My heart sinks when Park Geun-hye's aide tells me he has prepared 24 pages of briefing notes for our lunch, containing responses for every question I might contemplate asking the South Korean presidential candidate.
Official Korea is a formal place, where greeting, eating, drinking and even sitting are governed by hierarchical Confucian traditions. I had tried to explain to Park's people that Lunch with the FT is more of a conversation than an interview, but my pleas for informality did not coincide with Park's highly choreographed aspirations to become leader of Asia's third-largest economy.
