Call To Service Foreign Service
lyson McFarland was sitting in a staff meeting at the U.S. consulate in Shenyang, China, last summer speculating with colleagues about what they would do if North Korean defectors sought refuge there. Within minutes, someone came running through the office, saying three North Koreans had jumped over the wall surrounding the consulate.
She had been at the consulate for less than a week, beginning work in a four-month assignment as acting political officer and acting public affairs officer. But as the only Korean-speaker on the staff, McFarland was vaulted into a diplomatic crisis. "It was so strange, because we had just been talking about that very thing happening," she says. It was also one of the most exciting experiences of her young career. Because North Korea is such a secretive nation, few Americans have any experience dealing with its citizens. McFarland was thrilled to have the opportunity to debrief the defectors and get to know them. "It was an incredible experience to be able to talk to them, especially after they relaxed and realized we weren't going to throw them out," she says. The refugees were in the compound for several days, under 24-hour watch, while the crisis was resolved. Then 28, McFarland impressed her colleagues with skill and grace beyond her years.
"The issue of North Korean refugees in China was one of the highest-profile foreign policy issues the United States dealt with during the summer of 2002,"says Mark Kennon, the U.S. consul general in Shenyang, in an e-mail."[McFarland's] participation was key to resolving an issue that created headlines around the world and which occupied the highest level U.S., Chinese and South Korean leaders for weeks," he says.
McFarland's enthusiasm for her work was evident in other ways. She traveled extensively along the border area between China and North Korea, taking photographs and interviewing government officials and other regional observers about subjects such as trade and the flow of refugees from North Korea into China, to provide Washington policy-makers with greater insight into the region.
Growing up in Greene, N.Y., McFarland didn't have much experience with foreign cultures, and she felt compelled to see more of the world. "I knew I wanted to travel and study other cultures," she says. When she applied for a foreign exchange program in high school, she was selected to study Japanese, sparking her interest in Asia. She also studied Korean and traveled extensively in Japan and South Korea as a student, first while she was at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where she earned a bachelor's degree, and later while a student at the University of Hawaii, where she earned a master's degree in Asian Studies.
"I think the most important skill is to be able to just listen," says McFarland, who now works as a program development officer in the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy. When she won a coveted position as a Presidential Management Intern in 2000 at State following graduate school, she knew she had found her professional home, she says. In just three years at State, McFarland, now 29, already has made an impression. Joseph McGinnis, a former supervisor of McFarland's when she worked on arms control issues in an early assignment at State, describes her as "a take-charge sort of person who wants to demonstrate her abilities in a way that contributes to the good of the nation."
Kennon, McFarland's supervisor in Shenyang, says she is a true team player. "She can lead and she can follow, as need be. I would like to have her on my team again, any time."