INTERVIEW WITH HIS EXCELLENCY LUIS T. CRUZ
Philippine Ambassdor to South Korea
Seoul, South Korea
October 15, 2013
(Ambassador Luis Cruz talks on the long Philippines-Korea relations and the
main areas of cooperation between the two countries. He also cites the
significance of President Aquino’s state visit and other related activities like his
meetings with the business community and the Filipino community in South
Korea)
Ang masasabi ko lang if we compare Philippine-Korea relations with other relations of
the Philippines with other countries, I’d say that it will ranked as one of the top five. I’m
saying this because we have a very long history of bilateral relations. I guess it started
on August 8, 1949 when President Quirino proposed the creation of the Asian people
anti-Communist League and it was here in Korea, in Jinhae where we have the current
naval, Korea Naval Academy. It was there where this regional military alliance was
proposed by President Quirino was agreed upon by the Presidents of the Republic of
China, Chiang Kai Shek at that time, and President Syngman Rhee of South Korea.
So, that’s how our collaboration started but of course, we recognized Korea as a
Republic the year before that, March 3, 1948.
Then during the Korean War in 1950, we sent more than 7,000 troops over a 5-year
period. I believe that one of the reasons there is because the initiative to have this
military alliance in Asia was from the Philippines. And secondly, the President of the
United Nations, at that time, General Carlos Romulo, he was instrumental in rallying the
members of the United Nations to send troops here -- 16 countries responded including
the Philippines. Now after that, the truce was signed in 1953. We still sent two
battalions until 1955 to undertake relief and rehabilitations because the Philippines was
a member of the 7-man United Nations Team created by United Nations to undertake
relief and rehabilitation efforts here in Korean Peninsula.
But our engagement continued even after we have withdrawn all the military troops that
we have sent here and we sent engineers, as a matter of fact, some buildings which are
still standing here, including the US Embassy and the Ministry of Culture Information
and Sports. They were built by Filipino Engineers and of course, we sent a technicians
including people from IRRI so that we can introduce the appropriate rice variety,
suitable to the climate here in Korea.
So over the years, we have helped Korea in various forms including providing shelter to
North Korean Refugees who were bound for South Korea. And because of that, the
Koreans have treated us as blood brothers, practically blood brothers so therefore,
immediately after the Korean war, of course, the whole of Korea was ravaged, but now
as you can see, Korea is a very progressive country, it is the thirteenth largest economy
in the world. In Asia, they are the third after China and Japan. And then Korea is now
our major source of investments, trade, and in the area of ODA – in the past, between
2003 and 2007, the Grants and Aid that Korea sent to the Philippines averaged about 6
million a year. And it went up to 10 million up to 2010 and now, annually, it’s about
US$15 million, but in addition of course, they have been extending to us Soft Loans
during the visit of President Myung Bak in 2011, one of the agreements that was signed
was a Soft Loan Facility in the amount of half a billion US Dollars and these are mostly
being availed of by various Philippine agencies in terms of infrastructure facilities,
particularly relating to the agricultural sector.
On the area of multiculturalism, this is one policy of the Korean government that is being
given sharper focus, the reason is because as of now, there are about 1.4 million
immigrants living and working here in Korea.
As for the Filipinos who are married to Koreans, there are about 9,000 of them raising a
multicultural children. As a matter of fact, one very prominent Korean immigrant,
Jasmine Lee was elected last year to the Korean Parliament, he’s the first Korean of
immigrant descent who was selected to the National Assembly and we are proud of her
accomplishment because even before she was elected into office, she was already
involved in various NGOs, advocating the promotion of multiculturalism.
And to stress the importance of multiculturalism here in Korea, in 2006, they even came
up with a law on how to treat foreigners. This is unheard of course in the Philippines
because we come from a multicultural society, that is why the first impression of
Koreans whenever they come to the Philippines, that Filipinos are very welcoming that
is because we are used to seeing and treating, living with the foreigners. But in the
case of Korea, they have been a homogenous society for a very long time, and they’ve
never been used to seeing or having a foreigner living within their community. But now
things are changing, especially that many Korean companies – the big ones Samsung,
LG, Hyundai are global companies. So necessarily, they will have to interact with other
countries, and in that sense, we are also contributing to the promotion of
multiculturalism because many Koreans come to the Philippines to learn English to
prepare themselves for a globalized Korean and they do not only come to the
Philippines to learn English but many of them who are here, who because of time, and
their engagement not only in schools and their respective businesses, what they do is to
engaged the call center services in the Philippines wherein the teachers are in the call
centers and the students are here. It is known here as phone English – so they learn
English by phone and the teachers, the Filipinos are in the call centers in the
Philippines.
Well I guess in terms of tourism and their impression on the Philippines, I guess, you
know figures speak for themselves, Koreans are now the number one tourists in the
Philippines and this is no small fit, because if you look at the top four sources of tourists
who come to the Philippines, and I’m referring to the countries, of China, Japan, the US
and of course, Korea. If you look at the population of those four countries, the smallest
is Korea, but how come they are the top source of tourists for the Philippines. It is
because of this what we call this phenomenon of repeat tourists. We see in other
countries, they come to see the different sites, different attractions in that country, and
then after that, there are no more incentives to go back to that country, but in the case
of the Philippines, there is something that they found in the Philippines that keeps them
coming back. Well, I just mentioned one: education, but I know for a fact that many are
going to the Philippines over the weekend to play golf, for the ajummas or the women of
leisure, they come to us for shopping, for spa, and other entertainment activities. So
there are so many things that they like in the Philippines that’s why they keep on coming
back.
As a matter of fact, I’d like to think that the Department of Tourism has a big hand in
this. Because I remember in the mid-2000s, the Department of Tourism hired an
agency, Gallop – that conducted a poll here on the preferences of Koreans who have
been to the Philippines and based on the results of that survey, they came up with
different tourism promotional activities, and since then, before that, before the survey,
Koreans ranked us the third tourists in the Philippines but after the DOT has
implemented the various tourism programs, based on the recommendations of that
survey, they have retained that position for the last seven years.
So I would say that just by statistics alone, I would say that they have very high regard
for Filipinos because they keep on coming back, that’s one. Secondly, I believe that it’s
because of the historical ties that we have helped them during the Korean War. We
helped them during the rehabilitation of their country and now that they are in a position
to provide aid to other countries, being a member of the OECD countries, we are one of
the top destinations of their foreign aid.
The other factors that came out of in that survey of Gallop on the preferences of the
Koreans in coming to the Philippines, you wouldn’t believe this, but it came up as one of
the top five answers: the organic food that’s prevalent in the Philippines. Apparently,
while we take this for granted because we grow our vegetables organically, even our
fish farms and so on. So, apparently, these are the things that attracted the Koreans in
coming to the Philippines especially the seafood. That the seafood market where you
can find a lot of fresh seafood unlike here wherein the food from the seas that they buy
in the market are frozen. So that is one thing that is attracting Koreans in coming to the
Philippines.
Of course, the highlight of the visit would be a renewal of the ties that have been
strengthened over the years, as I said, Korean ranked very high in terms of Philippine
bilateral relations with the outside world – historically, you know in many other areas,
but I’d say that one area that we really have to work on would be the area of economic
relations. I say this because while our trade volume is quite high, it’s about US$8 billion.
But the balance of trade is in Korea’s favor. So we would like to narrow these gap and I
believe that the visit of the President would help a lot in the narrowing this gap in trade
relations, it’s about 3 billion. Of course we know for a fact that the main factor why we
have this gap is that a majority of our exports to Korea are raw materials while the
majority of exports of Korea to the Philippines are finished products. So one of the
things that will be taken up in this visit would be the assistance – ODA, transfer of
technology that we can benefit from Korea because they have been so far advanced in
a lot of areas regarding Research and Development, and in science and technologies.
One of the things that will be signed will be on military cooperation also. We know for a
fact that ever since President Aquino started his tenure, he has been advocating for the
modernization of our military, and Korea is one of our major sources of military
hardware. You know they have been winning several bids already in terms of military
hardware, the latest one was that of Kia of which they are now supplying us with military
trucks even ambulances. And on top of that, Korea has been donating a lot of military
hardware to us, I mean token, we buy them -- the range -- it’s between $1 to $100, you
cannot find them better bargain for one helicopter for $100.
One of them would be the defense cooperation. Of course, we had an MOU before on
defense logistics, I mean the procurement of arms and so on, but now we want to
upgrade that kind of relations. So in the defense cooperation agreement that will be
signed, areas to be covered would be in a exchange of visits, including scholarships for
our cadets, training and then exercises when it comes to humanitarian assistance. You
know, those kinds of activities so we are upgrading our relations with them. Of course,
we are in the exchange of visits that will also involve exchange of information.
Not on the president himself but the on the father of the President, the President will
visit the War Memorial where Korea, well, we have this museum in honor of, not only
Korean Veterans of the war, but all of the 16 countries that came here to help Korea
restore peace and freedom, and the Philippines is one of the 16 countries that sent
troops here, but of course, we did not only send troops here, in case of Senator Benigno
Aquino Jr., he was here as a journalist when he was only about 17 years old.
So the conferment of this distinction of appreciation would be on the father’s President
for his contribution in promoting peace inthe Korean Peninsula, through the articles that
he wrote for the Manila Times. But which were picked up also by international media.
But of course, President, I mean the father of the President, his involvement with Korea
continued long after he was sent here because I remember when he was in exile in
Boston, he has a very good friend who happen to be also a political exile from South
Korea, and I’m referring to President Kim Dae Jung. They were the best of friends when
they were exiled, when they were both exiled in Boston. As a matter of fact, some
Koreans that I’ve talked to here told me that when Senator Aquino decided to come
back to the Philippines, he left a memento, he left a gift, token gift to Kim Dae Jung his
manual typewriter so that is why I remember a few years back when President Kim Dae
Jung died, the official mourner that we sent here was not even a government official but
the brother of Senator Aquino and I’m referring to Butch Aquino, he was no longer a
senator but he came here, he was sent here by our government as the official mourner
because he was not only a previous senator but the family is a very good friend of their
kids.
That is why I mentioned earlier that this is going to be the highlight of the visit of the
President. You know, this Presidential visits would always necessarily involved selling
the Philippines. So in this case, the President will be selling the Philippines to be the
big conglomerates here in Korea. Some of them have already decided to expand their
operation and I’m referring to KEPCO who has been in the Philippines since the early
‘90s and I believe that 15% of the energy supply in the Philippines is being supplied by
KEPCO. And the President will hear their plans for expansion, now there are four other
big businessmen whom the President will meet, but basically, these other
conglomerates have undertaken already their various studies, feasibility studies on
possible investments especially in the real estate, in the leisure tourism industry and
there is also a financing agency that is looking into areas of investment also in the
Philippines.
These are the representatives of the various business sectors that the President will
meet. If I can mention, the last state visit that was done by a previous President in 2002,
during that time, President Arroyo talked with the chairman of Hanjin. At that time,
Hanjin has no definite plans yet on the Philippines but four years after, they have
decided to put up their shipyard so I hope that the same thing will happen in the talks of
the President will conduct with the businessmen who are giving a sharper focus on the
investment opportunities in the Philippines especially considering the fact that we have
very good economic indicators as compared with the rest of Asia, and of course the rest
of the world.
We have 45,000 Filipinos who are here in Korea, half of them are employed in factories
by virtue of this bilateral labor agreement that we have with Korea which is under their
law on the Employment Permit System. I’d say that this is a very good template in our
labor relations with other countries because in this case, the rights being extended to
Korean workers are the same rights if not more that are extended to Filipino workers.
So, practically, this means that the basic minimum wage which is about more or less
about US$1,000 per month, is also extended to the Filipino worker, of course they get
more because of the overtime pay and some meal allowances and also free
accommodation and so on. So, they get a lot of benefits including health insurance,
pension and so on.
But I’d say that the greatest benefit that we obtained there is that there are only two
agencies that the worker has to deal with. In the Philippines, they don’t have to go with
the, they don’t have to pass through private recruiters, there is only one recruiter which
is the POEA. And here, there is only one agency that they have to deal with them which
is the Ministry of Labor and Employment, it’s the Ministry that employs them. It is also
the Ministry that provides shelters and counselling centers to them. As you see, we
have Philippine Law that mandates Philippine embassies with big Filipino population to
rent a place that could serve as a halfway home or a shelter for Filipinos.
In our case, that is being taken cared of by the Korean government, while we do have
other shelters, but the ones whom we shelter there are practically not workers but the
other sectors of Filipinos who come here like tourists or those married to Koreans or
traffic victims and so on but the workers, they avail of the shelters and counselling
centers being provided by the Korean government.
Now the second largest group of Filipinos who are here, about 9,000 of them are what
we call the marriage migrant -- Filipinas married to Koreans. Now, we have a sprinkling
of professionals mostly engineers, we have 500 Filipino students who are enrolled in
various universities here, we also have religious workers – about 300 of them and then
the sectors of the entertainers, there are several I think about 2,000 who are here. So
as you can see the profile of Filipinos who are here is varied but we have organized, we
have encouraged them to organize themselves into Filipino Community groups so that
we can communicate with a large number of Filipinos through their associations. We
have about 87 Filipino associations as of now.
Well as to the preparations of the Filipino community here for the visit of the President,
of course, many of them are very excited, they came to know about this of course in the
news which came out about two weeks ago, but most especially during the visit of Press
Secretary Lacierda, he came here together with Usec. Valte about two weeks ago, I
understand that this is going to be a regular activity of the Office of the Press secretary
wherein he will be visiting various Filipino communities abroad but we were fortunate
that he chose Korea as the first country to have this meeting with the leaders of the
Filipino community.
So during that meeting, of course it was officially announced to the leaders of the
Filipino community that this is going to be this Presidential visit. Of course, many of
them are excited because it is very seldom that they get to meet the highest official of
the land. Now, what we did is we targeted a certain number of people who could come,
so since we have this social networking facility here through Facebook and e-mail, we
asked them to register and after we reached a critical number and then we have closed
the registration so that those indicated their availability to come on the 18 th of this
month, will have the pleasure of course of meeting the President.
And of course in that activity, I will be presenting to the President the five years
accomplishment of the Filipino Community organizations here in Korea. Because you
know here in Korea, a major issue that is facing the Filipino community here is that
whenever we have this threat coming from the North, that’s technically speaking the war
has not ended yet because what was signed in 1953 was an armistice agreement. So
there is always this regular threats coming from the North. So it’s not that they are
concern about this threats, but they become concerned because many of the relatives
in the Philippines kept on calling them, even the pronouncements of the government in
the Philippine media, you know, tend to be quite alarming to the point that they become
concerned also, but in a sense, they have observed here that the Koreans go on with
their daily lives. So in a sense, somehow they are placated because what they see
around them is that things that are normal.
But even then we have to prepare for contingency measures, and I’m glad that while we
have prepared this contingency plan, but basically it will involved a lot of volunteerism
from the various Filipino Community groups and we are happy to note that many of
them have declared their willingness to volunteer in helping come up with this
preparations in case of the need to evacuate Filipino communities.
This pension service, there was this agreement signed in 2005 between Korea and the
Philippines on the mutual recognition of the pension service. So, in effect the Koreans
working in the Philippines – they would be able to avail of the pension service through
the SSS, in the same manner that even before that agreement, the Filipinos here are
already enjoying the national pension service here – NPS. As a matter of fact, those
who have completed their contracts were able to collect the payments that they have
made during the contract period which is an average of about four years.
Now other than the agreement signed in 2005, they will not be able to collect their
pension anymore upon departure from Korea but will have to wait until they turn 60, and
then transact with SSS in the Philippines so that their pension would be given to them.
So basically the concern of the Filipinos here is that since many of them are young, in
their 20s, in early 30s, they wanted to avail of the status quo, meaning they wanted to
be able to withdraw that pension that they have subscribed to over their contract period
because they’d be using that as a form of investment when they come back home. So
the status now is that while it was already ratified by the Korean government, the
Philippine government has not yet ratified, but we have taken note of the concerns of
the Filipinos who are living and working here and the various agencies in the Philippines
are now reviewing the agreement and would come up with a common position so that
we can request the Korean side for a review of the terms. Basically that ... shared that i
just mentioned, if there would be a facility for them to be able to withdraw, you know,
their pension premiums upon completion of the contract.
At the moment, it is being reviewed by various agencies, it was submitted to the Senate
but at the same time, the Filipinos who are here submitted a petition to the Senate, I
know, regarding their concerns. But the thing is it has not been tabled for discussion by
the senate. As you can see, it was signed in 2005, now it’s 2013 and it’s still hanging in
the air. But there are two parties involved here – Koreans working in the Philippines and
Filipinos working here in Korea. So at the moment, it’s only the Filipino workers who
are here who are enjoying the benefits of this pension system, not the Koreans who are
working in the Philippines. So that is the essence of the agreement – you know, it is a
two-way agreement that will benefit both parties considering the fact that there are more
Koreans in the Philippines, I think three times the number of Filipinos here are the
number of Koreans who are in the Philippines.
I’m glad that the President of the Republic of the Philippines, President Benigno
‘Simeon’ Aquino III would be visiting Korea because the last time that we had a state
visit was more than ten years ago. So I’d say that its highly about time that we have
another visit here to reciprocate the visit made in 2011 by former President Myung Bak
of Korea. I’m saying this because Korea is one of our major partners when it comes to
various areas not only in politics, economics, even security arrangements, people to
people contact where we are very strong. As a matter of fact, Korea is now the number
one tourists in the Philippines for the last seven years.
So practically I would say that the Koreans treat us as blood brothers because of the
tremendous help that we have given to them especially during the Korean war and the
rehabilitation of Korean immediately after the war.
So the visit of the President would be highly significant in the sense that the two
Presidents will be exchanging this renewal of commitment to mutually help each other
and I believe that from here on, especially considering the fact now that the ... in the
Philippines is taking of, we will have more interaction and the other point that I would
like to mention here is that there is a new President here in Korea who begun her term
of office in February of this year President Park Geun-Hye, and one of the highlights of
her foreign policy in as far as Asia is concerned is that she has identified three countries
as the target of intensified cooperation especially in the area of economic cooperation
and Korea terms this as the VIPs, V - for Vietnam, I - for Indonesia and P - for the
Philippines. That is why the first few countries visited by Pres. Park Geun-Hye was
Vietnam and most recently, Indonesia and now President Aquino is making a State Visit
here.
It is a testament to the fact that Korea has noticed vast improvements and great
economic developments in these three countries. And I’d say that it’s not only limited in
the economic area but most especially in the people to people contact in the Aid
program, in the military cooperation especially for the Philippines because this is one of
the things that will be signed during the visit. But I believe that this will be a testament to
the long lasting friendship between the Philippines and Korea. Thank you very much.
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