KEI Contributor

Mark Lambert has extensive experience in East Asia. He previously served in the International Organizations Bureau where he established an office aimed at protecting UN integrity from authoritarianism. As Special Envoy for North Korean Affairs, he participated in negotiations with the DPRK aimed at the denuclearization of that country and devised and implemented a global pressure campaign to enforce UN Security Council Resolutions. As Director of the Office of Korean Affairs he helped shape the response to ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests conducted by North Korea.

While Political Counselor in Hanoi, he helped to devise a South China Sea maritime strategy and led a team that won recognition for dramatically improving U.S. relations with Vietnam culminating in the first ever meeting of the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam with the President in the Oval Office.

He served twice in Beijing, most recently managing U.S. political military affairs with China. Previously, he was named the State Department’s human rights officer of the year for devising a strategy to release Chinese political prisoners and promote religious freedom. He has served as Political Military officer in Bangkok and Tokyo and as a science and technology officer on the State Department’s Japan Desk. While attached to the United Nations, he was a weapons inspector in Iraq. His first tour was in Bogota, Colombia during the era of Pablo Escobar.

He has received a Meritorious Presidential Rank Award for helping to design and implement a plan to elect the leader of the World Intellectual Property Organization. He has been awarded for efforts bringing the United States and Vietnam closer together, for his voluntary efforts responding to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, for helping to shape the U.S. response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and for his work helping to resolve the 2001 EP-3 crisis involving a U.S. naval aircraft forced down on China’s Hainan Island. He has studied Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Spanish.