Festival Indonesia deepens bilateral ties
Culture can be a powerful tool to bring people together.
And Indonesia, one of Korea’s top two Southeast Asian investment destinations along with Vietnam, initiated a large-scale festival that promoted its culture and businesses in Seoul in late September.
The inaugural Festival Indonesia was part of efforts to implement people-to-people exchanges, one of the four areas of cooperation underlined in a special strategic partnership formed in 2017. The other three were defense and foreign affairs, trade and infrastructure.
Hosted by the Indonesian Embassy, Festival Indonesia 2019 also took place on the anniversaries of the Jakarta-Seoul sister city relationship initiated in 1984, Indonesia’s independence in 1945 and the establishment of bilateral relations in 1973.
The festival, from Sept. 20 to 22, consisted of four main programs — a cultural workshop and performances, cooking competition, business forum and an exhibition of jewelry and other items produced by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
At Cheonggye Plaza, visitors had a chance to learn about Indonesian folk dances and music such as saman and jaranan, as well as gamelan and dangut.
Saman is usually performed by the Gayo people of Aceh, a province in Sumatra. Originally, dance troupes consisted exclusively of men but they were later joined by women.
The leader sits in the middle and sings verses in the Gayo language while the rest start dancing. The verses can be religious, humorous or romantic.
Jaranan is a Javanese tradition that was begun to establish contact with the spirits of the ancestors, who continue to play an important part in the lives of their descendants.
Gamelan is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese.
Dangut is a genre of Indonesian folk and popular music partly inspired by Hindustani and Arabic music.
Modern dangdut incorporates influences from Middle Eastern pop music, Western rock, house music, hip-hop, contemporary R&B and reggae.
The cooking competition at Korea Tourism Organization’s Tourism Information Center in Jung-gu had two celebrity chefs as judges — Jia Choi of Korea and William Wongso of Indonesia.
Choi owns O’ngo Food Communications, a company that provides cooking classes and food tours for travelers.
Wongso is a culinary expert from Indonesia, specializing in Asian and European cuisine. He owns various restaurants and is Indonesia’s culinary ambassador.
The business forum was held at Lotte Hotel in downtown Seoul, attracting more than 150 businesspeople from Indonesia and Korea. They interacted through presentations and one-on-one meetings.
Among the items featured at the exhibition were handcraft baskets, bags, shoes, jewels and accessories.
During a Sept. 20 reception to mark Indonesia’s Independence Day, Indonesian Ambassador to Korea Umar Hadi said the partnership between the two countries “will bring about shared prosperity.”
He said the bilateral partnership would benefit the international community by ushering in “new narratives for multilateralism, co-prosperity and peace.”
Regarding the special strategic partnership, Ambassador Hadi said it “goes beyond transactional relationships.”
“It is special because it is not merely about profit margins, balance sheets or bottom lines. It is special because it is based on shared experience, shared values and shared vision. It is special because it evokes the sense of kinship, mutual respect and solidarity,” he added.
Guests included ambassadors and other members of the diplomatic corps in Seoul.
From the Korean side was Korea Forest Service (KFS) Minister Kim Jae-hyun, whom Hadi thanked for enhancing bilateral cooperation on forest protection and management.
Such cooperation dates back to the late 1960s, when Korea developed forestry in Kalimantan as part of its early overseas investment projects.
The two sides have worked on restoring peatland and mangroves to tackle climate change.
“KFS will continue to strive for mutual prosperity and peace,” Kim said.
He expressed hope that other ASEAN member countries would support the Peace Forest Initiative launched in September.