By Stephen Costello
Washington -- Don Oberdorfer, who was a distinguished foreign affairs journalist for the Washington Post beginning in the 1960s, and then in 1993 helped create the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University/SAIS in Washington, died July 23. He was 84.
Along with his diplomatic reporting from around the world, Oberdorfer was author of the best book on contemporary Korea, “The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History,” in 1997. The book has since been updated by scholar Robert Carlin. He was also author of the 1971 book “Tet!” about the 1968 communist offensive in VietNam.
Oberdorfer was one of a very rare breed of journalists. He was the kind of journalist that other journalists read, diplomats listened to and presidents talked to. His reputation for fairness and accuracy followed him during a long and productive career.
In “The Two Koreas,” Oberdorfer noted carefully how each succeeding South Korean president, and each North Korean leader, secretly probed and explored the other during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, looking for a breakthrough. He also wrote about the complexity of the defection in February 1997 of Hwang Jang Yop from North Korea to the South. “His defection was a political blow to North Korea and a potential political bonanza for the South since he brought to the South a lifetime of experiences in rarified circles in the North. However, what he had to say was complicated by his messianic belief that his mission was to prevent a devastating war on the Peninsula, to liberate the North from feudalism, and to pave the way for the reunification of Korea.”
In a long article for the Wilson Quarterly in 1999, “Seeking Truth in Action,” Oberdorfer wrote one of the most insightful and honest chronicles of Kim Dae-jung. Noting that he has been compared to South Africa's Nelson Mandela, he wrote, “Unlike Mandela, Kim is the representative of a disadvantaged region rather than a racial majority. Able to travel and study abroad during intermittent periods of exile or freedom, Kim is today the most internationally sophisticated president South Korea has ever known, and probably more sophisticated in the ways of the world than another Asian leader.”
We hosted Don at the Atlantic Council in September 1999, at just about the time of his Wilson Quarterly article. He sat with Robert Gallucci and former Ambassador to Korea William Gleysteen. During the discussion, Oberdorfer was careful to note the political difficulties of President Clinton trying to support a North-South initiative from Washington, as well as the political difficulties of President Kim in Seoul, having to deal with his own wide range of critics. He must have appreciated the irony when, less than a year later, North and South Korea achieved an unprecedented summit, against all the odds.
From his extensive reporting and deep understanding of Korean and the US systems, Oberdorfer knew better than most officials what was possible and what was at stake. His work and his example will stand as a high bar – appropriately high – for journalists, diplomats and even presidents, to measure their fairness and their ambition to seize opportunities and make progress on the biggest national issues.