Alastair Morgan is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies, at the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS).

Alastair was the British Ambassador to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from December 2015 until December 2018. He was British Consul-General in Guangzhou from 2010 to 2014 and Director of Trade and Investment at the British Embassy in Beijing from 2007 to 2010. Prior to that, he was Counsellor Trade Policy and Director of Inward Investment at the British Embassy in Tokyo from 2002 to 2006, following a year on loan to the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry from 2001 to 2002. He started work in British government service at the Department of Trade and Industry in 1985.

He was regional security expert and Coordinator of the UN 1874 Panel of Experts on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea sanctions from 2019 to 2021. He is currently a Tokyo College Ushioda Fellow of the University of Tokyo, affiliated with Tokyo University’s Graduate School of Public Policy. From 1983 to 1985 he was a lecturer at Gakushuin University, Tokyo. He is a graduate of Cambridge University.

Research

• Contemporary British diplomacy towards Asia
• Social, political and economic developments in China and Japan
• DPRK leadership and policy
• International responses to DPRK WMD and ballistic missile programmes, including sanctions
• Aspects of Northeast Asian twentieth century history

Publications

Reports

Alastair was coordinator of the United Nations 1874 Panel of Experts for the following reports by the Panel to the UN Security Council. Read the most recent reports.

• S/2019/691 30 August 2019
• S/2020/151 2 March 2020
• S/2020/840 28 August 2020
• S/2021/211 4 March 2021

Book

Guangzhou Minutes (mandarin), 2016, Huacheng Press, PRC (Collected articles from New Express, Guangzhou Daily and other Chinese publications)