South Korea appointed a Samsung Electronics executive as its new ambassador to Vietnam on Sunday as part of a reshuffle of 19 ambassadors and four consul generals.
Kim Do-hyun, an executive of Samsung Electronics and former diplomat, was named to Seoul's chief envoy to Vietnam.
Paik Ji-ah, president of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, was appointed to head the country's Permanent Mission to the UN Secretariat and International Organizations in Geneva. It is the first time for Korea to have a female representative there.
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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Yonhap) |
Other appointments include 17 new ambassadors to such countries as Iran, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Greece and Norway, as well as four consul generals in Guangzhou, Dubai, Istanbul and Wuhan.
Kim served in Korean embassies in Iraq, Russia, Ukraine and Croatia before entering Samsung as its global cooperation chief in 2013. He has served as an overseas mobile phone sales executive since November 2017.
His appointment may cause controversy as Samsung runs large mobile phone production lines in Vietnam. He was one of the most vocal members of a group of ministry officials who called for South Korea's diplomacy to be independent of the United States. (Yonhap)
