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Trump nominates former Rep. Michelle Park Steel as U.S. ambassador to Korea

Published: 14 Apr. 2026, 10:17

Michelle Steel addresses supporters at her election office in Buena Park, California, on Nov. 4, 2024. [AP/YONHAP]

U.S. President Donald Trump has nominated a former Korean American congresswoman as the United States' top envoy to South Korea, according to a presidential nomination document released Monday.

Trump tapped Michelle Park Steel, a former two-term Republican lawmaker from California, as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, a post that has been left vacant since former Ambassador Philip Goldberg left South Korea in January last year.

The nomination came as Seoul and Washington face a series of joint tasks, including "modernizing" the bilateral alliance, addressing trade and investment issues and cooperating on regional and global challenges, including North Korean threats and the Middle East conflict.

She is a prominent pro-Korea figure in the Republican Party and has supported the South Korea-U.S. FTA. She has advocated for North Korean human rights issues and taken a stance against anti-Asian hate crimes.

She will go through a Senate hearing followed by a confirmation vote. If confirmed, Steel is expected to help enhance communication between the two allies following a one-year and three-month vacancy in the ambassadorial post.

After Goldberg left the post, Joseph Yun, former special representative for North Korea policy, served as acting ambassador, followed by Kevin Kim, former deputy assistant secretary at the State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Steel, if confirmed, would become the second Korean American to serve as U.S. ambassador to South Korea, following former Ambassador Sung Kim, who served in Seoul as ambassador from 2011 to 2014.

Michelle Park Steel's official government portrait [SCREEN CAPTURE]

During Trump's first term, she served on the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. She was first elected to the House in 2020 and then reelected in 2022, but she lost to her Democratic rival in the general election in 2024.

During her time in Congress, she was active in pushing for legislation to address the issue of Korean Americans who have been separated from their relatives in North Korea in the wake of the Korean War (1950-53).

She previously served as a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors and the California State Board of Equalization.

Her husband is Shawn Steel, who served as the California Republican Party chairman from 2001 to 2003. He has been the Republican National Committeeman from California since 2008.

She was born in Seoul in 1955 to parents who were Korean War refugees who fled North Korea. She spent her childhood in Japan and moved to the United States at 19. She speaks fluent Korean. Her Korean name is Park Eun-joo.

She earned her bachelor's degree from Pepperdine University in California in 1997 and an MBA from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 2010.

BY LEE JI-WON, YONHAP [[email protected]]