Hobnobbing With the Ambassador

Thanks to a friend from DailyNK for inviting me to last night’s meeting to the Korea Club. The bad news is that everything there, including remarks by the featured speaker, U.S. Special Envoy to the Six-Party Talks, Ambassador Joseph DiTrani, was off-the-record, and I’m going to keep my word and respect that. The good news is that what I learned will still be useful here, because it will open up new sources of information all of us, and more importantly, because what I heard there could help me distinguish between good and not-so-good information later.

Here’s a lesson that will help you go far in life: never be punctual.

The schedule listed a cash bar starting at 6:30. Preferring my cash to things one finds at bars, thank you, and having much office work to complete first, I aimed for 7:00, when they started serving the Chinese banquet. I got there at about 7:05 to find barely an empty seat in the room. I zeroed in on the only one I could see, asked if was occupied, and sat down.

Turns out, it was right between Balbina Hwang and Ambassador DiTrani. Having no idea who this man on my right was, I introduced myself and asked (and this was embarrassing) him where he worked. He said, “I’m with the State Department.”

This, my friends, is why Joseph DiTrani is a diplomat, and I’m not.

My jaw probably hit the table when he told me his name. Both the ambassador and Ms. Hwang were extremely gracious, insisting that the seat was not reserved and that I was welcome to join them. Not a trace of the elitisim or power-class apartheid so endemic to Washington; in fact, they successfully feigned actual interest in my piddling life as a court-martial trial lawyer in Korea.

DiTrani is extremely pleasant, even disarming. His voice, mannerisms, sense of humor, and slightly deadpan style reminded me of Christopher Walken . . . but without the creepy Christopher Walken vibe. Hwang has a boxcutter-sharp mind and a clear understanding of stated and unstated goals of all the states in the region. She also has a refreshingly low threshhold of tolerance for stupidity. In both of them, however, I sense the weariness that comes from tugging at the intractible loops of the Gordian knot.

None of this, by the way, should be taken as a comment on my views of the policy opinions Amb. DiTrani expressed. In time, they will emerge elsewhere, and believe I now have a enough good idea of what his sincere concerns are, and aren’t, to link the ones that matter.