Seoul — British Ambassador to South Korea, Colin Crooks, will not attend the upcoming Global Korea Forum organized by the unification ministry, citing concerns over gender inequality among the panelists, the British Embassy in Seoul announced Wednesday.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the decision was influenced by the panel composition revealed on the forum’s website, where all but one of the panelists are men, with Yonsei University professor Chun Ja-hyun being the sole female panelist. Notably, Chun’s participation was not confirmed at the time of Ambassador Crooks’s decision to withdraw. The embassy highlighted that promoting gender equality is a key value and stressed that events benefit from a diversity of viewpoints to enhance success.
The unification ministry responded to the ambassador’s decision by acknowledging his concerns and explained that the gender disparity was unintentional. “We tried to get in touch with a diverse pool of experts regardless of their gender and nationality, but due to many reasons, female experts could not take part and the panel was inevitably filled with a majority of male experts,” a ministry official stated.
The ministry also committed to achieving a balanced representation of female and male experts at an international seminar scheduled for November.