9th ACC Reporters Corps

TharangaRanasinghe, a Reporter from Sri Lanka Working in the Overseas Team

It has been four months since the 9th ACC Reporters Corps started their work.

Reporters of the ACC Reporters Corps have worked hard to publicize the Asia Culture Center (ACC) both at home and abroad and to rapidly report live news and information on exchanges of Asian cultures.

Do you know that there are foreign student reporters in Korea, other than Korean counterparts?

The ACC Reporters Corps is producing English articles to convey news and information about the ACC through the ACC English website and SNS (social-networking services) to as many people as possible both in Korea and overseas.

This time, we have looked into the world of a reporter.

The ACC foreign reporter met for this article is Tharanga Ranasinghe from Sri Lanka, the Pearl of the Indian Ocean.

There was an exhibition, entitled “Rabindranath Tagore: The Art and Life of a Cosmopolitan” held on June 15th at Library Park inside the ACC Archive & Research, as an exchange program with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.

Tharanga showed up at the site to gather information on this event, and we followed him around throughout the entire reporting process to see how the reporting is done.

The event was scheduled for 2 p.m.. He was already on site, waiting for the exhibition to start and fully ready with one hand holding a notebook, the other a pen, and a camera hung around his neck. When the opening ceremony began, he started to write down and capture every little detail. His serious looks and busy footsteps moving around the site for perfect photos epitomized a professional reporter. As the event proceeded, it was only after the opening ceremony that an interview with the reporter was finally conducted.

Q. You speak Korean very fluently. I heard you have stayed in Korea for quite a long time. What made you come here?

I was a librarian at a university library in Sri Lanka ten years ago. A KOICA volunteer came as a librarian and we worked together for two years.

I started to take an interest in Korea thanks to the volunteer at first, and in 2008, I found out about a cultural partner project, run by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, which gave me a chance to work at the National Museum of Korea for six months. After the training program, I returned to Sri Lanka, but I missed Korea and wanted to study here again. So I came back in 2014 for a doctorate with a government scholarship upon the completion of the master’s course.

Q. You have maintained a long relationship with Korea. How did you find out about the ACC and why did you apply for this position?

Soon after I started my course in Korea, I saw TV news on the opening of the ACC. I got curious, so I visited its website and read the job posting for the ACC Reporters Corps. It was during the winter vacation, and I had enough time on my hand, so I visited the facilities. It was larger than expected and had a wide range of infrastructure, giving me a chance to take a peek at the potentials of Asian cultures. I acquired more information on the ACC and their programs during my visit.

My major is library and information science, so I already had an interest in Library Park and in music, traditions, and arts. What the ACC Reporters Corps does was what I wanted, so it was destiny for me to apply.

Q. As far as I know, the competition was fierce to become a reporter for the ACC Reporters Corps. How did you feel when you found out that you got the job?

When I first applied, the ACC had only the Korean website, not the English one, so it took me a while to understand the contents, and the tasks required for the application were not easy at all. After reading the application requirements several times, I managed to understand them but still had difficulties in working on a video clip and the application form. In the process, I frequently checked the website and watched the YouTube video to study and make preparations. Because I invested a lot of time into the application, I became more desperate to be one of the reporters. When I found out that I was in, I was indescribably happy for the achievement.

Q. Your first report as a reporter of the ACC Reporters Corps, what was it about?

The first report that I made was about the Play Library inside ACC Children. I visited the facility for two days on a weekend to meet and talk to teachers and parents of children as users of the facility and learned a lot in the process. Like I said, my major is library and information science, so it was meaningful for me to have an opportunity to think about and study the importance of the library for children.

Q. It feels like only yesterday since the first report, but it has been about four months that you started to work as a reporter for the ACC Reporters Corps. What do you think about your job as a reporter?

Once I started to work as a reporter for the ACC, I found out that there were so many interesting events I wanted to report.

I feel bad that I don’t have enough time for reporting due to the doctor’s course at the graduate school, but I try to produce two to three articles a month. In the ACC Reporters Corps, you can schedule your working time for subjects that interest you each month. It is really good that I get to choose the subject and time. As a major in library and information science, I prefer issues regarding the Library Park of the ACC Archive & Research, so I usually volunteer for them.

Q. I am sure that you have learned a lot from the reporting experiences that you have two or three times a month. What is the most memorable one, if any?

I once volunteered for an interesting case where a robot called Pitaka wrote the Tripitaka Koreana on a plastic panel at one of the spaces inside ACC Creation. I did not want to focus only on the robot, but tried to shed light on other aspects, such as religious ones. As a Buddhist, I studied the Tripitaka Koreana before the reporting.

Sri Lanka also has a pitaka. The Tripitaka is the division of Buddha’s teachings into three parts. Equivalent to Christianity’s Bible and Islam’s Koran, Buddhism has the Tripitaka.

The fact that Korea has one got me curious. As the former Tripitaka Koreana carved on the wooden panels became digitalized, it was possible to search for the information online from the database. In the process, I learned the process of the Tripitaka production, which was really intriguing.

It was very satisfying as I learned a lot from the reporting.

Q. Two things at once, reporting and learning. I am sure that there have been many interesting subjects, but I think there might be some difficulties you have experienced as a foreign reporter working for the ACC Reporters Corps.

I had difficulties because I was not familiar with new technologies. Recently, I carried out an interview after thorough preparations for the type printing workshop at Library Park, but I couldn’t generate an article because I did not record it properly. It was my first interview as a reporter for the ACC Reporters Corps, but all the efforts I made on preparations were wasted because I did not pay much attention to the recorder that I used for the interview. I interviewed for 20 minutes, but the recorded conversation was only five-minute-long, so no article came out. Furthermore, because the interviewee was Korean, I had to do the interview in Korean, which was also not easy at all.

Reporting in ACC Reporters Corps is a one-man operation, meaning that writing, taking photos, and interviewing should be done by one person. I prefer working alone, but sometimes it is hard.

Q. It is not common for a foreign student to work as a student reporter in Korea. What do others think about your job?

Many foreign students do not even know these activities exist. If they do, I am sure that they would be very interested in participating. Many friends actually view my job with an interest because I get to enjoy cultural activities and report at the same time.

As there are many foreign students of various majors in Korea, I think these kinds of activities would go a long way toward publicizing the ACC further.

Q. Is there something you hope to get from the ACC, while working as a reporter?

There are so many things I want to do at ACC, but the most important one is that I continue to work as a reporter.

When I first applied for the ACC Reporters Corps, I thought I would get a chance to let people in Sri Lanka know about the ACC, but I didn’t, which, by the way, would have been better otherwise.

Sri Lanka knows Korea only as a country with advanced technologies, but they do not know that the nation has this big cultural organization. I write articles only in English, but if possible, I want to write in the Sinhala language, so that Sri Lankan organizations would find out about the ACC.

One thing I hope to get from the ACC is more opportunities to share and meet between Korean and foreign reporters.

The interview with Tharanga finally came to an end after a long talk on the sofa at the lobby of ACC Archive & Research.

Even after the interview, he was busy moving around to acquire more information on events held at Library Park.

It was possible to see his eyes burning with the passion and professional mindset of a journalist from the close pursuit of his activities as a reporter.

Besides Tharanga, the ACC Reporters Corps has another foreign student reporter, Amos from New York. These two reporters worked hard for coverage on the recent ASEM by implementing a meeting at the Press Center, gathering information from the briefing sessions, and paying a visit to the site. You can read their articles from the ACC English website and ACC’s English SNS postings.

[Reported by Song Jin-ju /Design Edited by MunGeum-ji]