Field Note 04 of 22

Seoul, South Korea

“You can quote anything I say. I am not worried.”

He leads the India team at one of Korea's key economic policy institutions — the kind of position that means regular travel to India, regular conversations with officials at both the national and state level.

Partway through our conversation, I mentioned that many of the people I'd interviewed in India, over four years of visits, asked me not to quote them directly. He waved it off immediately. Quote anything, he said. He wasn't worried.

It wasn't bravado. He talked about his work the way someone talks about something they simply enjoy — long hours, genuine motivation to learn more, to produce a sharper analysis than the one before it.

The contrast stayed with me longer than almost anything else from that trip: an institutional culture where being quoted isn't a risk to manage, but simply what happens when your work is good enough to stand behind.

Field Note 04