SEOUL, July 30 (AJP) - The new United States ambassador to South Korea lands in Seoul on Thursday afternoon, ending a vacancy of about 18 months at the top of the American mission and filling the post for the first time since President Donald Trump returned to office.
Michelle Steel is expected to arrive at Incheon International Airport at about 3:20 p.m. She will deliver an arrival statement to reporters at 4 p.m. in the briefing room at the first-floor entrance to the VIP lounge in Terminal 2, according to the United States Embassy in Seoul.
The job has had no confirmed occupant since Philip Goldberg left in January 2025. James Heller has run the embassy in the interim as chargé d'affaires, the senior diplomat who leads a mission when no ambassador is in place.
Steel's confirmation closed a process that began in the spring. Trump sent the nomination to the Senate on April 13, and it was referred that day to the Foreign Relations Committee. The committee approved her 14 to 8 on June 4, and the full Senate confirmed her on June 17 by a vote of 55 to 39.
Her statement to the committee, submitted at her May 20 hearing, set out how she reads the relationship. She described the alliance as the linchpin of peace, security and prosperity in Northeast Asia for more than seven decades, and called the combined defense posture, anchored by the 28,500 members of United States Forces Korea and reinforced by extended nuclear deterrence, the bedrock of the partnership. It "remains ironclad," she wrote.
She named three security problems the two governments work on together: North Korea's unlawful weapons programs, its expanding cybercrime operations and its deepening military cooperation with Russia. She pointed to the trilateral partnership with Japan as part of the effort to defend a free and open Indo-Pacific. On the economic side, she cited the strategic trade and investment agreement reached in 2025, under which Seoul committed to invest $350 billion in American strategic industries and to reduce barriers to American exports, and said the joint fact sheet issued after Trump's state visit to Gyeongju set out an upgrade to security cooperation that included a South Korean pledge to expand defense spending.
Her own account of how she reached Seoul runs through the war that created the alliance. Her parents fled North Korea during the Korean War and built a life in the South, where she was born. In her statement she noted that more than 36,000 Americans died defending that country. The family later moved to Japan, where she studied at Nippon Joshi Dai, Japan Women's University, and her father encouraged her to continue on to the United States. English, she told the committee, is her third language.
Steel won a seat on the California State Board of Equalization, the only elected tax board in the country, where she represented more than nine million constituents, then served as supervisor and chairwoman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. In the House of Representatives, she served two terms representing California's 48th and 45th districts, sat on the Ways and Means Committee, and worked on the Transportation and Infrastructure and Education and Labor committees, on issues ranging from tax policy to relations with China. She holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from Pepperdine University and an executive master of business administration from the University of Southern California, and the State Department describes her as fluent in Korean and Japanese.
The department, in its certificate of competency submitted to the Senate in April, concluded that her record in elected office and her experience abroad make her well qualified for the post.
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