NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press has named Seoul news editor Foster Klug as its chief of bureau for South Korea.
The appointment was announced Tuesday by Ted Anthony, the Asia-Pacific news director based in Bangkok, to whom Klug will report.
“Foster’s expertise in covering the Koreas, and his deep understanding of the changing face of East Asia, ensure that everyone who relies upon AP for news of this region is well served,” Anthony said.
Klug, who has covered Asia for nearly a decade, will manage AP’s operations from Seoul, reporting on South Korea’s emergence as a regional economic, political and cultural power. He will work closely with Pyongyang bureau chief Eric Talmadge on coverage of a deepening standoff with North Korea over its nuclear and missile ambitions.
Klug, 40, has traveled widely to cover big stories, including global economic and security meetings and U.S. diplomatic missions, and was a contributor to AP’s award-winning team coverage of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 and the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that same year.
He joined the AP in 2000, working as a newsman in Phoenix and Baltimore before becoming AP’s first Asia correspondent in Washington in 2005. For five years he covered issues of interest to the region across all branches of the U.S. government, reporting on U.S. sanctions against North Korea, Washington’s currency dispute with Beijing and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. He also interviewed visiting Asian ministers and heads of state in the U.S. capital and at annual U.N. meetings in New York.
Klug was named Seoul news editor in 2010 and acting chief of bureau last year. He has taken a lead role covering both Koreas, including the dramatic technological and economic transformation in the South after decades of poverty, war, dictatorship and tensions with the North. He has also covered and written about the rise of North Korea’s young new leader, the purges and executions that followed and the threats of nuclear war.
Klug, a second generation AP reporter, is from New Orleans, Louisiana, where his late mother, Mary Foster, was a longtime AP reporter. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and is a fluent Japanese speaker.
Before joining the AP, he lived for three years in rural Nagasaki, Japan, where he taught English and coached basketball at a junior high school.
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