Recently, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was nominated to be the next ambassador to China, making him the first Chinese American to serve in that role. Now, there are reports that Korean American Sung Kim will be nominated to be the next ambassador to South Korea, another first:
“If confirmed, Kim will be the first U.S. ambassador to Korea with a Korean background. … The career diplomat served as chief of the political-military affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul in 2003, and also worked as a political officer in Tokyo. Prior to that, he served in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and Hong Kong.”
I would never say that you should have the ambassador to a country to have actual roots to that country, but I think if the nominated candidate does and is of course qualified, all the better – if for only symbolic reasons. A lot of ambassadorships to very friendly allies – especially small Western European ones – often go to big major campaign fundraisers, and those ambassadorships are truly symbolic, where the consequences of any screw up are negligible.
South Korea is one of America’s biggest trading partners and militarily, one of our key allies where the U.S. has over 50,000 troops station there to counter the North Korean threat. Given Kim’s background, he sounds pretty qualified.
