Martin Uden

One step closer to London

This week, we have a guest blog from Jeehyun Ahn, a Press and Public Affairs Officer at the British Embassy Seoul.  Jeehyun is blogging about her trip to London to work as a Media Delegation Liaison Officer at the London Summit.

One step closer to London

I work for the British Embassy in Seoul as a Press and Public Affairs Officer and I was sent to the London Summit to work as a Media Delegation Liaison Officer. My job at the Summit was to work with the FCO press department to assist the official media delegation from the Republic of Korea.

On 1st April, the team of 25 Media Delegation Officers, including myself, had a briefing from the FCO and a walk-through of the Media Centre at the Excel Centre. I was surprised to see just how tight the security was. Police had set up barricades and checkpoints within an 800 metre radius of the ExCel Centre and anyone without a pass was not allowed in. That night, all the Media Delegation Officers worked through the night in preparation for the next day!

At 6 am, the Summit itself began! I met the Korean delegation at 6 am at the Accreditation and Security point and escorted them to the Media Centre. After the VVIPs had arrived, the Media Centre where I was based started getting extremely busy. I had to assist all the Korean media with their requests and escort them to numerous media events. Over the course of the day, I was lucky enough to be involved in the bilateral meeting between US President Obama and Korean President Lee Myung-bak, an interview with Bob Geldof and the press conference of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. At the beginning, it was incredibly busy and slightly stressful; unexpected things happened throughout the day and we had to change our plans at the last minute. But everything turned out to be a real success at the end...

I found my experience at the Summit enjoyable and rewarding. Apart from the fact that I shared the most exciting three days in my entire life with good friends from 25 different countries, I also now feel closer to London and the FCO.

Posted at 17:51 09 April 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]

Stepping up global economic dialogue

The attention paid to the World Economic Forum seems to grow every year, and this year is certainly no exception. From the UK, the Prime Minister and the Business Secretary all have plans to attend, and from the Republic of Korea the Prime Minister is leading a sizeable delegation.  It also looks as though the two Prime Ministers are going to be able to meet each other, mostly to talk about plans for the G20 Summit planned for London in early April.  Since Korea follows the UK in 2010 as the Chair of the G20 process, there have already been a number of contacts and visits in both directions to coordinate our positions.  I have found it fascinating to be part of some of these talks and hear how we are trying to tackle the global economic crisis in this international process.  There's a long way to go and many issues still to be resolved, but I must admit I would not have expected that in my first post as an Ambassador I would be able to have as my daily business trying to spread the word about climate change and also being a small part of attempts to mitigate the effects of one of the worst global economic downturns ever seen.  It's a privilege to be some part of this - even if I'm not in Davos.

Posted at 12:43 30 January 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[0]