Donald Trump, the President-elect of the United States, is set to be inaugurated on the 20th (local time), and among the candidates for the first U.S. Ambassador to South Korea under Trump's second administration is former Korean-American Congresswoman Michelle Park Steel (Korean name Park Eun-ju), a two-term former federal House Representative.
Michelle Park Steel, then a U.S. Representative, attending the U.S. Republican National Convention in July last year. Photo by Yonhap News
Born in Seoul in 1955, former Congresswoman Steel immigrated to the United States with her family in 1975. She served as a federal House Representative for four years starting in 2021 but lost the election last November by about 600 votes.
It is known that Steel became interested in politics after realizing the need for Korean-Americans to enter politics following the LA riots. Her husband, attorney Sean Steel, who served as the chairman of the California Republican Party, is said to have helped her enter the political arena.
Pro-Trump figures such as current House Speaker Mike Johnson and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, both from the Republican leadership, have privately recommended former Congresswoman Steel to President-elect Trump as the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea.
Alongside Steel, former Deputy Chief of Staff Hooker, who was involved in the North Korea-U.S. summits during Trump's first administration, is also mentioned. He is a close aide to former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, who served during Trump's first term and was considered a candidate for various diplomatic and security positions in the second administration.
Earlier, on the 5th of last month, President-elect Trump nominated former federal Senator David Perdue as Ambassador to China, and on the 16th, former Ambassador to Portugal George Glass was nominated as Ambassador to Japan, but the Ambassador to South Korea has not yet been announced.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration, following the retirement of current U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Philip Goldberg, has decided to dispatch former State Department Special Representative for North Korea Policy Joseph Yun, who is Korean-American, as the interim charg? d'affaires. Ambassador Yun is expected to assume the post as early as this week after completing internal State Department procedures.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
