President Donald Trump, with Yun Hyang Lee at his side, speaks to North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un before their expanded bilateral meeting at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore June 12, 2018. Jonathan Ernst—Reuters.
Time: Meet the 'Unsung Hero' Who Interpreted for President Trump During His 1-on-1 With Kim Jong Un
When President Donald Trump met face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the first time, he had only one other person in the room on his side: State Department interpreter Yun Hyang Lee.
Lee, State Department’s interpreting services division chief, has been an “unsung hero” in negotiations with both North and South Korea for years, Frank Aum, a North Korea expert at the U.S. Institute for Peace at Johns Hopkins University, told TIME.
“She doesn’t try to be the star of the show, she says in the background,” said Aum, who worked with Lee in high-level negotiations involving the U.S. Defense Department. “She’s very attuned to getting the interpretation and translation right rather than being more involved than she has to be.”
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WNU Editor: I have seen and heard interpreters translating a remark that was completely different from what was being said, and I have seen interpreters get chewed up and blamed for why a meeting did not work out. It is a thankless job .... but one that is so necessary.
