Seoul to Dakar: Olympic Ties Bring Korea and Senegal Closer

Shortly after taking up my post as ambassador to Senegal, I met the chairman of the organizing committee for the Dakar Youth Olympic Games. He told me the role model for this year’s Games in Dakar is the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Senegal, he said, wants to recreate Korea’s experience — an Olympics that became a focal point for national development, generated momentum for growth, and brought together a world divided between East and West in a setting of peace, harmony and solidarity. He added that the committee had visited Korea several times to learn from the country’s more recent experience in successfully staging the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics and the 2024 Gangwon Youth Olympics.

Senegal, at the western tip of the African continent, has long served as the gateway to West Africa. Above all, it stands as a model of democracy in the region, having gone through peaceful transfers of power by election without a single coup since independence in 1960. It lies far from Korea geographically, yet much of the hairtail on Korean dinner tables comes from these waters. More recently, Senegal has grown more familiar to Koreans through figures such as Paco, known for his acrobatics at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and Kaani, a choreographer for Beyoncé.

Since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1962, Korean business people who settled in Senegal, along with development cooperation agencies including the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), have shared Korea’s development experience and sustained cooperation across fields ranging from agriculture and fisheries to education, health and medical care. In June last year, Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye visited a KOICA rice value chain project underway in the northern region of Saint-Louis, where he stressed that Korea and Senegal were producing tangible results in agriculture and other areas and building an excellent partnership.

Interest and enthusiasm among young Senegalese for Korean culture and products — K-pop, Korean food and dramas — has grown noticeably warmer of late. The Korea Week events and K-pop festival the embassy holds each year draw about 1,000 local residents, and clubs of young Senegalese who love Korean culture organize their own events to promote and enjoy it.

Senegal, whose potential for cooperation with Korea is growing by the day, will host the Dakar Youth Olympic Games — the first Olympics on African soil — for two weeks starting on the 31st of next month. With its pride in “Teranga,” a spirit of warm hospitality toward guests, Senegal is well suited to welcoming young athletes from around the world. As in Seoul in 1988, pride and anticipation are palpable across Senegal ahead of the Games, which promise to be a springboard for the country and the continent. The Korean Embassy in Senegal and the Korean community here will do their utmost to support a successful showing at the Games.

In the official theme song “Teranga,” the popular Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour sings: “Teranga Dakar, Dalal ak jamm, Amal yakaar, football ak xale yi” — Dakar of Teranga, welcome in peace, do not lose hope, sport and the young are together. I hope the Dakar Youth Olympics will spread a message of peace and hope around the world, and that the Olympic thread running from Seoul and Gangwon to Dakar becomes an opportunity to further strengthen cooperation between our two countries.