Consul General Edward K.H. Dong

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A member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service with a career rank of Minister Counselor, Edward Dong assumed his current position of Consul General of the U.S. Consulate General in Osaka-Kobe on July 21, 2008.

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in East Asian Studies and Political Science, a Master of Arts degree in the Group in Asian Studies, and a Juris Doctor degree, Dong entered the Foreign Service in June 1978.

After an initial tour as a Vice Consul in Mexico City, the remainder of Dong’s tours have all been in East Asia or dealing with East Asian issues. He has had overseas tours in Taiwan twice, in Korea twice, Singapore, and Guangzhou, mostly as a political officer but some times also with responsibilities in economic/commercial and cultural affairs. He served as Consul General in Guangzhou. In the U.S., he has been Staff Assistant in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, a Member of the Policy Planning Staff (handling East Asian issues), Director of the Office of Korean Affairs, and, as a Pearson Fellow assigned to the City of San Diego’s World Trade Center, a Senior Advisor on trade and investment issues involving East Asia. He was also a member of the Senior Seminar, a year-long training program for senior members of the Foreign Service along with counterparts from other civilian foreign affairs agencies and the U.S. military.

Dong is married to Linda Nakamura, and they have two sons. Ken is married to Teresa, and they have a child. The younger son, Ian, is unmarried. Ken, Teresa, and Ian all work in some aspect of biochemistry.

Dong’s interests include Tang poetry, Confucianism, history, literature, old movies, and music, especially jazz guitar. He has two guiding principles, deriving from the Confucian Analects. The first is: a public servant is not simply a tool. The second is: every day, I examine myself on three points; in carrying out official matters, have I not been loyal? In my interactions with friends, have I not been faithful? In transmitting (the doctrine to others), have I not reviewed (the precepts)? (The latter is a quotation from Zengzi, the ancestral sage of the Dong clan and a direct disciple of Confucius.)