Celebrating the New Year with Our Online Friends

[성김 대사]

As many of you know, at the Embassy we place a lot of value on our online connections.  We encourage our friends on social media to interact with us, to share their feedback and ask questions.  I’ve been proud to see our online communities grow throughout my time in Korea, but I have always thought that interacting strictly online can only take us so far.

So when our me2day friend Lee Hayoung asked me through “Ask the Ambassador” whether I was willing to meet with online friends offline, I thought it would be a great chance to strengthen our connections even further.  

With that, I asked the Embassy’s terrific social media team to organize a special New Year’s party at our residence just for my online friends – and of course, we invited Hayoung.

The invitation to the Embassy’s SNS friends

Altogether, the Embassy’s various social media accounts have over 35,000 followers, and several hundred expressed interest in attending the party.  In order to allow more personal interaction and meaningful dialogue, we had to limit participation to around 20 followers.  I was pleased to see such diversity among those who joined us.  The group included a Japanese executive, an American who is the only foreign employee at the Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO), an American senior manager from Samsung, a Mongolian student, two Korean high school students, a university professor, an intern, a successful young entrepreneur and some other very bright young Koreans, not just from Seoul, but from all over the country.  And not surprisingly, the questions they asked me were just as diverse and impressive. 

Celebrating the New Year with our SNS friends at the Habib House

The centerpiece of this get-together was the question-and-answer session, which we actually filmed so we can turn it into the next “Ask the Ambassador” video.  So stay tuned for that! 

The event also gave us a great chance to mingle informally, which allowed me to answer additional questions.  I am glad that I got to speak to each and every person who attended the party. 

The 20 invitees who made it to our SNS New Year’s Party!

All of the questions were interesting, but one sticks out in my mind: What is your mother like?  How did she raise you and what impact has she had on your life?   

My answer was a story.  When I was traveling in the U.S. recently, a Korean journalist who covered one of my events complained that my comments were a little too cautious and did not provide him interesting material for his article.  But he went on to say that he was delighted when he met my mother at the event.  He was impressed by my mother’s quiet strength, modesty and unconditional love for me.  I think this story says it all about my mom!

Our party with online friends also featured an excellent piano recital by a former Korean intern at the Embassy who is now attending university in the U.S.  And in true American fashion, we finished the night with a very competitive white elephant gift exchange. 

At first, the white elephant started out slow because people were being so considerate, but after about the eighth present it became a free-for-all.  The most-wanted present seemed to be a very nice book of American art which must have been “stolen” five times! 

Gifts under the tree for the white elephant game!

At this event, I was asked if I would like to continue this kind of online/offline engagement.  It’s a question that many of you have asked as well, through comments on my blog or over social media.  So let me finish this blog by saying I think these kinds of meet-ups are great, so we will try to arrange them on a more regular basis.

Thank you all for reading my blog and watching my “Ask the Ambassador” videos throughout the past year.  And I hope you have a very happy New Year!