ASIAN TOUR 1967 18APRI-L
KOILE v
SPEECH 3Y THE PRIME VINI3STER, MRi. iiROLD HOLT
AT DIIFER PARTY IN SEOUL 8TH APRIL, 19 7
Prime Minister Chung, Mrs. Chung, Your Excellencies, Ladies and
Jentlemen: I am delighted to have this opportunity on oehalf of the
Australian Jovernment Iand the Australian Embassy, my colleagues
from Australia of the official party and of the press who are here
with me toni ht to be able to repay in the least fractional
measure the kindness and hospitality, Mr. Prime Minister, that we
have received from your Jovernment and your people. I am afraid
this is only fractional in more senses than one. I am not able to
offer you for example the delightful after-dinner entertainment
with which you regaled us last ni; ht. Even if you were to come to
Australia I question whether we could entertain you as delightfully
as w: e were last evening. It will be a memory we will carry with
us and treasure for many years to come.
He are now near the end not only of our visit to your own
country but of the journey on which we set out some twelve days
ago to visit four o the countries of this area, neighbouring
countries, friendly countries and it has beun for all of us,
I am sure a most enthralling experience. I spoke Last niiht
on what already had occurred to inform and interest us in the
course of our visit to you, and this has been built on today by
our visit to the South of your country.
The weather in a sense was not timed, but I come from a
very arid continent, and I have learned to welcome rain whenever
it comes because rain means good fortune for somebody. At least
I think you are assured of good crops as a result of the rain
which we have encountered here today. I am only sad, and I pass
my s mpathy and that of my colleagues to you that perhaps it
was he result of the difficult conditions which we ourselves
experienced in our own flying that you have suffered this tragic
disaster from the air, which has caused the loss of. so many lives.
Please accept, Prime Minister, our sympathy in this tragic event.
Our first visit to the United Nations Cemetery at Pusan
was a poignant reminder to us of our friendship. I h-id said
yesterday that I understood there was a cemetery here, where one
in every ten of the graves was an Australian grave, and I went
there today. The Officer in charge of the Cemetery for the United
Nations said it was one in six of the graves which .; ts Australian,
and that is a reminder to us of our comradeship in more difficult
times but a comradeship which laid the firm foundations of a
friendship on which we have been aole to ouild ever since that time.
Then, coming from a country which itself has enjoyed great
industrial development over recent years, it was a stimulating
thing to go to Ulsan and see there the tremendous industriil growth
which, thanks to the imaginative vision and drive of your great
President and of your own leadership and -overnment you have
created in a matter of a few years. You now have tre oeginnings of an
industrial complex which will fortify the economic strength of your
country. Already you have, as I understand it perhaps the largest
urea fertiliser plant in the world, a great refinery, and other
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industries with more to follow. As we drove there, despite the rain,
we found friendly people wherever we went. We found the beautiful
countryside which is a part of your great heritage in this
wonderful country.
So all this adds together to ouild a memorable experience
for us. As we come to the end of this journey in Korea my
over-riding impression is first of the friendliness of your people,
the warmth of which his greeted us wherever we have moved. My
other impression is of the strength of your people their
determination to preserve their Korean identity, tAeir determination
to preserve the way of life they treasure. They have shown that
they can and will resist those who would submerge that way of life
in an oppressive communist dictatorship, and they have a determination
not merely to maintain this country as a secure country and a free
country, out to develop it and make it a better country for its
citizens to live as a growing and strong member of the unity of
free nations. May I just add by way of a concluding comment it may be
of some interest to you because I think it is a happy augury for
our future in this region of the world that my journeys have
taken me to four different countries as well as officia encounters
in Hong Kong and Singapore, and at no point have we found a hostile
banner, a hostile voice, a hostile look.
I, as a representative of a country which has European
tradition and origin but -shich is happy to find itself part of the
geographical unity which is Asia have seen warmth and friendliness
wherever I have gone. Nowhere, Prime Minister, have we been
received with more warmtn and more friendline. s than in this country
of Korea, hitherto unexplored by an Australian Prime Minister. I
thank you and your people Mr. Prime Minister for the hospitality which
you have extended to us. I express the confident hope that these
sound foundations of friendship will be built upon in the years
ahead, and make for our two countries a continuing bond which will
be built with strength for the area as a whole.
In that spirit I invite you all to join with me in honouring
a toast to the President of your friendly country of Korea and
Mrs. Chung, their colleagues in the Jovernment, and the people of
Korea whom we honour and with whom , we live in peace. I give you that
toast.