My name is Haram Park, and I am a 2nd year student studying in Seoul National University, majoring in international relations and political science. I left Korea when I was about two years old, off on a journey which would take me to Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and finally, the Middle Eastern country of Jordan. Most of my childhood memories are associated with that place, where I spent a total of eleven years, beginning from the second year of elementary school to the year when I received my high school diploma.
If there is one lesson that I have learned during my time abroad, it would be that there are always two sides to every conflict and it is of the utmost importance to appreciate the viewpoints of both parties. As a country that has always warmly accepted refugees, Jordan has inside its borders a large number of Palestinian refugees, a number which has steadily increased ever since the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Under such circumstances, it is unsurprising that the majority of the public harbor a great dislike regarding Israel, a point of view that has been passed on from generation to generation. To the Jordanian and Arab public in general, the existence of the state of Israel is an abomination, a representation of the humiliation suffered by the people in the past and a memory of all that has been lost.
When one lives in a foreign country from a young age, it is easy to empathize with the inhabitants of that country. The same was true for me; having been brought up in Jordan in a neighborhood where almost everyone was of Palestinian origin, I had long since established that Israel was the enemy. I would have remained this way if it was not for the fact that colleges in Korea begin their semesters in March, whereas schools in Jordan graduate sometime during June. Therefore, I was given a nine-month gap of free time, in which, I travelled to Israel, where I would study Hebrew for six months.
Once there, I soon learned that I rather enjoyed living in the country, and that the people that I had learned to hate as a young man were in fact rather pleasant, not much different from the people that I had grown up with. I realized that no matter how truthful my Palestinian friends could be, all they were willing to do, and perhaps even capable of, was to tell me their side of the story. The people of Israel have their own story to tell, and while I cannot labor into its complete details, it is undoubtedly one of the most elongated and painful stories in history. As a result, its people have developed an iron will to survive and protect, perhaps making it inevitable for conflict to arise.
It is not in my place to comment regarding the right or wrong in this issue. All I can say is that it has been a valuable experience for me to witness first hand one of the greatest conflicts in history from both sides. It has been a great pleasure for me to share my experience in the Middle East.
