One of South Korea's wealthiest and most powerful figures goes to Washington this month to become his country's ambassador to the United States at a time when the two nations are at odds on how to deal with North Korea's nuclear program.
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Hong Seok-Hyun: Will his friendship with the Washington Post's Donald Graham help Seoul's strained ties with the Bush administration?
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The government has tapped Hong in large part in the belief that his American media connections will grant him entrée into the innermost sanctums of influential American news organizations and may help win media support for South Korea's controversial leftist policies, notably a softliner approach to reconciliation with North Korea.
Hong, who talks publicly of his friendship with the Washington Post's CEO, Donald Graham, was instrumental in persuading Joongang Ilbo to begin printing the International Herald Tribune for Korean distribution when it was jointly owned by the Post and the New York Times. Hong also got Joongang Ilbo to begin publishing an English-language edition, inserted into the IHT's Seoul print run six days a week.
The New York Times acquired sole ownership of the IHT in 2003 and the South Korean government counts on Hong to make inroads at the Times' editorial boardroom. Hong claims a close relationship with executives and writers at the Times, which has long called for a soft line toward North Korea and urging the Bush administration to tone down its tough talk.
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Hong is the first Asian to become president of the World Association of Newspapers. He is seen speaking at the 10th World Editors Forum Info Services Expo 2003 in Ireland.
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Hong will doubtless have swifter access to the likes of Graham and New York Times publisher and chairman, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., than to Rice. Nevertheless, President Roh Moo-Hyun counts on him to get through to the new secretary of state in hopes that he will convince her and her boss to go easy on the North and negotiate a new agreement for the United States, South Korea and Japan to finish construction of twin nuclear reactors as initially agreed on at Geneva in 1994.
Hong made clear his potential as a bridge between American conservatives and Korean leftists in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in February 2003, during which he deplored anti-Americanism in South Korea but assured his audience of the strength of the Korean-American alliance.
Most significant was his stated position on the nuclear crisis.
"We take encouragement from the Bush Administration's principle that the nuclear issue should be addressed through dialogue," he said, citing then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's call for a new framework to replace the 1994 agreement as "just one of many indications of the United States' determination to find a peaceful resolution."
