Speech at lunch given by South Korean Prime Minister (Lho, Shin-Yong)

Prime Minister, your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I am most grateful to you and Mrs. Lho for your very warm welcome and for your hospitality today.

This is an historic occasion.

My brief remarks today are the first to be pronounced by a British Prime Minister on Korean soil. [end p1]

Given all that has passed in our relationship, which is now entering upon its second hundred years, we have perhaps left this rather late.

But now, with the first visit which Chun Doo Huanthe President of the Republic has just paid to London, we have been doing some rapid catching up.

The foundations for our modern relationship were [end p2] laid in the testing years of the Korean War, when our soldiers fought side by side in the defence of freedom.

I look forward tomorrow to visiting the United Nations cemetery in Pusan where those who died in this cause are buried, and to honouring their memory, just as this morning I honoured the Korean dead at the national cemetery. [end p3]

The struggle, Prime Minister, is not yet over. Both our countries have to be vigilant. In the talks that I had with the President in London and here, and with yourself this morning, I found that our views on these problems were very close.

I hope that we shall now be able to take our dialogue forward so as to build up a wide range of contacts and cooperation. [end p4]

We have a lot to offer each other in the economic and commercial fields, but we have more basic work to do if we are to exploit the opportunities fully.

We need to know more about each other. To achieve this, more exchanges, especially at the university level, are necessary.

We must welcome the start that has been made in this area. [end p5]

Your own family provides an excellent example in your son who is studying at Oxford, my own university.

I hope that your plans for the training of post-doctoral students will mean that we see many more of your young people in Britain.

Through the Embassy and the British Council, we shall do all that we can to help. [end p6]

In the other direction there is a clear need to improve the knowledge of Korea in Britain.

We both know that there is a limit to what Governments can do in this regard.

Our funds are limited.

We must therefore look to the private sector to play an active role.

If we are right, and I am sure that we are, in forecasting steadily growing trade [end p7] between the two countries, we can expect the businesses which are going to profit from this to consider putting some of their investment into the future, and into people as well as plant.

Mr. Prime Minister, my programme tells me that I must now leave to go to the DMZ and to the scene of one of the great battles of the Korean War. [end p8]

It will remind me how closely Britain and Korea have stood together in the past.

I hope that my visit here will, like that of the President to London, help continue and increase that spirit of cooperation and of working together for the ideals which we share in the future.

The Republic of Korea has a true friend in Great Britain.

We look forward to seeing that friendship [end p9] expressed in practical ways across every aspect of our relations.

Prime Minister, thank you most warmly for your hospitality and for making me feel so welcome here.

May I now ask you all to drink to the health of the President of the Republic and to the second hundred years of Korea/British relations.