1996 Van Fleet Award Honoree
JAMES T. LANEY
AMBASSADOR OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA
During your extraordinary and wide-ranging career, there has been a strong and recurring theme: Korea. I remember, from our very first meeting in Atlanta in 1993, the enthusiasm with which you spoke of your first experiences in Korea as a young soldier in 1947-48. And how much more has followed!
Your teaching experience at one of Korea’s great institutions of higher learning—Yonsei University—from 1959-64 is well-remembered in Korea. A large group of friends and admirers from those days have watched your evolving career with enthusiasm, and welcomed your appointment as American Ambassador with joy.
Your service in Seoul has come at a time of great importance and rapid change. The ongoing efforts by Americans and South Koreans to establish constructive relations with North Korea have been difficult and challenging. You have served the Clinton administration, and the United States, extremely well. The key role you played in bringing about President Carter’s visit to North Korea in l994 was a vital ingredient in a situation that might otherwise have developed into a crisis of great magnitude. Your firm insistence last April that a meeting between President Clinton and President Kim Young Sam was vitally important also paid great dividends in terms of our relations with Seoul and the involvement of China in dealing responsibly with North Korea.
Your service in Korea, as a soldier, as a professor, and now as American ambassador, exemplifies what General Van Fleet had in mind when he created The Korea Society in 1957. These career achievements perfectly embody the spirit of the James A. Van Fleet Award which I am delighted to present to you now. Your acceptance of the award brightens its luster, and your accomplishments set a very high standard which we hope that others will seek to follow. Congratulations!
