In August 2025, the historian, diplomat, linguist, and Korean Studies pioneer, Dr Adrian Buzo passed away after a long battle with illness.

Known for intellectual curiosity, warmth and generosity, Adrian Buzo helped lay the foundations for Korean Studies in Australia and advanced international understanding of the Korean Peninsula – particularly the origins of the political culture of North Korea. He also had a unique talent for jazz piano, a love for all forms of literature (George Eliot was a particular favourite) and, arguably, a not-so-typical traditional Korean trait: a deep love of cats.

Adrian Buzo was born in 1948 in Brisbane, the son of Zihni Jusuf Buzo OAM from Berat, Albania, a Harvard University graduate and civil engineer, and Elaine Johnson, an Australian schoolteacher of Irish descent. After some years residing on Sydney’s Middle Harbour, at the age of seven Buzo and his family moved north to Armidale, where his father worked a civil engineer and assumed a position at the University of New England. There, the young Buzo and his brother Alex attended the Armidale School. His father later was employed in Switzerland and Buzo attended the International School of Geneva and then finished his schooling at North Sydney Boys High School.

In 1973, Adrian graduated with honours in Japanese at the University of Sydney, and soon after joined the Department of Foreign Affairs. He served two years in the Australian embassy in Seoul where he undertook Korean language studies at Yonsei University. In April 1975, Adrian was part of a group of three diplomats sent to Pyongyang to open Australia’s (first and so far only embassy) to North Korea, where he was to serve as Second Secretary. Sadly, the North Korean Government declared them personae non grata and they were forced to close the embassy and leave the country, making those few months the entire lifespan of Australian diplomatic representation in North Korea.

Over the next few years, Adrian became an academic commuter between Sydney and Seoul, graduating in 1981 with a Master’s degree specialising in the study of early Korean writing systems from the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Dankook University, Seoul. In 1997, he was awarded a doctorate in Asian Studies from Monash University, where he became a senior lecturer in Korean Studies.

In 1992, Adrian was appointed to Australia’s first full-time Korean Studies position as director of the National Korean Studies Centre, one of four Asian Studies centres funded as part of the Australian Government’s implementation of the 1987 National Policy on Languages to promote the teaching of Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian and Korean. The NKSC was based at Swinburne University of Technology and was instrumental in establishing Korean language programs across the country, in particular at Swinburne, Monash University and the University of Melbourne. The NKSC was also heavily involved in supporting the establishment of Korean as a subject at Griffith University, UNSW and the University of Queensland. Further, the NKSC supported teaching Korean in primary and secondary schools such as Strathcona Girls Grammar in Melbourne. The NKSC facilitated the establishment of a Korean language resource collection and the appointment of a Korean librarian at Monash University and ran student exchange programs, hosted Korean scholars, and developed Korean language-teaching materials.

All of the Korean language programs in Melbourne relied on one of the few and, to this day, one of the best, Korean language........

© Pearls and Irritations