Tag: US Ambassador

Admiral Harris Criticizes Biden Administration For Not Nominating a U.S. Ambassador to South Korea

| November 19, 2021

If it was going to take this long to get someone approved to fill South Korea’s ambassador position the Biden administration should have just kept Admiral Harris in place. He is a retired military officer that has served in a bipartisan fashion under Democrat and Republican administrations:

Retired Navy admiral Harry Harris, seen here in November 2018, served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea from July 2018 to January 2021. (Benjamin Parsons/U.S. Army)

The former U.S. ambassador to South Korea on Wednesday said he was “disappointed” that his position remains unfilled since he stepped down in January.

Speaking at a panel hosted by The Korea Society in New York, Harry Harris, a retired admiral who once led U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and Pacific Fleet, said he received “calls or emails from our friends in Seoul regularly” about the lack of a U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

“We still don’t have an ambassador nominated to replace me yet,” Harris said during the panel discussion that also included retired Army Gen. Robert Abrams, the former commander of U.S. Forces Korea; retired Adm. Scott Swift, the former commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet; and retired Army Gen. Walter Sharp, a former USFK commander.

Harris served as the ambassador from July 2018 to January 2021. President Donald Trump nominated him to fill a 16-month vacancy, and the Senate confirmed him by voice vote.

President Joe Biden has not named a new ambassador to South Korea since his inauguration Jan. 20. Christopher Del Corso, a career diplomat and a former U.S. Marine, serves as chargé d’affaires ad interim.

Harris – the first Asian American to achieve four-star rank in the Navy – said he offered to remain as ambassador for six months until his replacement was nominated.

“It’s been over a year since our election,” he told the panel. “I tell my friends this is emblematic of the divided political landscape in America in the 2020s.” Harris described the absence of a nomination as “legislative malpractice” but added that the blame ought not to be directed at the Senate “since the White House hasn’t even nominated someone.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

US Ambassador Tries Makgeolli for the First Time

| November 12, 2018

I still can’t get used to seeing Admiral Ambassador Harris with a mustache:

U.S. Ambassador to Korea Harry Harris visits the back alley of Seochon, an area west of Gyeongbok Palace in central Seoul, to try out a traditional Korean rice alcoholic beverage called “makgeolli” for the very first time.

While sitting in a tiny, cozy hanok, Harris carefully sipped on samplers of makgeolli with all different flavors served with beautifully crafted Korean traditional dishes that go well with it. And he immediately fell in love with makgeolli. All is captured on a video posted on the embassy website.  [Korea Times]

Woman Breaks Into US Ambassador’s House in Seoul and Korean Police Let Her Go

| September 16, 2018

It appears that Ambassador Harris is going to need to start packing a gun to protect himself after reading this article:

Habib House is the U.S. ambassador’s residence in downtown Seoul. Yonhap

What if it had been a terrorist?

That must be what crossed the mind of U.S. Ambassador Harry Harris.

About 10 p.m. on Sept. 3, an intruder was caught prowling Habib House, the U.S. ambassador’s residence in downtown Seoul.

It is said Harris is not happy with the intrusion and the lack of adequate follow-up measures by Korean police.

The intruder proved to be a Korean-Chinese woman who arrived in Korea two days before the break-in.

When discovered in the house, she was reportedly speaking incoherently and making an unfounded claim that she was a relative of former President Lee Myung-bak, now in jail and being tried for corruption while in office, among other things.

It couldn’t be confirmed whether the ambassador was at home when the intrusion happened. But he is said to be upset about what could have happened if the woman was an IS terrorist trained to harm him.

He is said to be dissatisfied with the Korean police response, not even offering written assurances promising no repetition of a similar incident.

The Namdaemun police station, which is handling the case, told The Korea Times that the suspect was released 48 hours after the incident and it was no big deal.

“Breaking in and entering is not a serious crime,” a police officer said. “By law we could hold the woman for 48 hours. So we released her.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but based on the police response to this incident, any crazy leftist could break into the US ambassador’s house to launch a protest against the Trump administration’s North Korea policies with no consequences.

What makes this matter even worse is that the prior US ambassador Mark Lippert was brutally knifed in the face by inadequate Korean security.

Victor Cha Expected to Be Nominated as Next US Ambassador to South Korea

| August 31, 2017

This is actually a name that has been floating out there for quite some time:

Victor Cha

The Trump administration plans to name a Washington-based academic and former White House official, Victor Cha, as the next US ambassador to South Korea, an administration official said on Tuesday.

Cha is a former director for Asian affairs on the White House National Security Council and served as deputy head of the US delegation in multilateral talks with North Korea over its nuclear program during the administration of President George W. Bush.

An administration official said he expected the appointment, which will be subject to a Senate confirmation hearing, to be announced “soon,” and added that it had “been in the works for a long time.”  [Business Insider]

You can read more at the link, but his appointment is not going to make the academic crowd advocating for engagement with North Korea happy.

Is Victor Cha A Bad Candidate for US Ambassador to South Korea?

| August 5, 2017

That is what this editorial in the Korea Times is claiming:

Victor Cha

This means that who the next U.S. ambassador to Seoul will be is ever more important. He or she should be communicative with Koreans and have Trump’s trust ― giving a nudge when the president wobbles and making sure it gets noted. In that sense, Victor Cha, a former Bush operative and professor at Georgetown couldn’t be a worse candidate, according to five people in the know.

Putting their suggestions together, the result is Cha, who would act as if he were Caesar the Conqueror, trying to get his way no matter what at the risk of a great deal of friction with the Moon Jae-in government. That would be possible and dangerous because he, if appointed, would exert influence at key junctures when his boss was distracted, and the North’s asymmetric threat will peak. Some say that it is better now without a resident at Habib House in Seoul than Cha in it.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at link, but basically since Cha is not a supporter of engagement with North Korea the academics the Korea Times spoke with think he is a bad choice for US ambassador.

From a military perspective something that I know Victor Cha has pushed for in the past is to have Seoul take over OPCON of Korean forces.  This is something that left wing ROK presidents wanted in the past and then when the US called their bluff on this issue they started playing delay games until a conservative president took power and put it off entirely.  I think Cha would probably also be a strong advocate for the ROK to pay more for the US-ROK alliance which is another key President Trump initiative.

Mark Lippert Tapped To Become the Next US Ambassador to South Korea

| May 2, 2014

Congratulations to Mark Lippert for being picked as the next US ambassador to South Korea:

Mark Lippert via Wikipedia.

Mark Lippert, one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s oldest and closest aides, has been nominated to be the United States’ next ambassador to South Korea.
Multiple diplomatic sources say the U.S. government notified Seoul of the impending announcement during President Obama’s visit to the nation last week.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Lippert will replace the current ambassador, Sung Kim, in the second half of the year.  Kim, who’s three-year term is nearing an end, is expected to return to the State Department in September. As for Lippert’s credentials, the 41-year-old is currently Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s chief of staff. At the age of 32, he became the foreign policy advisor to then-Senator Barack Obama.

Four years later he was appointed as National Security Council chief of staff, and in 2012 as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs.  [Arirang News]

You can read more at the link, but reading Lippert’s biography of note is the fact he joined the Naval reserve in 2005 and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as an intelligence officer.  Something that caused some controversy was that while serving on active duty he was accused of still receiving his $147,500 White House salary.  He is also accused of having a history of leaking information to the media to discredit rivals.  This is supposedly why former Defense Secretary Robert Gates did not want him in the Pentagon and he was moved over there after Chuck Hagel took over:

We’re also told that former Defense Secretary Robert Gates was opposed to Lippert’s appointment at the Pentagon and the White House was waiting until Gates was gone. Gates was a staunch defender of Jones and might have held a grudge against Lippert. Also, Gates might have been wary of having someone who is so close to the White House embedded in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, especially one with a history of leaking and insubordination. Republican critics also say he lacks the qualifications for the job of being the Pentagon’s top Asia policy official.

“Lippert is a guy who has no experience working in the Pentagon, no qualifications for leading defense policy on East Asia, and who is super close to the White House,” said one Bush administration Asia official. “Other than that, he’s perfect for the job.” [Foreign Policy]

 

His East Asia experience is studying Mandarin at Peking University as part of his graduate school program at Stanford and then in 2012 when he became the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs at the Pentagon when Secretary Hagel took over.  As far as specific experience with South Korea I have not seen anything.  Overall though if you read about him he is a major insider within the Obama administration, which should mean the Korean government will have someone at the US embassy with ready access to the White House.

It is expected that one of Lippert’s biggest tasks will be to try and get South Korea and Japan to better cooperate with each other politically and militarily.  Good luck with that.