Simon Smith is a British diplomat, currently serving as Britain’s ambassador to the Republic of Korea. Born in 1958, Smith attended Wadham College, Oxford to study German and French, gaining a BA in Modern Languages in 1980. Before joining the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), Smith worked at the Department of Employment for five years. He joined the FCO in 1986, and his subsequent postings to the British Embassies in Tokyo and Moscow mainly focused on economic, trade, and investment issues. He was the FCO’s Director for Russia, the South Caucasus,s and Central Asia between 2005-2007, and from 2007 he served for five years as the British ambassador to Austria, and the UK’s permanent representative to the international organizations based in Vienna. His role included serving as the UK’s Governor on the Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency.  Smith then worked as ambassador to Ukraine from 2012 to 2015 and was appointed the British Ambassador to South Korea in 2018. He had previously visited both the North and South Korea peninsula during his time as head of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s NE Asia & Pacific Department. Smith speaks English, French, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese and Korean.