hankyoreh

director of Google Ideas

By Gil Yun-hyung, staff reporter

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson announced that former U.S. State Department policy planning staff member Jared Cohen would be joining him and Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on their scheduled visit to North Korea this week.

In a Jan. 5 press release, Richardson said Cohen, currently the director of Google Ideas, and personal consultant Tony Namkung would be accompanying him and Schmidt on their trip this week, which he described as a “private humanitarian mission.”

He also said members of the group would be holding a press conference at Beijing International Airport on Jan. 10.

Responding to the State Department saying that the timing of the visit is “not helpful,” Richardson said he was aware of its objections, but added that the trip’s organizers had already followed one request in December to delay the visit.

“We’re not representing the State Department, so they shouldn’t be that nervous,” he said.

He went on to say that the group would be discussing the release of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American currently being detained in North Korea, and that the trip was not on behalf of Google.

Cohen worked on the policy planning teams of Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton between 2006 and 2010 before taking his current position at Google. The New York Times Magazine previously described him as having played a pivotal role in establishing both secretaries’ visions for 21st century US diplomatic policy.

Cohen is also an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is famous for having the third largest number of Twitter followers in the US government after President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain.

The Associated Press also referred to Cohen as the organizer of a July 2012 conference in Los Angeles for which he invited North Korean defectors to speak about poverty and suppression in the country.

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