Authors

James E. Hoare

Jim Hoare (b.1943), has a Ph.D. in Japanese history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and joined the Research Analysts (INR equivalent) of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1969. He worked mainly on China and Korea, and was posted to the British Embassy Seoul (1981-95) and Beijing (1988-91). Following the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UK and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) in December 2000, he became the first British representative in Pyongyang from May 2001-October 2002.

Since his retirement in January 2003, he has regularly written and broadcast about North Korea, and for some years, taught a course on the subject at SOAS. Among his books are Japan’s Treaty Ports and Foreign Settlements (1994), Embassies in the East (1999), Historical Dictionary of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (2012 - new revised edition 2019) and Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea (2015 - new revised edition in June 2020), and several books on East Asia with his wife, Susan Pares.