Cho Tae-yong | |
---|---|
조태용 | |
Director of the National Intelligence Service | |
Assumed office 16 January 2024 | |
President | Yoon Suk-yeol |
Preceded by | Kim Kyou-hyun |
Director of the National Security Office | |
In office 30 March 2023 – 31 December 2023 | |
President | Yoon Suk-yeol |
Preceded by | Kim Sung-han |
Succeeded by | Chang Ho-jin |
South Korean Ambassador to the United States | |
In office 11 June 2022 – 29 March 2023 | |
President | Yoon Suk-yeol |
Preceded by | Lee Soo-hyuck |
Succeeded by | Cho Hyun-dong |
Personal details | |
Born | Seoul, South Korea | 29 August 1956
Political party | Independent |
Alma mater | Seoul National University (BA) |
Cho Tae-yong (Korean: 조태용; Hanja: 趙太庸; born 29 August 1956) is a South Korean career diplomat with over three decades of experience who served as South Korea's National Security Advisor from March[1][2] to December 2023. On January 16, 2024, he was appointed Director of the National Intelligence Service of South Korea.
Cho has extensive experience in a range of high-level diplomatic assignments dealing with the United States and North Korea. In November 2016, he represented South Korea in talks with Michael Flynn and other members of then-U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's foreign policy team on North Korea.[3] He and then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken held five rounds of U.S.-South Korea strategic consultations on North Korea between 2015 and 2017.[4] As South Korea's First Vice Foreign Minister between 2014 and 2015, he represented South Korea in regular U.S.-South Korea-Japan trilateral talks with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama.[5]
He is not to be confused with Cho Tae-yul, a similarly named South Korean career diplomat who was South Korea's Second Vice Foreign Minister of Affairs until 2016 and currently serves as the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations.[6]