Written by: Douglas Barrett  |  Posted on: April 11th, 2022

The Annual General Meeting of the British Korean Society was held at the Korean Cultural Centre UK on 28 March 2022.

After two years of virtual meetings it was great to finally be able to meet together as a group. Around 40 of us were in attendance.

Chairman Martin Uden and Secretary Hannah Giles

The meeting was opened by our Chairman Martin Uden who noted that it was exactly a year to the day when we held our online AGM. Highlights of the year so far had been the Chuseok Reception kindly hosted by Ambassador Kim Gun, and the House of Lords dinner which attracted over 100 people. Martin said that he was grateful to Ambassador Kim and his predecessor Ambassador Enna Park for all their hard work in furthering UK-Korean relations. Martin also noted that he was very encouraged by the success of our online events. He also thanked our sponsors. You can read the full Chairman’s report here.

Hee Yu Lee in her pre-recorded report due to illness said that BKS finances were in good shape and we were running a healthy surplus. Martin noted that we would continue to subsidise events where we can.

Claire Moon gave the membership report. Our membership has continued to grow despite the pandemic. Despite losing members, we have picked up others. Our membership now stands at 234.

Sadly, Ian Simm could not be present, so Martin read his Grants programme report. No surprise that many awardees were awaiting the full lifting of Covid-19 restrictions in Korea in order to take up their grant. Grant applications have been slow in the past two years but were slowly picking up.

Sylvia Park took us through future events which will include an event to honour the veterans of the Korean War. It will be held at the National Arm Museum on 5 May. Other events will include the Chuseok Reception and our Annual Reception at the In and Out Club towards the end of the Year. We will also hopefully hold an online event every eight weeks or so, one of which will be our popular “Two Ambassadors” event.

We then had a wonderful presentation by Judy Owen a previous grant recipient who told us about the play “What Remains of Us”. The play is a fascinating study of real-life reunions involving families split between North and South Korea. It played to sold out audiences at the Bristol Old Vic and received excellent reviews including in The Guardian. We were also treated to a clip of the play. Judy hopes to take the play nation-wide next year.

ROK Ambassador Gunn Kim at the reception

Ambassador Kim Gun joined us as the end of the evening. He noted that he was proud that UK-Korea Trade now stood at £13Bn reflecting the excellent health of our bilateral relationship. He expressed solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

We were then treated to wine and excellent Korean food though delayed in arriving.

Our thanks as always go to the Korean Cultural Centre for hosting our event; to all our sponsors and to Ambassador Kim for kindly spending time with us.

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