Envoy describes Czech experience in N.K. in 1950s

Czech Ambassador to South Korea Jaroslav Olsa Jr. delivered a speech on Korean-Czech relations during a monthly lecture series, the first this year organized by the Asia Society Korea Center, at the ASEAN-Korea Center in Seoul on Tuesday. Olsa focused his talk on Czechoslovak-North Korean ties during the 1950s.

Czechoslovakia, as a member of the communist Warsaw Pact along with the Soviet Union and China, supported North Korea in the Korean War, which lasted for three years from 1950. Throughout much of the 1950s, it sent a team to monitor the armistice agreement.

The central European nation was one of four states that made up the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission ― along with Poland, Sweden and Switzerland ― tasked with monitoring the truce along the 38th Parallel dividing the South and the North.

Olsa also described early contacts between Czechs and Koreans in the 1800s and early 1900s, as well as the impressions and experiences of Czechoslovak officials working in North Korea in the ’50s.

Unlike the small teams sent by Sweden and Switzerland to South Korea, Olsa described how some 300 Czech soldiers, the country’s contingent to the NNSC, boarded a train and rode the Trans-Siberian railway to enter North Korea. This was the largest number of Czechs on the Korean Peninsula ever, he said.

What they saw, according to journals collected later, was a North Korea laid to waste, the destruction surpassing what they had witnessed in Germany after World War II, Olsa said.

Upon arriving at his Seoul posting seven and a half years ago, Olsa started a project to collect as many documents from the 1950s as possible. He has collected about 6,000 photographs, half of which are of the North.

The Asia Society Korea Center has held this lecture series since June 2008. A lecture by Daniel Pinkston, deputy project director at Crisis Group, is scheduled for March and a lecture by the Nepalese Ambassador to South Korea, Kaman Singh Lama, is slated for July. Many foreign diplomats attended Tuesday’s lecture, including Japanese Ambassador to South Korea Koro Bessho. For more information, contact the Asia Society Korea Center office at koreacenter@asiasociety.org.

(ephilip2011@koreaherald.com)