You might have caught a headline earlier in the month about Busan being home to Asia’s first holocaust museum, housed in the newly-opened Busan Israel House cultural center.

Michael Fraiman has put together an interesting piece for Busan Haps about how it came to be –including an interview with the founder, Jay Kronish.

Basically, the Israeli ambassador gave Kronish and his Korean wife Keum-won the marching orders, but not the government funding, so he had to practically go door to door in Israel raising funds and acquiring exhibit material.

An interesting part of the piece:

Israel’s relationship with South Korea has developed strangely and quickly in the last decade. Israelis have in fact been thirsting for Korean culture since 2003, when My Lovely Sam Soon, an internationally popular Korean drama, hit the Holy Land with force. As recently as 2011, Israeli Hallyu fans were starting to cook Korean meals they’d seen on TV.

According to a recent Jerusalem Post article, around 40,000 Koreans visited Israel in 2012, more than any other Asian country. Only 12,000 Israeli tourists reciprocated, which doesn’t sound significant until one recalls that Israel’s population is 7.6 million, roughly one seventh of South Korea’s.

You can read the rest here.