‘All change please’: mind the generation gap

By James Pearson and Raphael Rashid

Upon leaving his post, former British Ambassador to Seoul in the 1970s, William Bates (affectionately known as “Master Bates” to his Foreign Office aides), wrote a long and passionate valedictory to Whitehall that outlined some of the changes he had witnessed as the United Kingdom’s “man in Korea.” In it, he spoke of the shiny new tower blocks that were cropping up across the country, the fast cross-country motorways that had reduced the Seoul to Busan expedition to a mere commute and the emergence of heavy industries that