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Photo Exhibition Highlights Plight of Refugees

Jung Woo-sung

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is holding a photo exhibition in Seoul ahead of World Refugee Day on Saturday.

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The exhibition features some 30 photos taken in refugee camps in Nepal by renowned photographer Cho Sei-hon, who visited them in November last year with actor Jung Woo-sung.

The two attended an event for the show at Seoul City Hall on Wednesday.

"Their living environment was miserable but I could see hope in their faces", Cho said. "I wanted to show that they are no different from the rest of us".

"As I met refugees directly, I started to think seriously about the reasons why they had to cross the border", said Jeong, who was appointed as an honorary delegate for the Korean UNHCR mission in May last year and visited camps in Nepal and South Sudan.

He was officially appointed as a UNHCR goodwill ambassador on Wednesday.

Nepali Ambassador Kaman Singh Lama was also in attendance. He said, "There are many refugees from Bhutan in Nepal who lost their homes and homeland. After a resettlement program started in 2007, 69,000 Bhutanese refugees in camps in Nepal were scattered across eight countries, but still so many refugees want resettlement".

 

Attendants pose at a photo exhibition marking World Refugee Day in Seoul on Wednesday.

Korea has been receiving an increasing number of asylum applications, but the process is long and arduous, with just 61 successful cases out of 2,000 who applied for asylum last year.

Kim Young-joon, the immigration director at the Justice Ministry, said, "We will cooperate so that refugees can confidently make a life in Korea".

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