United States President Barack Obama has nominated Sung Kim, special representative for North Korea policy and former envoy to South Korea, as the ambassador to the Philippines, the White House announced Wednesday. Kim’s nomination is subject to Senate confirmation.

If confirmed, Kim would become the first Korean American to hold the ambassador position to U.S. major allies two times. It may take a while before nomination because the Republican-dominated Senate delays action as President Obama nears the end of his final term in office.

Kim, who was born in Seoul, Korea, immigrated to the United States in the mid-1970s. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and earned a J.D. degree from Loyola Law School and an LL.M. degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He began his career as a district attorney in Los Angeles.

He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1988 and served in Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia.

He was also a special envoy for the so-called six party talks - composed of envoys from the U.S., South Korea, North Korea, China, Japan and Russia - on the North Korean nuclear issue from 2008 to 2011, director of the Office of Korean Affairs in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs from 2006 to 2008, and political-military chief at the US Embassy in Seoul, Korea from 2002 to 2006. Kim has been in the current job handling the North Korean nuclear issue since 2014 after serving as ambassador to South Korea for three years.

Attention has now moved to who will succeed Kim and Mark Lambert, Director of the Office of Korean Affairs, U.S. Department of State, is being mentioned as a possible candidate.

Meanwhile, Kim’s nomination coincided with the termination of Joseph Y. Yun as U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia, who is another Korean-American career diplomat. Yun is soon to return to the Department of State, where he is expected to hold a key position. Yun served as political-military chief at the US Embassy in Seoul. He took office as ambassador to Malaysia in 2013.

By Lee Jin-myung

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