United States President Barack Obama has nominated Sung Y Kim to replace Philip Goldberg, the former Ambassador to the Philippines.
The nomination of Sung Y Kim was made soon after Obama phoned President-elect Rodrigo Duterte to congratulate him on his win to the presidential office.
Sung Y Kim is a career member of the Foreign Service, and has been a US special representative for North Korean policy and the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State since 2014.
Kim was also the Ambassador to South Korea from 2011 to 2014.
Officials say that the recent election campaign in the Philippines, Philip Goldberg earned the ire of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, who told him and Amanda Gorley, the Ambassador to Australia, to “shut your mouth.”
Duterte dared the two countries to “cut their ties with the Philippines”.
The back and forth criticism came from Duterte’s remarks at an election rally where he said he should have been first to rape Jacqueline Hamill, an Australian missionary who was killed in the Davao City jail hostage crisis in 1989.
Goldberg has previously been expelled from Bolivia as an Ambassador and officially declared ‘persona non grata’ by Bolivian President Evo Morales.
Morales accused Goldberg of meddling in the country’s internal affairs.