With so much delight and interest I read my friend Millet Martinez Mananquil’s recent article on the Lifestyle page of Philippine Star and I think she would allow me to quote a certain paragraph because I can relate on her narrative. ‘ Korea speaks well of the purchasing power of the Korean market. After all, this Asian superpower boasts its electronics, automobile, telecom and shipbuilding industries.’ I have been to the same place few years back where Millet was and this was the Gangnam area in Seoul. It’s indeed a shopper’s’ paradise.
Just last Saturday night, I attended a birthday party on the rooftop of the Times Hotel, the newest addition among establishments in the Korean town and I got the feeling I was in Gangnam. The motif was very Korean. The guests of birthday celebrant, businessman David Kim were a mix of locals and Koreano headed by Joo Yong-Kuk, Times Hotel owner, Chairman Choi Jong Pil, of the and Lee Tae-Ho and Ha Jin-Ho, directors of the Korean Community Association.
I remember writing about the migration of Koreans in Angeles City when I was still a board director of the Clark International Airport Corporation and traced it from the very beginning. To recall, the Koreans started arriving in droves in Angeles City since the late nineties and increased dramatically in the early two thousand when we open Clark airport to international flights. The Friendship road in the city which is located in barangay Anonas morphed into a ‘Korean town’. The area suddenly became like the Gangnam area of Seoul. More than a kilometer of restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, videoke, KTVs and grocery stores lining up both sides of the road. On any night with those colorful blinking lights and neon signs in Korean characters gave life to Friendship. The locals were introduced to samgyupsal, bulgogi and kimchi.
Why are they here? Obviously for various reasons. But first the background. The Korean Peninsula was divided into two. The north and the south. The Korean war raged for three years, 1950 to 1953. The war divided the country into a communist northern half and an American- occupied southern half, the division marked by the 38th parallel as the demarcation line. And until today, there is no reunification between the two Koreas. There were several efforts but all failed. And it seems the peninsula will never be reunited. And North Korea President Kim Jong-Un keep firing those long range missiles.
RETRO: Few years ago I traveled to Panmunjong, and saw the no mans land that separates the two Koreas. Our travel guide was so impressed when I told him about the participation of our Filipino soldiers during that war. That our soldiers were the last combatants repelling the onrushing North Korean contingents aided by communist Chinese troops. They were the soldiers belonging to the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea (PEFTOK) where the late President Fidel Ramos saw actions.
The postwar planners had intended the division between the north and south would be a temporary administrative solution but to this day the reunification effort on bothsides was stonewalled. And every now then, due to change in leadership from Kim Il Sung, considered as great leader of the North Korean nation, to his son Kim Jong il and now the very young and inexperienced grandson Kim Jong Un would intermittently send shivers to the south every time the latter would order tests of their nuclear arsenals. That's one good reason why many Koreans are placing investments in other nations particularly in our country. The experience of the South Vietnamese people during the fall of Saigon in the late sixties after it was overrun by the North Vietnamese soldiers may have influenced actions now of the Koreans coming from the south.
The other reason why mostly they are settled here in Angeles City and some moved to Baguio City, Metro Manila and in Cebu City in the south is because of proximity. The activation of the Clark International Airport must have contributed largely to their coming.