Library of Congress Interview with David E. Mark The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR DAVID E. MARK Interviewed by: Henry Precht Initial interview date: July 28, 1989 Copyright 1998 ADST Q: David, perhaps you could tell us something about how you became interested in the Foreign Service and set out on this career. MARK: I had had no special orientation for the Foreign Service or international affairs during my undergraduate days. As a matter of fact, my only contact with the foreign world was a high school graduation trip at age 15 in 1939 when I went to France and dropped briefly for five days into Nazi Germany and then into Switzerland. But, except for an interest in travel, it had not left me with any particular ideas about a career in the field. In any event, after I finished my undergraduate work at Columbia University, I was drafted into the Army in 1943, so that career thoughts were put off quite a bit. However, by 1945, when the war had come to an end, I took account of the fact that I had not been sent overseas, and, therefore, was likely to be retained in the service a long time, while people with higher priority would be discharged. And about that time, in September or so 1945, there was this sign put up on our unit's bulletin board which said, “First post- war examination for the Foreign Service; people who succeed will probably be discharged in order to enter the Foreign Service.” Interview with David E. Mark http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000745 Library of Congress And so I said, “My, God. What an opportunity.” At the time, I was going to Columbia Law School, even though in the Army, because I had managed to get assigned to Newark, New Jersey air base and had wangled a job on the night shift so that it was possible for me to go back to law school in the daytime. I had finished one year before entering the service, and this seemed to be an alternative possibility to practicing law. In any event, I took the exam, which in those days was two and a half days long, and also did, I think, the French and German tests, both of which I failed. I waited for the results, which came about January or February 1946, saying that I had passed the written exam and was marked down for an oral exam in Hagerstown, Maryland, of all places, in April 1946. That was also my last semester of law school, and, as a favor to veterans, one was allowed to take the N.Y. bar exam while still in the last semester of law school. So I took that, passed it, almost simultaneously made it through my oral exams, and then had to make a choice in about June 1946 whether I'd try a legal career that, even then, looked like a fairly prosperous one, or go into the government where my pay, as it turned out, annual pay at that time, was to be $3,278. But, even though the oral examiners had been a little hard on me, I thought, and had shaken their heads, saying that I had had a very provincial background, even though living in worldly New York and having once traveled abroad and having gone to a decent university, the Foreign Service beckoned. I assumed that their having passed me meant that I had a fairly decent chance to move along in the service if I got in. And certainly that was the heyday of American power and glory in the world; and the idea of being associated in some way with the events connected with the impending era struck me as more appealing than the lure of money from practicing law in New York. So I opted for the Foreign Service and arrived in Washington at the—whatever it was—the training division, the predecessor of the Foreign Service Institute, in September 1946. Interview with David E. Mark http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000745 Library of Congress Q: How many were in your class? MARK: I think we were something like 30 to 40. I can't remember exactly, and I can't remember all the people who were actually in the class. One of them, though, was Deane Hinton, who is still in the Service at the moment as ambassador to Pakistan and has had a long and illustrious career. But I'm sure that if I saw the list of names, there would be a number who distinguished themselves. Q: Were they all provincials like you? MARK: Well, everyone came from some city or other, but in that sense, they too were from the provinces. I don't know what their experience had been, nor do I know how many had really planned for a Foreign Service career all their lives. Q: But you didn't sense that you were at a disadvantage because you had had heads shaken at you during the oral exam for your provincialism? MARK: Well, not particularly; I had some self-confidence, though I felt overawed by the whole process. I mean, I was still just 22, and, once in Washington, I was associating with people who were ambassadors, who had had distinguished careers in the service during the war, who were connected with a mysterious government agency that I was only beginning to learn about; and so I did feel overawed. For example, I had to learn how to behave at receptions, even really had to learn how to drink a cocktail, because I had been basically abstemious before then, not out of any principle but just because of not having been exposed very much to it. Q: So you went through this basic training. And then what did they have in store for you? Interview with David E. Mark http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000745 Library of Congress MARK: Well, of course, there was a day, probably around November, maybe late October, in '46 when we were all notified where we were going, and I was told that I was going to Seoul, Korea. And I said, “Oh, my God. I'll never learn that language.” And someone said to me, who I guess had looked into it, “Don't worry. They have an alphabet.” Well, it's true. The Korean language does have an alphabet, which now is used much more than it ever was in those days. But basically it is an East Asian language, structurally—what do they call it—syntactically very close to Japanese but, in vocabulary, totally different. It was a little two-man office in Seoul of political advisor to the commanding general of U.S. forces in Korea, and I was to be the second man. I didn't know it at the time. There was a third man, William Brans, a captain in the Army who had been lent to the office because he had been a Foreign Service auxiliary officer at an early point in the war, and who later on became a Foreign Service officer himself, I think ending up as our consul general in Perth, Australia many years later. But in any case, my chief was William Langdon, who was one of the real old-time heroes of the Japanese language service, and he had served at various posts in Japan, Manchuria, and even China (Chungking) during the war at one point. I think he was, until the Japanese came in, consul general at Mukden. But, in any case, at this point he was in Korea and trying to influence the course of our policy toward the middle road, which was difficult because the military was in control and not particularly interested in the subtleties of South Korean domestic politics. They were much more concerned about the fact that the Soviet Union had occupied the northern half of the country, and they preferred as leader a staunch anti-communist. Q: Were you in the embassy, or were you in the military headquarters in Seoul? Interview with David E. Mark http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000745 Library of Congress MARK: Well, of course, there was no embassy. It was just the political advisor's office, but, in fact, we were installed in what had been the prewar consul general's house. I mean, Seoul had been one of the consulates general under Tokyo before the war, and we had a nice compound in the center of the city with a lovely old-style house that I believe is still used as a residence by the American ambassador, plus a little office down near the gate to the compound. That is not used as an office now. There's a big embassy building up on the main boulevard. Q: But was that our diplomatic establishment then? MARK: That was the only diplomatic establishment. The two of us were there, and while Mr. Langdon engaged in high politics—and told me about them so that I could begin learning, I was engaged in everything else, which was a little bit of administration, such as it was, some consular work, and miscellaneous low-brow activities. We had one very faithful, loyal Korean employee, who had held out even during the war under a lot of pressure from the Japanese. And in the consular work, there were people trying to emigrate to the United States. Of course in those days, under the Oriental Exclusion Act, no Koreans could hope to go as immigrant visa holders, but there were a lot of white Russians and others.