Bethesda Presbyterian Church

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A Foreign Service Officer's Journey

BPC's Kurt Tong: A Foreign Service Officer's Journey

Kurt Tong, Director of the Office of Korean Affairs at the State Department and father of Mia, shared vocational vignettes with the congregation at its outdoor Worship service on September 20. In the crosslink below, Kurt relates experiences with and faith perspectives on his two decades of Foreign Service work in Japan, China, and Korea -- including his work this summer in helping to secure the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two U.S. journalists held in North Korean custody for over four months. 

Moment for Mission: “A Foreign Service Officer’s Journey”
Kurt Tong

It is a bit daunting for me to step up here and give a “Moment for Mission” and not talk about what Bethesda Presbyterian Church does, or tell a compelling story like my daughter Mia did two weeks ago, but instead talk about my paying job working for the State Department. 

Most of us leave our outside jobs at the church’s front door, and are more comfortable that way. So please bear with me.

Chuck first asked that I discuss my experience this past summer related to the release of the two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, from North Korea last month. 

Then he gave my little “Moment for Mission” the title of “A Foreign Service Officer’s Journey” – which prompted me to wonder if I should say something a little more general. 

This Foreign Service Officer’s journey is approaching the 20-year mark, and it has traversed the Philippines, Japan, China and the two Koreas at various times, with my wonderful soulmate Mika and three super kids joining the fun.

Washington is a government town, and so it is useful to reflect for half a moment on the unique opportunities for service – or for doing damage – that exist for those of us that work in the government. 

Much of what one does in government is morally and ethically neutral – it doesn’t really help anyone except in an abstract and indirect way. Nor does it really hurt anyone. In such a circumstance, one just tries to take pride in one’s work, and do the best job one can.

But there are opportunities to do damage in government, including in foreign affairs. Either consciously or through miscalculation, we can hurt people. This is one reason why, frankly, I have stuck to working on East Asia, instead of working on more challenging regions like the Middle East or Africa. 

Still, even in my career, there have been moments where I wondered whether I was doing the right thing. In Japan, for example, I was part of the effort to get Japan to close its insolvent banks in the 1990s. That made sense as a policy to help the overall Japanese and U.S. economies. But in the short run it put a lot of people out of work. 

On the more positive side, working in government also provides a chance to do something useful. I am glad that I was able to help convince the U.S. government to get involved in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS in China. I tried hard in China to get U.S. resources to help China with its environmental problems.

One of the most quote-unquote “Christian” things I have done in government was to help convince the old White House, the last guys, to provide food assistance to North Korea. This was a tricky question: to decide to give food aid to a country with which we are still technically in a state of war. To do it, we had to convince the North Koreans to accept strict rules for monitoring the distribution of food, including allowing lots of American and United Nations personnel into their country to do the monitoring. 

It took three trips to Pyongyang, over eight months, to convince the North Koreans to allow our monitors to work there. But finally they agreed, and during 2008 we provided about 170,000 tons of food. This helped literally millions of people to have a better life, so they could get enough calories to be healthy. Unfortunately, the North Koreans ended the program this past March, because they worried that our food monitors were spies (which they were not), and because they were getting ready to have another nuclear test.

So I guess I should mention the case of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. 

These two young journalists got caught up in their own enthusiasm about reporting on the very serious problem of North Korean women being treated as virtual slaves in China after escaping to China from North Korea. In order to get some interesting video footage, they ventured across the ice-covered Yalu River in the early morning of March 17. Unfortunately for them the North Korean border guards were not asleep that morning, and they were arrested. 

At first the North Koreans didn’t know what to do with them. But soon Kim Jong-il decided to keep them in North Korean custody, planning to release them later as a gesture to try to smooth things over after he had finished his nuclear test and some missile tests. 

I was certain all along that the two women would be released this year, even after they were convicted and sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp. It was just a matter of timing for the North Koreans. 

We negotiated hard with the North Koreans, trying to convince them that the right time was sooner rather than later. Ultimately, it came down to what kind of face-saving gesture we could arrange for Kim Jong-il to release the women. Kim insisted on former President Clinton coming to Pyongyang for the release, because he was still bitter that Clinton had planned and then cancelled a trip to North Korea nine years ago, back in 2000 when Clinton was still President. 

This was hard for us, because Bill Clinton is the Secretary of State’s husband, and because, frankly, Kim Jong-il doesn’t deserve the honor of such a visit. But to his credit, President Clinton agreed to take on the mission, for the sake of the two young women. And many of you may have seen the results on television, including Clinton’s stony-faced photos with Kim Jong-il, and the joyful return home of Laura Ling and Euna Lee out in Burbank, California.

The most challenging part of this episode for me was explaining the situation to the Ling and Lee families and seeking their forbearance as we gradually made progress over the four-and-one-half months that Laura and Euna were in Pyongyang. I spoke with the families regularly, exchanging information. Sometimes they got quite emotional, and I would find myself encouraging them to find the strength to stick with our strategy of not lashing out at the North Koreans publicly. I tried to be reassuring without making too many promises. In the end it all worked out, and I have new friends in California. Last Sunday, Mika and I were able to enjoy having lunch with the Ling Family as they visited Washington to say thank you to Secretary Clinton and to the Swedish diplomat who helped look after them in Pyongyang.

Chuck asked me to relate my “Moment for Mission” to my faith. I’m not sure exactly how to do that. Certainly it’s not to say that the U.S. government, or any government, is doing God’s work. That would be incredibly presumptuous, and often dead wrong. 

But I do know that participating in a Christian church gives me strength and helps keep me grounded as I go about my duties as a taxpayer-funded worker charged with doing the quote-unquote “right” thing in looking after our nation’s relations with other countries. It also reminds me to remember to ask myself “what would Jesus do?” – a really high standard that can be really hard to meet – as I go about doing my duties on behalf of the taxpayers, as decided and directed by other admittedly fallible leaders elected to represent the taxpayers.

Thank you for listening. 



Last updated by Bethesda Presbyterian Feb 1, 2010.

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