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Mark Tokola

Vice President
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About Mark Tokola

Mark Tokola is Vice President of the Korea Economic Institute of America in Washington, DC. He retired as a U.S. Senior Foreign Service Officer with the rank of Minister-Counselor in September 2014. His last posting was as Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at US Embassy London. Previously he had served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the American Embassies in Seoul, Republic of Korea; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; and, Reykjavik, Iceland. Among his other postings were two tours at the US Mission to the European Union in Brussels, Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs at Embassy London, and Economic Counselor at US Embassy The Hague. He also served as Director of the Iraq Transition Assistance Office (ITAO) in Baghdad from 2007-2008. Mr Tokola received the State Department’s Superior Honor Award for his work on implementing the Dayton Peace Accords while serving as Political Counselor in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1997-1999. He holds a BA in International Relations from Pomona College in Claremont, California, and an LL.M. in European Community Law from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Mr. Tokola serves on the Board of Governors of DACOR: An Organization of Foreign Affairs Professionals, and on the Board of Trustees of the Bacon House Foundation.

Mr. Tokola’s spouse is Dr. Nancy S. Tokola, a physician who graduated from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She holds post-doctoral degrees from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) in Medical and Pharmaceutical Research and from the University of Groningen (Netherlands) in Humanitarian Action. She was the first American recipient of a European Union Marie Curie Fellowship. Mr. and Dr. Tokola have four children.

Where in the world is Kim Jong-un? The dictator of North Korea who appears so fond of being filmed and photographed has disappeared from sight – and there are rumors…

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May 1, 2020

On January 27, the South Korean government in concert with private biotech companies went into overdrive to produce effective testing kits for the coronavirus. There were at the time 4…

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March 20, 2020

This article was published in United States Institute of Peace on March 25, 2024. The September 13, 2023, meeting between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in Russia’s Amur Oblast marked a…

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March 25, 2024

KEI’s Vice President  Mark Tokola was interviewed on VOA’s Washington Talk. This interview was published on June 10, 2023. https://keia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/01000000-0a00-0242-e308-08db6945ecad_Trim.mp4   To watch the full clip on VOA, please click here.…

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June 14, 2023

Directly addressing the question of how the U.S. government should respond to China’s hostile economic behaviors, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola published an op-ed on National Interest that outlines how…

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April 22, 2021

In his latest column for the Asia Times, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola notes that there are four assumptions that underpin the U.S. approach to North Korea. There is a…

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April 1, 2021

Does the forty-fifth president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, have a foreign policy, not least of all inclusive of the vital Northeast Asian region? The question is not…

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Region: Asia

June 24, 2020

With an outbreak of diplomacy under way for the Korean Peninsula, a review of North Korea’s approach to negotiations is timely. A summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and…

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August 3, 2018

For the proverbial visitor from Mars, the political situation in Northeast Asia is inexplicable. Sitting amidst a group of relatively stable, wealthy, and powerful countries, is a small, poor, belligerent…

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August 1, 2017

Today’s relationship between the United States and China is more varied, complex, and cooperative than the accumulation of headlines would lead one to believe. The news media and commentators spotlight…

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Region: Asia

October 7, 2016

This is the first in a two part series looking at Korea’s Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Indo-Pacific Strategies of other governments. The second part can be found here. Over the past five years, Australia, Japan, the United States, the European Union, France, Canada, and South Korea, among others, have published separate Indo-Pacific strategies. Comparing them…

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February 7, 2023

A video version of the 10 Issues to Watch for on the Korean Peninsula in 2023 with the blog's authors is available on KEI's YouTube channel. The most significant event to impact the Korean Peninsula in 2022 was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As in much of the world, the war had the effect of furthering…

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It will take time for the ramifications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to become apparent, but we can see already that military force has, at least for the moment, swept aside international norms and diplomacy. The implications are not just European but global. Who now is going to convince Kim Jong-un that the world is…

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Region: Europe, Asia

February 24, 2022

As 2021 began, the world was still in the depths of the pandemic and vaccines to protect against COVID-19 were only beginning to become available to the public in a small number of countries. As 2022 begins, the pandemic continues to impact lives and economies around the world but there are signs of recovery. Among…

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Region: Asia, North America