Don OBERDORFER Don Oberdorfer is a journalist in residence at Johns Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC, and chairman of the new U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS. Previously he was a journalist for 38 years, 25 of them with the Washington Post. He is the author of five books, most recently a biography of the late senator and ambassador Mike Mansfield. His first book, Tet! (197), a political-military history of the turning point of the Vietnam War, was a finalist for a National Book Award.
Oberdorfer graduated from Princeton University in 1952 and went to South Korea as an Army lieutenant after the signing of the armistice that ended the Korean War. In 1955, he joined the Charlotte Observer and took a job with the Washington Post in 1968. He has won many awards for journalistic excellence, including the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for diplomatic correspondence (in 1981 and 1988.) and Georgetown University’s annual Edward Weintal prize for diplomatic reporting (in 1982 and 1993). In 1996, Princeton bestowed on him its Woodrow Wilson Award, given annually to a graduate for exemplary service to the nation.
