“Korea needs to understand language barriers and contribute to global peace” Well noted as acountry filled with beauty, Venezuela is also famous for its salsa music. Mr. Wolfgang Gonzalez, the Venezuelan Ambassador, has been in Korea for three years. “Korea is a developed modern society which keeps public order and security as well as genial warmth attracting many immigrants.” Venezuela has a population of about 4.2 million, including approximately 200 Koreans mainly employees working for local branches of Korean companies. At this time 37 Venezuelans live in Korea. Traveling between Korea and their mother country is not easy due to expensive airfare. Nine out of the thirty seven are college students and the remainders reside in Korea on business. Not long ago, the embassy had only one worker. It has been 40 years since Korea established diplomatic ties with Venezuela.“ Venezuela is thought of as a country far from Korea, but the two countries need to reinforce their mutual cooperation. To have a better understanding of Korea, I try not to miss state occasions and cultural events, especially Korean traditional music concerts,”the ambassador said. Beauty pageants are very popular in Venezuela, which has a beauty academy training beauty contest winners-to-be for one year prior to bigcontests. As a result, Miss Venezuela was crowned Miss Universe for two years in a row from 2008. Ambassador Gonzalez made a positive comment about multiculturalism in Korea. “Korea is one of world’s leading countries where there has been an increase in immigrants. It will advance tobecome a great multicultural society as long as it keeps treating immigrants naturally as now and tries to understand them. Multiculturalism is a good resource.”Also he added“, Many immigrants in Korea are misunderstood because of language barriers. Koreans should consider their suffering. I hope Korea will make an effort to bring peace to the whole world.”
