New Delhi: When asked if South Korea was keen on “a high-level participation” in the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya in January next year, its ambassador to India, Chang Jae-Bok said the temple city was “very important, historically” for both countries.
“You will have a very important inauguration of (the) Ram temple in Ayodhya. For now, to have a high-level representation…the central government or the UP (Uttar Pradesh) government should elaborate on the programme,” he said at a press conference Tuesday.
He added: “However, we will work on that (South Korean high-level participation), if the Government of India issues the invitation for the Ram temple inauguration.”
What the ambassador was referring to is a legendary tale in South Korea of a 1st-century princess from Ayodhya, Suriratna, who left the Indian shores to marry Korean king Kim Suro. The legend is often cited when the diplomatic relationship between the two countries is discussed, with experts claiming that it acts as a cultural bridge to shore up their ties.
For instance, Chang’s predecessor Shin Bongkil had made similar remarks just before the bhoomi pujan (ground-breaking) ceremony of the Ram Temple in August 2020.
ThePrint takes a look at how Ayodhya — believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram — has played a significant role in the Indian-South Korean diplomatic landscape.
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The legend of Suriratna
On its website, the Indian Embassy in South Korea narrates a tale of how Suriratna undertook a long sea voyage to Korea with her brother Monk Jangyu in the year 48 AD to marry Korean king Kim Suro and eventually came to be known as Queen Heo Hwang-ok.
For its authority, the website cites Samguk Yusa (Heritage History of the Three Kingdoms), a 13th-century collection of legends, folktales, and historical accounts from the three kingdoms of Korea — Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla.
In an academic paper published in 2019 in the Indian journal The Geographer, P.B Rana Singh, a professor of cultural geography and heritage studies at Banaras Hindu University, and Sarvesh Kumar, an assistant professor of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gorakhpur University, further elaborate on the legend.
According to the authors, Princess Suriratna was “born in the city of Ayuta/Ayodhya (India), named Sa keta in the ancient period” and reached Korea when she was 16. The paper also says that the queen’s husband King Suro of Geumgwan Gaya — believed to be located around the present-day Gimhae city in the southeastern part of Korea — had founded the ancient Karak kingdom.
The authors draw on not only the phonetic similarities between the names ‘Ayuta’ and ‘Ayodhya’ but also their emblems — a pair of fish.
While the twin fish is the official symbol of the state of Uttar Pradesh, where Ayodhya is located, the emblem can also be found in several places in South Korea, such as the tomb of Queen Heo Kwang-Ok in Gimhae City.
Ambassador Chang also alluded to the phonetic similarity between Ayuta and Ayodhya.
“In one history book, it was mentioned that a princess from Ayodhya… I don’t know if Ayodhya is Ayuta or not, but in the Korean language, it’s Ayuta. But many people guess that Ayodhya was Ayuta,” he said.
According to a report in the BBC in 2018, the royal couple went on to have 10 children, thus establishing the Kim or Karak clan. The report also quotes historians saying the descendants of the couple number more than six million — roughly 10 percent of the South Korean population.
The Indian embassy website also supplements this narrative, stating that “many Koreans trace their ancestry to this lineage”. “Some scholars believe that Buddhism reached Korea via the maritime route with the arrival of Princess Suriratna and her brother Monk Jangyu,” the website says.
Fact, or fable?
In 2010, Byung Mo Kim, professor Emeritus of South Korea’s Hanyang University and a national archeologist, claimed he shared genes with the royal family of Ayodhya. For 40 years, Byung had been tracing the route that the princess had taken to Gimhae city, he told The Indian Express. The Korean professor passed away in 2020.
Like the 2019 academic paper, Byung also drew evidence from cultural symbols, such as the twin fish. According to him, the symbol, originally from the Mediterranean states, could be found everywhere in Ayodhya’s historic buildings. A similar symbol could also be found at the gate of the royal tomb of King Suro in Gimhae city, the professor had told The Indian Express.
During one of his visits to Ayodhya, he reportedly said he had “all the evidence to culturally connect the two cities”.
Evidence of such links can also be found in South Korea, according to Shin, the former Korean envoy to India. During his remarks before the bhoomi pujan of the Ram Temple in 2020, he said artefacts from the ancient kingdom of Ayodhya have been part of archaeological findings from the king’s tomb.
But there are also conflicting claims about where the queen was from, or if she did indeed exist at all.
Experts suggest there is some evidence to suggest that Queen Heo could be from Tamil Nadu. This necessitates further research, Abhishek Ranjan, a doctoral research scholar of Korean Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), told ThePrint.
Media reports also suggest that there is no mention of Queen Heo’s connection with the Ayuta kingdom anywhere other than Samguk Yusa, and even that doesn’t mention precisely where Ayuta is located.
Meanwhile, the 2018 BBC report mentions that there is no clear evidence to suggest that Princess Suriratna existed at all. “Her origin story is considered to be mythical and is not considered to be history by academics,” the BBC report quotes its Korean Service journalist David Cann as saying.
How it has shaped India-Korea diplomatic ties
Consular relations between India and Korea existed since 1962 and diplomatic ties since 1973. But it was in 2000 that Ayodhya featured prominently in the relationship. This was because of an agreement that India and South Korea signed to develop Ayodhya and Gimhae as sister cities.
The following year, a memorial for the Indian princess was inaugurated in Ayodhya on the west bank of the Saryu. The event was also attended by the North Korean ambassador.
According to Vyjayanti Raghavan, a retired professor of JNU’s Centre for Korean Studies, Ayodhya’s prominence in the bilateral ties needs to be looked at in the backdrop of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
The Asian financial crisis of 1997 was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of East and Southeast Asia during the late 1990s, starting with Thailand. The crisis severely affected the Korean economy and, according to Raghavan, South Korea began falling back on cultural ties to help patch up their finances.
“It was around the time when Korean investments were picking up after the Asian financial crisis. The country needed to capture the market again and while building bilateral ties, South Korea also turned to cultural and historical relationships,” she told ThePrint.
Ayodhya and the legend of Queen Heo have been a perennial presence in the diplomatic scene between India and South Korea since the early 2000s.
In 2018, the former first lady of Korea, Kim Jung-sook, visited Ayodhya and was the chief guest at the famed Deepotsav event there. She also led the bhoomi pujan for a new memorial of Queen Suriratna in Ayodhya — a joint project between the two countries.
According to JNU’s Ranjan, the focus on such cultural links between countries shows the relevance of soft power in international relations. “The relations between India and South Korea have evolved to Track 2 diplomacy which involves people-to-people ties, which further amplify if substantiated with cultural ties,” he told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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