Published : Oct. 15, 2019 - 12:59
South Korea's new ambassador to the United States, Lee Soo-hyuck, has been formally appointed and will leave for Washington to take office next week, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.
The appointment came after the US gave its diplomatic consent to Lee's nomination, about two months after President Moon Jae-in named the diplomat-turned-lawmaker to be his new ambassador for the US.
(Yonhap)
Lee is expected to leave for Washington next Thursday, the ministry said. Lee served as South Korea's first chief nuclear negotiator for the six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia, when it was launched in 2003 with the goal of resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.
He also served as ambassador to Yugoslavia in 2002 and Germany in 2005, before entering politics in 2016, when Moon, chief of the then opposition Democratic Party, picked him to spearhead his party's subcommittee in charge of peninsular and inter-Korean affairs.
He won his parliamentary proportional representation seat in 2017. (Yonhap)