Martin Uden

Tape-cutting

It's by no means uncommon for me to use my tape-cutting skills, but a bit unusual to have to carve up three tapes in three days.  On Thursday, I helped to open an exhibition for DAKS, celebrating its cooperation with LG Fashion, with a display of fascinating items from the DAKS' archive.  Then on Friday, we opened (this time with my wife in the scissors line-up) a British goods promotion at the Shinsegae department store, and finally on Saturday, I helped open the British Council's annual UK University Fair for prospective students.

Posted at 10:46 02 November 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]

A weekend expedition to old UK naval graves

One of the few places in Korea I’ve always wanted to get to, but somehow never managed to was what is often called Port Hamilton, but more properly known as Geomundo.  (For some background, the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komundo is a fair introduction.)  But this weekend, I finally made it (but only just!) with over 20 friends from the Korea Britain Society in Seoul.  These islands are a fair way off the south coast of the Korean mainland and at the best of times involve a ferry ride of around 3 hours.  We were extremely lucky that the Korean Navy was happy to help with arrangements and took us there on Saturday afternoon, in a journey lasting 2 ½ hours.  That journey itself was hardly calm, but the forecast for awful for the Sunday, so we had to cut short our stay and come back the same evening.  This time the journey took 4 ½ hours and for many of the travelers a fish dinner we’d had on Geomundo proved to be a very short-term investment.

The reason for me to go was to pay respect at the graves of ten UK sailors and marines buried there.  Most of them had died in accidents during the British occupation of the islands from 1885-87.  Some years back the graves had been in a sad state of repair and it was a continuing concern of the Embassy how to ensure their proper upkeep.  But in fact the islanders are proud of their connection with the UK and the Korean Navy is likewise respectful of fallen comrades. So between them and occasional visits by passing Royal Navy ships (the latest only in August) the graves are now superbly maintained.  Indeed, a more tranquil and fitting resting place for them could scarcely be imagined, overlooking glorious clear seas and enchanting islands while herons circle overhead.

I hope you’ll look at some of the photos we took while there.  Aside from Geomundo, they also show a wonderful old house in Yeosu which we visited on the Sunday morning.  These old gentlemanly houses are few and far between now in Korea, but the owner of this one fiercely protects it for the sake of the eleven generations of his family who lived there before him, and for the sake of future generations.

Posted at 11:03 28 October 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[1]

A ridiculously busy week

Sometimes in spite of whatever planning you might attempt, visitors do have a habit of coming all at once.  So it was this week.  I realized at the end of it, that in the space of seven days, I didn’t have a single normal breakfast to myself, I managed one lunch at home and ate every dinner out or with guests at home.  But it was all worth while.

The visitors were first the British Ambassador from Pyongyang, Peter Hughes.  He’s been there for over a year now and this was his first opportunity to get to Seoul to exchange views and information about the DPRK, in a way that is hardly possible in Pyongyang.  So he saw a good mix of governmental, military, academic and diplomatic contacts in a crowded three-day programme.

Overlapping with him was Mr Quentin Davies, who is the Minister for Defence Equipment and Supply at the UK Ministry of Defence.  The main reason for his visit was the Seoul Air Show, and he also saw his opposite numbers and gave a speech about the procurement of defence equipment.

In fact, all three of the visitors were here on the Wednesday of the week, so I was a bit torn three ways.  The final visitor was Professor Alison Richard, the vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University.  Of course the Embassy wasn’t responsible for organizing her programme in the way we did for the other two, but I hosted a reception at my house for Cambridge alumni and attended two other events with the vice-Chancellor.

There can be times that diplomacy can appear to be a high-class travel agency, catering and hotel business.  Those aspects actually are important to be sure visitors get the most out of their time overseas, but it’s always important to keep in mind just why and how visits like this contribute to the Embassy’s objectives.  This week
• we’ve learned more than we did before about how the Republic of Korea currently assesses the stance of the DPRK and what the next moves might be in relations between North and South Korea;
• we’ve explored the possibilities of further partnerships between the UK and Korea in the defence sector, including some projects with European and US partners;
• we’ve encouraged Cambridge alumni to remember their alma mater in the year of its 800th birthday, reminded many influential Koreans of the excellence of UK science and academic endeavour and persuaded young Koreans to consider studying at Cambridge – including through the joint scholarship scheme announced last week with the FCO’s Chevening programme.

from gettyimages

Posted at 16:38 26 October 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]

Meet The President

An unusual couple of days, seeing President Lee Myung-bak on both of them. First it was the annual Garden Party held in the grounds of the Blue House for the diplomatic corps. Sadly there are simply too many people there for us all to be able to have much of a talk with the President, but all his advisers are there and a lot of senior Koreans, so a great opportunity to network. I find that the President’s advisers see it much the same way, and hunt me out, just as much as I search for them in the crowds.

The following day, I again met the President when we were in attendance for the opening of the new Incheon Bridge, a prominent sight when you land at or take off from Incheon airport. The bridge is the longest in Korea, and in the top ten in world, and the reason for my involvement is that AMEC, the UK engineering and project management company, was the lead contractor and is justly proud of its achievement in delivering a landmark construction on time and on budget. They headed up what was the first public/private partnership in Korea to be led by a foreign company. Samir Brikho, the company’s CEO, was there as well and has a clear concept of the potential importance of Korea for AMEC, especially in terms of partnerships in the energy field. I was able to read out a message from Gordon Brown congratulating all concerned with the bridge. So much of our work to help British business is quietly done behind the scenes, and it’s nice to be able to show good public support in this way.

Posted at 22:35 20 October 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]

British Embassy Offers Chevening Scholarships

This time of year is when the Embassy starts to seek applications for Chevening scholarships. These scholarships offer talented graduates and young professionals from Korea the chance to study for postgraduate qualifications at the UK's leading universities. They cover the costs of one year's postgraduate study in the UK. Over 800 Koreans have benefited from the scheme over the past 25 years and many have risen to very senior positions on their return to Korea. Indeed, Prime Minister Chung Un-chan studied in the UK on a Chevening award.

For the first time this year, we are also seeking applications from Korean students who want to study at the University of Cambridge for a special Chevening Cambridge Scholarship jointly funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Cambridge Overseas Trust.

The deadline for applications for both schemes is December 7th 2009. Please visit this website to apply: www.britishcouncil.or.kr/chevening

Posted at 14:20 19 October 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]

Teaming Up With ‘Flower Boy’ On Climate Change

To mark Blog Action Day today, the British Embassy in Seoul is launching an online climate change campaign on Cyworld (Korean Facebook) with the support of the British Council, and Korean celebrity, Mr Kim Beom.  The campaign aims to raise awareness of the importance of low carbon living and calls for action from world leaders at Copenhagen this December.   As part of the campaign, Mr Kim will visit London in two weeks to film a documentary about what the UK is doing to encourage low carbon lifestyles.  I hope that Koreans will learn lessons about what works (and what doesn’t work) after watching the final product.

Kim Beom, also known throughout Asia as ‘Flower Boy’, is passionate about climate change and committed to showing Koreans what they can do to reduce their carbon footprint.  And it’s important that Korea does act, given the size of its economy and its dependence on carbon fuels.  According to a recent report from the International Energy Agency, Korea is the world’s ninth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and saw the fastest rise in CO2 emissions per capita of all the OECD countries from 1990 to 2007. 

I hope that our Cyworld campaign and this blog help to persuade Koreans of the urgency of acting to prevent dangerous climate change.   You can also visit our Korean Cyworld site and leave a message for Korean leaders.   And English-speakers can visit the Act on Copenhagen website to pledge support for an ambitious, effective and fair deal at Copenhagen.  Make your voice heard! 

Posted at 09:42 16 October 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[1]

Mandelson makes an impression

I have missed writing my blog, having been away on leave and on business and then just recently catching up with what I'd missed and then preparing for a visit by Lord Mandelson.  He was in Korea on 6-8 October in his capacity as the UK Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.  I've been hoping to secure a visit from one of the Ministers in his department ever since I arrived, because the work that the UK Trade and Investment part of the Embassy does here is tremendously important and it can get a great boost from a well-timed and well-prepared visit.  Of course we did have a visit by the Duke of York in October last year, but politicians can do some things that members of the Royal Family can't do, and vice versa.

[Photos show, from clockwise top right: Lord Mandelson meets Korea's President Lee Myung-bak; breakfast meeting with Korean business leaders; meeting Korea's Minister of Knowledge Economy, Choi Kyung-hwan; and delivering a keynote speech to the British Chamber of Commerce Korea and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry]

For Lord Mandelson, the two major themes were the EU/Korea Free Trade Agreement and work on G20 issues.  When Lord Mandelson was the EU Trade Commissioner he kicked off the negotiations for the Agreement here in Seoul, and now it is due to be initialed on 15 October, signifying that the negotiations have reached the point where both sides are happy with the text.  But of course agreeing texts is one thing; making sure that they achieve the desired goal of encouraging and facilitating trade and investment between the EU and Korea is another.  For that we need to be sure that EU and Korean businesses can see the opportunities and act on them.  This is the message Lord Mandelson was sending, and is one we need to keep repeating to be sure UK business knows of the greater opportunities that will be available. We estimate that the FTA will generate up to 13 billion Euros(￡ 11.82 billion) for Korean companies, and generate exporting opportunities for EU goods and services of up to 19 billion Euros (￡17.27 billion).

The G20 continues to offer a great chance for the UK and Korea to work together to help forge what the G20 Leaders at the Pittsburgh Summit described as "the premier forum for our international economic cooperation". Now it is agreed that not only will Korea take over from us as G20 Chair, but it will also host a Summit here in November 2010. Korea will have a major role in the early days of this new forum, and if the UK can help in any way, I'm sure we will.  Not only will we see ministerial interactions like Lord Mandelson's, but President Lee has also accepted Gordon Brown's offer to have one of his closest advisers, Baroness Shriti Vadera, to act as a adviser for Korea in helping the transition from one Presidency to the next.

Posted at 12:12 13 October 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]

Korean's Midterm Target

Recently the Korean government announced three possible scenarios for carbon dioxide emission reduction targets.  This is a welcome and important development.  Korea is among the first countries in the world to commit to such a target.  I welcome Korea's announcement and believe that this will be a positive catalyst for the upcoming United Nations climate change negotiations in Copenhagen.

To prevent catastrophic climate change all nations need to limit the global average temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.  To accomplish this challenging, but vital, goal the total emissions from all countries must be cut to less than half of their 1990 level by 2050.  In the UK we have legally binding targets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, in the long term by at least 80% on 1990 levels by 2050. To set us on the right track we have short term targets set at 34% reductions by 2020. And it's working as emissions have fallen steadily since 1990 while GDP has increased.

When I have the opportunity to meet Korean Government representatives I continue to support an ambitious mid-term target.  I have been impressed by the current Administration's efforts on low carbon green growth.  A quick transition to a low carbon economy is in all of our interest, and these targets are an important part of that evolution.

Posted at 15:05 15 September 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]

Help us to make our blogs better

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We want to know what you like and dislike about our blogs, what you’d like to see our bloggers writing about, and how you feel about the style of our articles.

To get your feedback we’ve created a short survey. It should only take a few minutes to complete and it will really help us to understand your thoughts and feelings.

Please help us to make this blog better and take the survey.

FCO blogs team

Posted at 04:07 02 September 2009 by e-Media Global  |  Comments[0]

Kim Dae-Jung

Korea has truly lost one of its greatest sons.  Kim Dae-jung passed away on 18 August after a lifetime of struggling for democracy and human rights in Korea and in Asia.  By his own account, he escaped death five times as successive governments in Korea sought to silence him.  To much of the world, he was most famous for the sunshine policy towards North Korea, but my memories of him - formed because they coincided with my time in Korea - were of his conviction for sedition and his death sentence in 1980 and then as an opposition politician in the 1990s before becoming President in 1998.  Without him (and this is not to say he fought alone: there were many other heroes, famous or not) Korea would not have made the transition to the vibrant democracy it is now.  And also among his many achievements we should not forget the decisive and effective action he took as President to bring Korea out of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.  But certainly my most vivid memory of him will be seeing him in early July and being struck by how passionate he was - even though he was clearly not at all strong physically - about human rights in Burma.  He never stopped fighting for causes he believed in.

Posted at 09:47 26 August 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]

A sad duty

Former President Kim Dae-jung has been in hospital in Seoul for about two weeks now, and is now in intensive care.  I felt I had to go to the hospital to offer any support I could to the family, especially given the links they have with the UK - the President lived in Cambridge in the early 90s and had been host to the Queen during the State Visit of 1999. Readers may recall I called on him in early July to talk about Burma.

I met members of his staff and Mrs Lee Hee-ho, the former First Lady, and spent a few minutes with them.  It was good to see that bringing back memories was some comfort.

It happened that I visited the hospital on the anniversary of the day that President Kim returned from Japan 36 years previously after surviving an assassination attempt.  He saw this as one of a series of miraculous escapes from death. I can only hope that there will be a repeat of that escape.

Posted at 09:38 14 August 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[1]

Ex-US Presidents visit the Korean peninsula

Rather to my surprise, while on holiday in California recently I met somebody I knew here in Korea.  He told me that he was helping to organize a trip to Korea for President George W Bush and asked if I'd like to meet him.  And when he told me that it would be in Andong, where (eager readers of this blog might recall) I had been in April, I was more than happy to go down for the day.

It was a low-key affair, with the President giving a talk to students at a High School, followed by a little tourism and lunch.   I particularly liked one of his answers to the students.  When asked for a single piece of advice for students, he said simply, "Read!".  I hadn't realised that during one of his White House years he read 92 books, which he explained was possible because he didn't watch television or play video games.  Reading was his main leisure pursuit.
 
As a keen collector of old books on Korea, I have to agree with the President. While there may be no substitute for personal experience in many ways, reading allows you to draw on other people's experience and learn of things that you have no chance to visit personally - above all the past!  I certainly would not know anything like as much about Korea and the Far East if I hadn't been able to read so extensively about the region.
 
I find it interesting, incidentally, to realise that for a short time there will have been two ex-US Presidents on the Korean Peninsula - Clinton in Pyongyang and Bush in Seoul.

Posted at 09:32 07 August 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[1]

Manchester United's visit to Seoul

In so many ways, one of Britain’s greatest strengths from Chaucer onwards has been its culture.  In recent times that has become an economic and export driver.  The latest Harry Potter film is a very clear example of this, but so too was the tour to the Far East, including Korea, by Manchester United.  Their worldwide commercial success has been remarkable, quite apart from their achievements on the football field.  It was the same last Friday.  In front of a capacity crowd at Seoul’s World Cup stadium, Man U beat FC Seoul 3-2 in what turned out to be an exciting match. 

For me it was also fascinating that the team takes such great care to foster its public image and was accompanied by two of the great names of the team’s past – Sir Bobby Charlton and Bryan Robson.  But for the Seoul crowd, there was really only one name on their lips – Park Ji-sung.  Although he didn’t start the match, he came on in the second half, which was really what the crowd wanted to see.  He is such a well-known figure in Korea, and the nation is very proud of his achievement in playing for Man U.

One other footballing issue that both countries share is that both Korea and England are bidding to stage the World Cup in 2018/2022.  It’s clear that both countries have tremendously strong bids, based above all on the strong fan base and the high standard of the home leagues.

Posted at 13:47 27 July 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[2]

EU/Korea Free Trade Agreement

 The EU and Korea managed to make sufficient progress in the last week on the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations to be able to say that we have a deal. There are always formalities to go through – and the example of the US/Korea FTA shows clearly that these are not always pure formalities – but it does look as though we’re there. Certainly at some points in the two years of negotiations it almost looked as though we had run out of steam, but the concept of an agreement between two such important trading partners always made a lot of sense. For both the EU and Korea, once it’s in force it will be the largest FTA (in terms of trade volumes) for both countries.

I haven’t seen the complete deal as yet, but bringing down tariffs in so many areas is bound to increase trade for both sides which will be good news for consumers, whether of Korean electronic goods in the EU, or European beverages in Korea. There are also a wide range of other measures designed to make it easier to trade and do business on both sides. The opportunities the agreement will offer will be a very important area of business for the Embassy in the coming months - and for all the EU Embassies in Seoul, I’m sure.

Posted at 16:21 15 July 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[2]

Looking for Yoghurt

There aren't that many UK theatre companies that come to Korea, so when they do, I'm only too happy to go along and support them.  Although I'm not really the target audience - it's a children's show - it was still fun to see "Looking for Yoghurt" which was directed by Peter Wynne-Wilson from Birmingham and it's already played in the Birmingham Rep.  What makes it all the better from my point of view is that it brings together Korean, Japanese and British characters, all of whom speak their own language yet still manage to communicate with each other.  A great metaphor in so many ways.  It's playing at the Daehangno Arts Theatre and goes to Kapyong and Yeoncheon before going on to Japan.  http://www.hanyong.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk gives some of the background to this collaboration; http://cafe.daum.net/joyfultheatre gives details of the performances in Korea.

And it's great fun.  Certainly the children in the audience very clearly - and vocally - enjoyed it.

Posted at 09:52 13 July 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]