It was my 4th time attending the colloquium, and the guest speaker, Ambassador of Sri Lanka came to South Korea. Mr. Tissa Wijeratne talked about the beauty of Sri Lanka that I did not know of before. However, as I listened to the colloquium, the way I viewed the country has changed. The most impressive one was about the tourist spots because for me, it was never really famous for tourism. And luckily, according to the speaker, the civil war ended in 2009 - 3 years ago, and because of that, Sri Lanka’s tourism industry boomed.
Moreover, Mr. Wijeratne shared a lot of information, especially places where tourists can enjoy Sri Lanka. This includes: beaches, heritage sites, scenic beauty and so on. And for me, beaches were most interesting places, although I am from Busan, near the Haeundae, I never go there because it is so crowded. I am also interested in animals, and Mr. Wijeratne introduced us about wild life of Sri Lanka, and it looked really fantastic. Usually Koreans thinks that we need to go to zoo or other places like the amazon, or national park of other countries like USA or Africa. But the fact that we do not need to go that far away seemed really attractive. In his speech, these two things were the most interesting thing to me.
Even though he spoke about a lot of other things, I do not remember all the things he discussed, however, the only question that I still remember was about civil war given by other student who was curious about the conflict, if it is still going on, even though the Sri Lankan government declared it has ended. And the speaker carefully answered the question, mentioning the problem like race, belief and so on. I thought it was really amazing to ask, and to be answered. So finally I could understand what Sri Lanka really is.
by Han Sang Geun
Class 4-3 (Prof. Roger)
