The Map Room in the Foreign Office tells you a lot about the 1920’s British view of the world. Lots of empire, some Europe, Asia pretty sparse. Well, in the offices of the Korean equivalent of UKTI, Kotra, there is a map with Korea at the centre, naturally enough, but with the UK (and a bit of Scandinavia) on both sides. So we are both east and west. I have tried to find out what it symbolises about Korea’s view of the UK. But no luck. Any guesses, please email me.
I was intrigued, though, by Kotra having a super new building all to itself, in the rather splendidly named “Invest Korea Plaza”. Now would it not be a neat thing to have a UKTI building in Invest Britain Place, say in Canary Wharf?
I did visit the Korean Investment Corporation (the sovereign wealth fund) in its spanking new building. Now that building is owned by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund whilst the Korean National Pension Service recently bought the HQ building of HSBC in Canary Wharf. You see where my mind is going. But don’t worry, no chance of UKTI getting a new HQ. The Koreans have followed us in one respect. Just as we changed from the Board of Trade to DTI to BOT to DTI to BERR to Business, Innovation & Skills; they changed from the DTI to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. Any better?
Korea is an interesting country. The built landscape is wholly modern. The British Ambassador’s residence, built in 1890, is unimaginably ancient for Korea. It turns out that there were two sorts of British visitors to Korea from the nineteenth century onwards. Merchants who would trade; and missionaries who wanted to convert. The latter did best early on, but a British ambassador in the 1960's said that commerce was now his main activity; and that seems just right to me!
Korea is an extraordinary economic phenomenon. In the 1950's it had the same GDP as Sudan. Now it is the 13th largest economy in the world, “from chips to ships”. It is, like the UK, a trading maritime nation with few natural advantages – no oil, no minerals, 75% mountains, sandwiched between two giants, China and Japan. And like the UK, it does very well, living on the wits, the hard work and the engineering talents of its people.
So we have much in common. And my trip has been about building on this common ground, in trade, in investment, in Science and Technology, in defence, in international diplomacy.