July 06, 2011
By Patrick Goodenough

President Obama has nominated Wendy Sherman as undersecretary for political affairs, the State Department’s third-ranking position. (Photo: Albright Stonebridge Group)

(CNSNews.com) – President Obama’s nominee to a top State Department post is one of the few American diplomats to have met North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, whom she later described as “smart, capable and supremely confident.”
Wendy Sherman traveled to Pyongyang in 2000 in her capacity as counselor to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Visiting South Korea four years later – when she was no longer in government – Sherman had some positive things to say about the reclusive Stalinist leader.
She had found Kim Jong-il to be “smart, capable and supremely confident. He’s not a lunatic, nor is he psychiatrically ill, but he has an inflated sense of power,” Seoul’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper in March 2004 quoted Sherman as telling students at a leading women’s university.
Obama nominated Sherman on July 1 as undersecretary for political affairs, the State Department’s third-ranking position.

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