Korea has a strategically important relationship with Lebanon, by virtue of its 350-strong troop contingent deployed there since 2007 to help oversee a United Nations peacekeeping operation.

But that relationship will now likely further expand into areas of art and culture with newly arrived Lebanese Ambassador to Korea Jad El-Hassan.

El-Hassan is keenly interested in traditional Korean furniture and art, and he wants to make artistic exchanges an integral part of his posting here.

“I would like to promote this kind of exchange of Lebanese and Korean artists,” he said during an interview with The Korea Herald on Wednesday.

El-Hassan arrived in Korea on June 22, and was still in the process of moving into his new residence with boxes waiting to be unpacked and paintings to be hung up. His love for art, however, drove him to purchase three paintings by local artists Han Eun-hye and Lee Kyu-yeong, which were some of the first to find a place on the walls of his living room and dining room. 

“I like portraits,” he said, pointing to one on the wall. “This is a Korean shaman, and (artist Han Eun-hye) has a unique way of depicting her facial expressions.”

“I liked the way he interpreted nature in Korea,” El-Hassan said, gesturing over a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade toward a delicately framed painting of Cheongsando on the wall by artist Lee Kyu-yeong.

“I have three paintings now and this is only the beginning,” he said.

El-Hassan, 58, a career diplomat with a posting in the Czech Republic from 2007-2009 as ambassador and, more recently, three years’ experience as director-general of international affairs in Lebanon’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said he had requested the posting here.

“In fact this is my second time to come to Korea,” he said. “I occupied the former ambassador’s place for two months when he was on vacation in 2010. It was this experience that inspired me to request a posting in Korea.”

“The positive impression I experienced of the people, the institutions, the beauty of the country’s nature, and the simplicity, kindness and hospitality of the people, inspired me,” he said.

El-Hassan’s Korea posting is not his first in East Asia. He served as Charge d’Affairs for six months in Japan early in his career in the 1980s, and he now also speaks Japanese, as well as English, Italian and French in addition to his mother tongue of Arabic.

“I always wanted to come back for more experience in the Far East,” he said. “My immediate goals are to enhance relations between our two nations and our two countries and to promote these relations.”

However, El-Hassan’s wife stayed in Lebanon with their two sons, who were both born in the United States, and are attending school there.

Korea and Lebanon started diplomatic relations in 1981.

The two nations deepened those relations in 1994 when the Middle Eastern country opened an embassy in Seoul and closed its embassy in Pyongyang. North Korea, moved its diplomatic relations with Lebanon to its mission in Syria.

The government voted in October to extend its peacekeeping operation, dubbed its “Dongmyeong” Unit, which means “Light from the East” in Korean, through August 2013 following the United Nations Security Council’s decision to extend the mission there.

The Dongmyeong Unit was dispatched to the Middle East country in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 calling for 15,000 peacekeepers ― United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), to monitor a cease-fire agreement formed in the aftermath of bloody clashes between southern Lebanon, Hezabollah and Israel.

Dongmyeong’s medical team has treated 50,000 local patients as of Nov. 1 over the last five years, according to a press release by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Since the inception of this operation, they have done an excellent job, first in the military role assigned to them, and also on the social level,” he said. “They have five doctors with them and are helping people in the communities they are in.”

El-Hassan said that the new commander paid him a courtesy visit about two weeks ago before departing for the Dongmyeong Unit he was assigned to lead through August 2013.

El-Hassan said Korea had achieved a lot in a short time.

“(Korea) has been a member of the United Nations since just 1991, and they are non-permanent members of the U.N. Security Council for the second time,” he said. “This is quite impressive.”

“Korea is also an excellent example of soft power, the ability to persuade others to do what you want, without using force,” he said. “Diplomacy is all about achieving your goal in a humble way, by reaching out to other cultures, interaction between nations.”

El-Hassan will present his Letter of Credence to President Lee Myung-bak in the coming weeks.

By Philip Iglauer (ephilip2011@heraldcorp.com)