Booyoung funds taekwondo training center in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH ― Shouts of a taekwondo demonstration team filled a newly built training center Friday as they showed off their spectacular kicks in front of crowds.

The event was held in commemoration of the opening of the Booyoung-Khmer Taekwondo Center inside the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh, with the donation by Booyoung Group, a construction-based company.

“The taekwondo training center will not only promote the martial art but also the ties between the Koreans and Cambodians,” said Lee Joong-keun, the chairman of Booyoung Group.

Around 50 children sang Korean and Cambodian songs including Arirang and “Spring in my hometown,” both Korean folk songs, the Cambodian anthem and a country’s folk song at the beginning of the event

The opening ceremony was attended by 450 Korean and Cambodian government officials and guests including Ambassador to Cambodia Kim Han-soo, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, and Cambidian Tourism Minister Thong Khon, who is also chairman of the Cambodia Taekwondo Federation.

The two story center, which can accommodate 1,000 people, is located on 1,880 square meters of land housing dormitories and training venues.

Booyoung Group gave an around $450,000 financial support to build the center.

Lee received the “royal order of sahametrei,” Cambodia’s the highest honor that can be given to a foreign national, at the opening ceremony in recognition of his efforts to build a strong relation between Korea and Cambodia.

In August last year, Booyoung Group held a graduation ceremony at an elementary school for the first time in Cambodian education history. The company said it was a watershed event to spread another type of a cultural wave in the nation following K-pop and TV dramas.

The donations go back to 1983, when the company was established.

The firm has paid for 130 dormitories and gyms for schools and town halls across the nation.

“Education is one of the most important things in nation’s development,” Lee said.

The so-called “management by sharing” started in other Asian countries since 2003 such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, East Timor, and Malaysia. Booyoung Group built 600 schools in 14 nations and donated 600,000 blackboards and 60,000 digital pianos.

Adaptations of Korean children’s songs and folk songs are programmed into the donated pianos in an aim to spread the traditional Korean culture in the nations.

In addition to the piano donation, a graduation ceremony is held in almost all of the nations where there used to be no graduation event after Lee’s suggestion of holding one to the governments.

At the graduation ceremony, graduates sing the adaptation of a Korean graduation song for teachers and juniors, and juniors sing back for the graduates, similar to the one held at schools in Korea.

The construction company has given financial supports through the world taekwondo federation around 400 million won ($365,000) for promoting taekwondo in Vietnam, Laos as well as Cambodia.

In October 2011, the firm committed $3 million to the U.N.-Habitat over the next decade to spur urban development in Africa.

By Kim Young-won (youngone@heraldcorp.com)