Ayodhya to host 1st lady of South Korea on Diwali

Revellers in this year’s Diwali celebrations at Ayodhya will have an unusual guest: the First Lady of South Korea. Accepting an invitation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kim Jung-sook will partake in Deepotsav on Tuesday hosted by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as part of the three-day Diwali celebrations to revive the 2000-year-old connections between Korea and Ayodhya.

Ayodhya features prominently in Jung-sook’s four-day itinerary who will be here with a high-level delegation. One of the functions that she will grace is the ground-breaking ceremony of the memorial for Suriratna, an Ayodhya princess, on the banks of river Saryu.

Legend has it that Suriratna travelled to Korea when she was 16 and married King Kim-Suro in 48 AD. She was rechristened Queen Hur Hwang-ok, and as many as 60 lakh Koreans of the Kim and Huh communities trace their ancestry to the legendary queen, including former presidents Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam, as well as Kim Yoon-ok, the wife of former president Lee Myung-bak.

Queen Hwang-ok led the establishment of the Karak dynasty, which is based in a town known as Kimhae. The deep connections between Korea and Ayodhya came to the fore around 2000. The First Lady will also pay her respects to the legendary queen. 

The then mayor of Kimhae had led a delegation of over 100 historians to Ayodhya in February 2000, and said that they intended to develop Ayodhya as a sister city of Kimhae. A memorial for the queen was planned, and in March 2001 the mayors of Ayodhya and Kimhae signed a Sister City bond. Every year, hundreds of Koreans come to pay their respects at the memorial.

Jung-sook arrived in India on Monday and was welcomed by Union minister of food processing industries Harsimrat Kaur. She visited PM Modi in the afternoon before holding a meeting with external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj. She also visited the Adarsh Shiksha Niketan Secondary School in the capital.