Colin Crooks

LVO The Royal Victorian Order (french: Ordre royal de Victoria) is a dynastic order of knighthood established in 1896 by Queen Victoria. It recognises distinguished personal service to the British monarch, Canadian monarch, Australian monarch, or ...

is a British

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or internati ...

serving as the British Ambassador to the Republic of Korea since 2022. Previously he served as British Ambassador to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from December 2018 to December 2021. Prior to serving as the Ambassador to the

DPRK North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and Tu ...

, Crooks served in various other positions in

Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service His Majesty's Diplomatic Service (HMDS) is the diplomatic service of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, dealing with Foreign policy, foreign affairs and representing British interests overseas, as opposed to the Civil Servi ...

, and was the Minister Counsellor at the British Embassy Beijing from 2015 to 2018 and the Chargé d'Affairs to the British Embassy in Pyongyang in 2008. In May 2020, Crooks announced via

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

that the Pyongyang embassy had been evacuated as a result of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

Sources

Living people Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to North Korea Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to South Korea Year of birth missing (living people) British diplomats in China {{UK-diplomat-stub