David Lambertson,

US ambassador

(ret)

Ambassador Lambertson is a native of Fairview, Kansas.  He graduated from the University of Redlands (California) in 1962 and entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1963.  He was assigned to Saigon from 1965 to 1968 as a member of the embassy’s political section, to Medan, Indonesia from 1969 to 1971, and to Paris, 1971-73, as a liaison officer and press spokesman for the U.S. Delegation to the Vietnam peace talks.

Lambertson returned to the State Department in Washington in 1973, first to the Office of East Asian Regional Affairs and then, in 1975, to the Office of Japanese Affairs as its Deputy Director.  He was posted to Tokyo, 1977-80 as Deputy Chief of the political section.  In the fall of 1980, he was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the UN General Assembly session.

Lambertson attended the Royal College of Defense Studies in London in 1981, after which he returned to Washington as Director of the Office of Korean Affairs, 1982-84.  He was Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, 1984-86, and Deputy Chief of Mission in Seoul, 1986-87.

In 1987 Lambertson was named Deputy Assistant Secretary of State with responsibility for the ten countries of Southeast Asia.  His work during his three years in that position focused on negotiations to end the war in Cambodia, support for the newly established democracy in the Philippines, and coordinating efforts to achieve the fullest possible accounting for Americans missing in action in Indochina. 

During the 1990-91 academic year, Lambertson was Diplomat-in-Residence at the University of Kansas, teaching in the Political Science Department. While at KU he was named by President Bush in early 1991 as Ambassador to Thailand.  He was confirmed by the Senate in July and arrived in Bangkok in September of that year.  Lambertson left Thailand in August 1995 and retired from the Foreign Service in September 1995.  During his Foreign Service career, Lambertson earned the State Department’s Meritorious, Superior and Distinguished Honor Awards as well as several Presidential awards.

Since his retirement, Lambertson has been an adjunct professor at the University of Kansas, and in 2002 was the Freeman Foundation Visiting Professor of Asian Affairs at Claremont-McKenna College in California.

From November 2000 through December 2005 Lambertson was a part-time U.S. representative in North Korea (DPRK) of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), making eleven visits to the DPRK totaling more than eighteen months in duration. 

Lambertson and his wife, Sacie, live in the country near Winchester, Kansas.