Student delegates are playing in the Samulnori ensemble. Courtesy of Putu Geniki L. Natih

Taking off from Soekarno Hatta International Airport at 4 p.m. on June 14 in a flight bound for Seoul, I couldn't wait to find out what was waiting for us.

In the past weeks since receiving the invitation from South Korea government to join the 2009 Program for University Students from BRICs and Latin American Countries, we've been quite busy preparing for the trip.

BRICs is an acronym that refers to the fast-growing developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

There were visits to the Korean embassy to get the program itinerary from helpful staff and to present a gift from the University of Indonesia (UI) to Ambassador Byun Chul Hwan, besides meeting my two fellow UI students and one from Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University who would join the trip.

At last we were on our way.

Organized by the National Institute for International Education (NIIED) based in Seoul, Republic of Korea, the 10-day program from June 15 to 25 was to bring together 32 university students from Indonesia, Russia, China, India, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Paraguay and Peru.

We were invited to experience not only Korean university life, but also to know the richly embroidered tapestry of Korean culture: its music, soap opera, cuisine, monuments ancient and modern, calligraphy, state-of-art technology, economy, Tae Kwon Do martial art, its people and so much more.

The NIIED plays a leading role in the development of international education and in fostering South Korea's new educational program to increase the number of overseas students by 2010. By that time it is estimated that the number of scholarships for foreign students will be doubled.

Arriving at Incheon airport in the early morning of June 15, a technological surprise was immediately noticeable, as we took the Incheon subway to the baggage collection area. Seoul's subway system is in fact the eighth largest in the world.

Welcomed at the arrival terminal by Ms. Jung Choon Lee, Deputy Manager of International Cooperation of Yeungnam University, and two student ambassadors, we immediately felt the care, kindness and hospitality that colored the entire program.

As we were carrying miniature Indonesian and Korean flags, a discussion of flag symbolism broke out to kill the time while waiting for other students from Sri Lanka, Brazil and Guatemala to arrive at the airport.

The Korean flag, Taegenkgi, has two contrasting elements of Eum and Yang which symbolize such cosmic forces as tranquility and activity, weakness and strength, darkness and light, male and female, while the red and white of the Indonesian flag symbolize bravery and sacredness.

Along the one-and-a-half hours bus driving from the airport to the NIEED Center in Seoul we got glimpses of city and rural life that confirmed South Korea's place as one of the "Four Asian Tigers".

Her rapid transformation into a developed country during the later half of the twentieth century has been coined as the "Miracle on the Hangang River". It has earned its place among the G20 major economies and similar to Japan and West Germany, it is rapid industrialization since the 1960s that has made South Korea one of the 10 exporters with the second highest saving rate in the developed world.

Significantly, this country has the smallest gap between rich and poor amongst high-income Asian economies.

Today South Korea is classified by the World Bank as a high income economy and capital city Seoul consistently placed among the world's ten financial and commercial cities.

At the welcome ceremony at NIEED Center, we participants felt that South Korea's motto *To broadly benefit mankind' was clearly being expressed through this international program. We learned that the main goal of the program was to foster good relations among nations and so we were expected to learn about the beauty of Korea and would become messenger of peace in our respective countries.

It was a moving reminder of South Korea's history of struggle to achieve peaceful independence, of the efforts of former president Kim Dae-Jung who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his work on democracy and human rights. It is also in line with the ongoing efforts of the current UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, a Korean, to foster peace between the world's nations, to eliminate poverty and to bring primary education to all the world's children by 2015.

Yeungnam University, four hours driving from Seoul, was the host of the whole program which campus became our base for the following days as we attended seminars and excursion to cultural sites.

We also visited South Korea's leading university in science and technology, Postech University, and Hanyang University, one of the first to foster engineering in Korea.

Each day's events were carefully orchestrated to enable us to take part in a wide range of activities from economic seminars to walks through traditional villages and to the glorious Bulguksa Temple in Gyeongju, once the capital of the ancient Silla Kingdom.

One of my favorite activities was learning to play in the Samulnori, a Korean traditional percussion orchestra. My Balinese gamelan experience from high school came in handy and it was thrilling both to learn and to share something from my own beloved Indonesian culture. Music is at once the essence of a culture and the medium through which cultural barriers may be transcended.

While the visit to the Hyundai Motor Company with its own hospital and port facilities enabled us to see the care, innovation and efficiency that has made South Korea a giant in the motor industry, the most meaningful experience of all was being able to stay with a Korean family.

My new friend So Jeong Jung, nicknamed Jenny, is a mechanical engineering student. The extremely competitive education environment and motivated workforce are two key factors driving Korea's knowledge economy and Jenny's determination and dedication will take her far.

I loved going to see the new electric car model being developed by her faculty, and staying with her family was a privilege that I will always cherish. Jenny's parents were teachers just like my own and her grandmother made us special food just like my grandmother does.

Representing many different cultures and faculties from economics and engineering to linguistics and international communication, the Korean student ambassadors and overseas delegates shared the same youthful optimism, good humor and learning spirit of students the world over. Each of us will carry home our own special memories of this deeply rewarding program. To value ourselves and others is surely the essence of respect and the way to make life on earth more peaceful and orderly.

Putu Geniki L. Natih
Student of the Economics Department
University of Indonesia

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