeff Robinson delivered a lecture hosted by the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) Korea on Dec. 2, giving an unscripted talk about Australia-Korea ties, as well as his own connections with Korea going back four decades.
While studying at Australian National University in the early 1980s, Robinson, a former member of RAS Korea, entered Australia’s first university-level Korean language program, which had begun in 1981.
"There were five students, and I was one of them," he recalled. "Because I was studying Korean, I met a lot of Korean students who were studying in Australia,” under what was known as the Columbo plan, which “paid for a lot of people from primarily Asia to come to Australia to learn skills that they could take back to their own country.” In early 1984 he came to Korea to study “at the encouragement of my Korean friends.”
His friends introduced him to Korean "suljip," or drinking establishments, and also afforded him the opportunity to experience the kindness of Koreans. “Once you get past the language and cultural barriers, I actually think that Koreans are very similar to Australians," he said.
His experience of living in Korea at that time was due to “people-to-people links” between the two countries — links, he noted, that go back over 130 years.
The first recorded Australian visitor to Korea — “before Australia was Australia” — was a Protestant missionary named Joseph H. Davies, who arrived in Korea in 1889 and “got on a donkey and rode from Seoul to Busan and promptly died.”
Undeterred, the mission board sent more missionaries to Korea — more than 100 during the next few decades — and focused on the southeast corner of Korea, particularly Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, where “they did things like establish maternity hospitals, orphanages and the like," Robinson said.
One of the earliest missionaries to come here in the 1890s was Isabella Menzies.
“I first became aware of Isabella Menzies and two of her colleagues,” Margaret Davies and Daisy Hocking, “when I was asked by the Korean Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs last year to accept awards on behalf of the families of these three women because they had been officially designated by the Korean government as Korean patriots," he said.
The three women, Robinson explained, were instrumental in establishing the first modern high school for girls in southeastern Korea, namely Busanjin Ilsin Girls’ School (now Dongrae Women’s High School). During the March 1st, 1919, movement, they “encouraged the Korean teachers and students to protest in support of Korean aspirations for independence. A lot of them were detained, including these Australian women. They later were released, and they ended up staying in Korea until 1942, when Japan and Australia went to war after Pearl Harbor.”
Other notable missionaries included James and Mary Mackenzie, who arrived in Busan in 1910 and established a hospital for people with Hansen's disease and an orphanage to teach life skills to the patients’ children. Their daughters, Helen and Catherine, studied medicine in Australia and returned to Korea in 1952 to establish a maternity hospital and train Korean midwives, staying in the country until the late 1970s.
Robinson said that when the Korean War broke out in 1950, Australia was the second country after the United States to commit military forces to the Korean Peninsula. Even before the war began, Australia had deployed a number of military personnel to the peninsula under the U.N. Temporary Commission on Korea, including two Australian officers who did a survey of military deployments along the border in May 1950. This report was instrumental in confirming to the U.N. Security Council that it was in fact the North that had attacked the South first.
Ultimately, 17,000 Australians fought here, including James Patrick Daunt, who “was by all accounts a bit of a tearaway,” or rebellious young person, when “he decided to join the army using his older brother's identity.” Barely 17 when he joined the Australian army, “his parents were frantic to understand where he went. By the time they tracked him down, he had already been deployed to Korea, and he was killed a couple of weeks after arriving here,” Robinson said.
In 2006, after it was discovered that he was the youngest soldier buried in the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, the cemetery named a stream on its grounds the Daunt Waterway after him.
Since the end of the war, Australia has consistently had military deployments to the U.N. Command.
Australia also played a role in Korea’s economic rise. When Park Chung-hee decided to establish a steel industry in Korea — something international economic observers considered ludicrous — “no foreign company would deal with them, except two Australian companies, BHP and Hamersley Iron, who took a risk and signed the first resources contract with Pohang Iron and Steel Company (the precursor of POSCO) to supply coal and iron ore, and also provided technical assistance.”
The gamble paid off. “POSCO is now, these decades on, Australia's largest single commercial customer in the world. Last year it bought $18 billion worth of resources from Australia.” The ambassador added that while in Korea to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, in late October, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took the opportunity to visit POSCO.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, left, poses for a photo with President Lee Jae Myung during a dinner event in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, Oct. 29. AP-Yonhap
Australia also had an embassy in Pyongyang in the mid-1970s. Among the members of the small team of Australians sent to Pyongyang was Adrian Buzo, who later went on to lead excursions for RAS Korea in the early 1980s. The North Koreans had hoped Australia would shift its votes in the U.N. in its favor, but when this didn’t happen, Buzo, who died earlier this year, “got 48 hours’ notice from the North Korean foreign ministry to leave, and he said it was the happiest day of his life.”
When Robinson joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1987, his first posting was to South Korea. At that time, “the primary objectives of the Australian Embassy were to advocate on behalf of workers’ rights and human rights,” and to open the Korean market to Australian exports. A milestone in that area was the free trade agreement negotiated in 2014. Since then trade has effectively doubled.
“Korea has been Australia's third-largest export market for decades," Robinson noted. "Australia was a key player in providing the resources and energy that underpinned Korea's economic development. It's been a hugely valuable relationship for both countries. But unfortunately, in a way, it didn't cause any problems, which means it didn't really get a lot of attention,” particularly in Australia.
Things have changed in recent years, however, as Korea is now one the most popular postings for young Australian diplomats.
Robinson lauded Koreans’ efforts to modernize their country. “Over the years I've seen how committed the Koreans are. There's a saying: Koreans tend to over-promise and then deliver. They've done it time and time again, developing the steel industry, auto industry, shipbuilding, EVs (electric vehicles), semiconductors,” despite the reservations and the doubts of the international community.
“I'm really pleased, in my own personal case, to have seen the development of Korea and in a small way Australia's role in supporting that, where Korea is now an amazing country. ... Each time I've come back to Korea I've been amazed at how it has developed.”
Matt VanVolkenburg has a master's degree in Korean studies from the University of Washington. He is the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr, and co-author of "Called by Another Name: A Memoir of the Gwangju Uprising."