U.S. Ambassador-designate to South Korea Sung Kim, 51, has been found to be a cousin of singer Yim Jae-beom, 48, who has been spotlighted in a popular television variety program of ”I Am a Singer.”
Father of the U.S. ambassador-designate Kim was serving at the Korean Embassy in Tokyo when the late President Kim Dae-jung was kidnapped in 1973 during the dictatorship of the late President Park Chung-hee. Kim Dae-jung was a promising opposition political leader then. His father left Korea and migrated to California accompanying his family in mid-1970s after stepping down from his public service jobs due to the kidnapping. He died in the United States in mid-1990s.
The mother of the U.S. ambassador-designate is Yim Hyeon-ja, who is the sister of Yim Taek-geun, 79, former executive managing director of Korea’s MBC. Yim is the farther of singer Yim Jae-beom. As a result, the U.S. ambassador and the singer are cousins.
The father of the ambassador-designate is reported to have been kidnapped to North Korea by villains along with some 30 other passengers on a flight from Busan bound for Seoul in 1958. He returned to Seoul via the truce village of Panmunjeom about 20 days after being kidnapped.
Born in Seoul in 1960, Kim attended a middle school for one year. He graduated from the Pennsylvania University and then attended Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. He has become a diplomat after serving as a prosecutor. He obtained his U.S. citizenship in 1980.
He started handling North Korea affairs when he served as the first secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul in 2003. Since then, he has attended six-party talks on denuclearization of North Korea without fail, visiting Pyongyang more than 10 times.
He was appointed head of the Office of Korean Affairs at the State Department in 2006, handling the transfer of the U.S. military operations during wartime to South Korea, North Korea’s nuclear program and Korean president-related affairs.
He obtained the title of “ambassador” in the Senate’s confirmation hearing in September 2008 and later became the chief negotiator of the U.S. and a special envoy of North Korea affairs. He has used English when negotiating with North Koreans although he is fluent in Korean.
The U.S. ambassador-designate has two daughters and is married to a Korean woman who graduated from Ewha Womans University.