Julie Chung United States Ambassador to Sri Lanka

Ambassador Julie J. Chung has been representing the United States in Sri Lanka as the Ambassador since 2022. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she migrated with her family to the U.S. at the tender age of five. Gaining her formal education from the University of California San Diego and Columbia University, she went on to become a career diplomat. She is an ardent traveler and sports fan, and scuba diving is one of her greatest passions. Ambassador Julie Chung speaks of her great affection for Sri Lanka and appreciation of the country’s beauty as well as its people and says that there is no other country like Sri Lanka anywhere in the world. The Lanka Woman team met the Ambassador at her official residence, “The Jefferson House” in Colombo, which was decorated  in a Christmas theme, and local as well as American paintings on the walls, showcasing her love for art and culture.  

Words - Indika Madapatha Sellahewa
Photos - Jagath Dharmakeerthi

Ambassador Julie, I was listening to your speech a few months ago at an event where they felicitated women-led enterprises around Sri Lanka. I was deeply intrigued with the short description that you made with an insight into your growing up as a little girl with great difficulty and arriving in America as a migrant family, how you grew up and became the U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka. Your life story I’m sure, will inspire many other women to reach for the skies even through great hardships they face. Please tell our readers  how you came to be where you are today. 

If I start with talking about my parents, they grew up in Korea and they were children during the time of the Korean war. A struggle between North and South. So, they were going through a lot of hardships. My grandfather had a business at the time, and he told the family, “go ahead, I’ll meet you at the train station. I’m going to go back to the office, gather some papers and meet you.” But sadly, they never met. They never re-united. So, he disappeared during the time of the war, and my grandmother had to raise three small children on her own.  They fled south to avoid the bombings and then the border closed between North and South Korea. So, it’s a story of separation and resilience. A story of how my grandmother raised three children on her own and my father was a little child at the time, grew up very poor in the aftermath of the war, studied very hard, and later went to military service, because you know all Koreans have to go into military service for two years, met my mother and eventually immigrated to the United States. And as immigrants they had nothing. My parents came with one suitcase, one rice-cooker, really had to start afresh. And my father worked at the factory floor of an engineering company, because in Korea he was an engineer. My mother was a journalist in Korea, but she didn’t speak English at first, so she also had to go to night school to study English. She worked as a dishwasher in an Italian restaurant. So, the first few years, they tell me that it was very difficult. I was five years old, so I only had happy memories as a child, my parents made my childhood very happy. And my sister was two. We have a picture of our first thanksgiving in America there when I was five years old. And my mother had learned to cook a beautiful turkey, you know it’s a very American tradition. My parents worked very hard. My father worked from the factory floor, he learnt English and he earned a Master’s degree and then he became a director at the engineering company and he moved up gradually, to become the CEO and President of that same company where he had begun on the factory floor. So that’s very much the American dream. It’s hard work, and there was nobody he knew, I mean he just worked hard, and they recognized his talents by merit and my mother became a librarian and for several decades she was a librarian. They were very active in their church, the Korean church, and they really focused on family and education, hard work, and getting used to living as immigrants in this new country - the United States. My sister and I grew up in Southern California, where we learned English, worked hard in school, and navigated the cross-cultural experience of embracing American culture while staying connected to our Korean heritage.   And then I went to university and joined the foreign service right after graduate school. So, it’s been quite a journey. But thinking about what my parents went through, war time, suffering, separation, those things I think helped build my resilience and empathy. Whenever I travel in the world, I know that many countries, many people suffer many hardships and sufferings, but I feel like with my family history I can understand a little bit of that. 

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