This is the Main Reading Room at the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in Washington. (Library's official Facebook page) 

By Charles Audouin

To mark the 70th anniversary of the bilateral alliance with the U.S., the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will host humanities symposiums in Washington and Los Angeles. 

The ministry on June 22 said it will jointly host the event "Reflections on the U.S.-ROK (Republic of Korea) Alliance in the Humanities" with the Korea Library Association, Library of Congress and Los Angeles Public Library. 

Slated for June 26-27 in Washington and June 29-30 in Los Angeles, both symposiums will invite American veterans who participate in the Veterans History Project (VHP) hosted by the Library of Congress with their families and millennial and Generation Z college students in the U.S. majoring in Korean studies. 

The event in Washington will start on the morning of June 26 with 50 participants at the Library of Congress. The next day, they will visit the Old Korean Legation and Korean War monument in Washington. 

The Los Angeles edition is slated for the afternoon of June 29 at the city's library with 100 participants. VHP experts including professors at Korean and American universities and film directors will shed light on bilateral relations through humanities lectures under the themes of missionaries, poetry, the Korean War, Korean culture and cinema.

A tour on June 30 will take visitors in Los Angeles to the former headquarters building of Heungsadan, aka Young Korean Academy, the base of the pro-independence movement's activities in the U.S. during Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula, and Memorial Hall of the Korea National Association. 

Jung Hyang-mi, director-general of the ministry's Regional Culture Policy Bureau, said, "We look forward to opening a new horizon in the Korea-U.S. alliance through this event, in which the people of both countries view the meaning and value of cultural exchange from a humanistic perspective."

The promotional poster on the left is for the conference in Washington and that on the right for the event in Los Angeles. (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism)