My Meeting with the North Korean Ambassador

My university is installing a new chancellor. The official ceremony is today, and I may or may not go, but for me, the most exciting part already happened. The reason I’m mentioning any of this is that the new chancellor spent a significant amount of time in Korea, and made several friends from both the North and the South. At least one of his friends has risen to a position of authority; he is now the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations. Since I’m a student of International Relations, I was chosen as one of the few allowed to meet with him.
Ambassador Han Song-ryol, or “Ambassador Han” as we were instructed to call him, is the closest thing the United States has to an official representative from North Korea. This man is a representative of a nation that is still openly at war with the United States, and so he was understandably tight-lipped and diplomatic when it came to answering questions. I also heard that he’s generally not allowed to travel more than 25 miles from the U.N. building, but got a special waver to come to our school, and is also prohibited from speaking or commenting in front of group larger than 40 people. With so many restrictions I can’t imagine the job feels very worthwhile (though I’m sure he wasn’t given much choice).

Now, my actual impressions of the meeting. In attedance were Ambassador Han, Counselor Pak, an aide, and the (American) CEO of some multinational, infrastructure-building NGO, as well as a two professors and fourteen students (including me). As is usual for a college setting, the beginning of the conversation was all about thanking people for their time, exchanging empty invitations, etc. When we finally got to the actual discussion, I have to say I was slightly disappointed but not surprised. The CEO did most of the talking, as the ambassador’s English was a bit labored, and kept the conversation focused on his NGO. Nobody (myself included) was really comfortable with asking anything political or economic in nature, but finally one guy mustered up the courage and asked about progress in the construction of the Ryugong Hotel. Ambassador Han handled the question well and gave a straightforward answer explaining the situation. Since I was meeting with an ambassador, everything I heard was very glib and diplomatic; the only slightly edgy implication was that US-DPRK trade is impossible because of UN sanctions, which I would agree with.

Anyway, it was really neat to meet this guy! I wanted to get a picture, but unfortunately it wasn’t allowed. Maybe next time we’ll get someone from China over here!

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