There was a forum recently at Jilin University, in the city of Changchun, Jilin province, where scholars working on Sino-Korean relations from a dozen universities in China and South Korea got together to discuss the latest developments in inter-governmental diplomacy.

Prof Lee Hee Ok, of Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University, told the gathering that "public diplomacy" has an important role in communication and it is not just limited to state-to-state exchanges on politics or the economy, then went on to give an example of it: "A Korean company put ‘Welcome President Park Geun-hye’as a headline in a few Chinese newspapers when she attended the Beijing APEC summit a few days ago and it got a lot of attention."

Lee went on to explain that what the Korean company had helped to stimulate debate and discussions among Chinese online and off-line, which "is a much softer approach than hard politics to touching people’s hearts."

Wang Li, of Jilin University, gave an illustration of the "public diplomacy" idea by pointing to Korean usages, saying, "Korean’s public diplomacy is influential in two major ways: it has experience and it is [part of] popular culture." Another example is "Gangnam Style", a South Korean singer’s 2012 hit, which became the first YouTube video to get a billion "visits" worldwide, and another, according to one Chinese studying in Korea, is TV, because, he said, "Korean pop culture makes the country more confident. My Korean friends and I have lots to talk about thanks to Korean TV dramas."

In referring to the effectiveness of Korean public diplomacy, Wang went on to encourage Chinese to learn from the country: "Public diplomacy is a low-cost way to maintain state-to-state relations, and the good results help a lot."

Many forum participants said they agreed that public diplomacy is an integral part of people-to-people contacts and is becoming more important to China-South Korea relations.

This second seminar on Chinese-South Korean relations was hosted by Jilin University. The role of public diplomacy has gotten a lot of attention by both of the governments, so, at the 2013 Chinese-Korean forum, in Seoul, South Korea’s capital, youth exchanges and programs were put on the agenda.