Second-Generation Refugee from North Korea Michelle Eunjoo Steel Nominated as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea in Trump’s Second Term

Michelle Eunjoo Steel, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a second-generation refugee from North Korea whose Korean name is Park Eun-joo, has been tapped as the first United States Ambassador to the Republic of Korea in Donald Trump’s second administration. It is the first time that a member of a family displaced from North Korea has been nominated as U.S. ambassador to South Korea. If confirmed by the United States Senate, she will become the second Korean American to hold the post, following former ambassador Sung Yong Kim. Because Steel is a former member of the House, her confirmation hearing before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the subsequent floor vote are expected to proceed smoothly. As Steel, a prominent pro-Korea figure within the Republican Party (GOP) who has close ties with President Trump, has been chosen as ambassador, expectations are rising that high-level channels between the two countries will return to normal. The South Korean government has indicated its willingness to swiftly grant agrément for her appointment.
Cheong Wa Dae (the Blue House) stated on the 14th, "If Ambassador-designate Steel is formally appointed in the future, we expect she will contribute to strengthening Korea–U.S. relations and deepening the friendship between the peoples of both countries." The nomination of a new United States Ambassador to the Republic of Korea comes about 15 months after former ambassador Philip Seth Goldberg left the post in January last year. Steel’s parents were refugees who fled North Korea during the Korean War. In a video she previously posted on Facebook, Steel said, "My parents escaped from North Korea," adding, "They lost everything because of the socialist system, but they were given the opportunity to build a better life in the United States."
She has shown deep affection for Korea, for example by introducing the Korean American Divided Families National Registry Act, which aims to help Korean Americans separated from their relatives in North Korea since the Korean War reunite with their families.
Born in Seoul in 1955, Ambassador-designate Steel immigrated to the United States with her family in 1975. Once an ordinary homemaker, she became interested in politics after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, when she strongly felt the need for greater Korean American representation in public office.
With the support of her husband, attorney Shawn Steel, a former chair of the State of California Republican Party (GOP), she entered politics and went on to serve as an elected member of the California State Board of Equalization and as an Orange County, California county supervisor, the county’s chief administrative official. She then served four years as a Republican Party member of the U.S. House of Representatives starting in 2021, but narrowly lost her seat by a margin of just over 600 votes in the November 2024 election.
However, beginning with her election to the California State Board of Equalization in November 2006, she won six consecutive races of various sizes in an area known as a stronghold of the Democratic Party of the United States (Democratic Party). Locally, this earned her the nickname "queen of elections." She also came to be called a "woman of steel," a play on both her resilience and her surname, Steel.
rainman@fnnews.com Kim Kyung-soo Reporter