Today, I got a speech from very kind and witty ambassador of India, Vishnu Prakash. He asked whether we know story of Kim-Suro to explain how we deeply connected to each other. Following the story of Samguk Yusa, Indian princess Suriratna came to Korea in 48 AD, married King Kim-Suro and became queen Huh Hwang-ok. So that 5 million Koreans trace their ancestry to the royal couple. This story represents that there is deep historical links between Korea and India from long time ago. In the another story, Korea Buddhist monk Hye-cho visited India from 723 to 239 AD and wrote the travelogue, “Pilgrimage to the five kingdoms of India” which shows a vivid explanation of Indian culture, politics and society. Thus, even though two countries are far from each other but there are various connections between the two. The ambassador explained about characteristics of India. First of all, India has many races among its population like the picture of people he showed us. India also is rounded by many countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan and Nepal etc., These facts have affected to India’s cultures and policies. In the last two decades, Asia has been under huge transition in politic, economic as well as social ways. Now, people are predicting that in next 20 years the global centre of economic gravity might shift to Asia, especially East Asia. In this context, combined national wealth of China, Japan, Korea and India as well as ASEAN countries would exceed that of the US and EU. It means that Indian’s destiny in the future is related to East Asia. India has a potential as it described as emerging market nation, middle power, regional power as well as emerging power. India has a high potential of economic growth and actually has grown so far. When we look through detail of India, we see that why India will
