Tourism & Hospitality | Saturday 6 May, 2017 10:10 am |

RIYADH: The next stop for the “Roads of Arabia” exhibition of Saudi archaeological masterpieces is South Korea, where it will open on Monday highlighting the rich cultural heritage of the Kingdom.
Pyung oh-Kwon, the South Korean ambassador in Riyadh, met with Prince Sultan bin Salman, president of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, at the SCTH headquarters in Riyadh to discuss the preparations for the event.
“The two leaders discussed the preparations for the opening of the Roads of Arabia exhibition at the National Museum in Seoul,” said Youngjae Kim, spokesman at the Korean embassy, on Friday.
They also discussed areas of mutual cooperation between the two countries.
The opening ceremony is on the evening of May 8, and the show will continue until August 27, the spokesman said.
He added that May 9, which is the first full day of the exhibition, is coincidentally the day of the presidential election in South Korea, and therefore a holiday.
It is expected that many Korean people will visit the exhibition on this holiday after voting, the spokesman pointed out.
The purpose of hosting the exhibition from Korea’s perspective is to introduce Saudi Arabia to Korean people and to have them more acquainted with Saudi culture and heritage.
Saudi archaeological and historical relics and masterpieces will be displayed at the exhibition, along with large-sized photos of Saudi landscapes. The landscapes reflect every part of the Kingdom, including mountains and oases as well as deserts.
“Roads of Arabia” was launched in 2010. Since then it has been hosted by 10 international museums in Europe and the US.
The exhibition was first shown at the Louvre museum in Paris in 2010. It then moved to La Caixa Foundation in Spain, the Hermitage Museum in Russia, Pergamon Museum in Berlin and then to the US. Then it moved to Asia with the first stop in Beijing last year.