By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Victor D. Cha, a Georgetown University international relations professor, started his job as an Asia specialist at the White House's National Security Council during Christmas week in 2004. His boss at the time said it would be a quiet period to settle into his new job, the first time Cha had worked for the government.

Then the Asian tsunami struck, killing at least 235,000 people as it swept across a dozen countries.

Cha's sudden introduction to high-level crisis management was a revelation. Debate over the rise of China and the eclipse of the United States dominate the discussions within the ivy walls of academia. But in the real world, he discovered, only one nation had the military might and the diplomatic connections to quickly deal with the tragedy.

"You see that in the crisis of this magnitude, what is the country that steps up and provides the public good? It wasn't China. China's role was helpful but peripheral. It was the United States," Cha said. "It is not only that we responded but that everyone is looking to us to respond."

Cha, 45, will return to Georgetown this week, but his government service has had unusual impact, especially for an ivory-tower academic with no experience in policymaking.

He arrived at the White House with a reputation as an advocate for a tough approach to negotiations with North Korea -- what he called "hawk engagement" -- but in the end he drafted the crucial memo that helped persuade President Bush earlier this year to allow U.S. negotiators to meet for bilateral talks with their North Korean counterparts in Berlin.

The approach all but shattered the taboo on substantive bilateral negotiations that Bush had imposed since the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions erupted nearly five years ago. North Korea requested the meeting after refusing substantive talks at six-nation negotiations in December. (Pyongyang proposed Geneva as a venue, but that is where a Clinton-era agreement scorned by Bush was negotiated, so Berlin was chosen.)

Cha caught Bush's eye by arguing in his memo that it is time to test North Korea's intentions -- seeking an agreement with specific actions and a limited time frame. North Korea ultimately agreed to shut down its nuclear reactor in 60 days if the United States ended a banking inquiry, but North Korea has now missed the deadline by more than two weeks.

Cha declined to discuss the memo. But he said that despite media reports of intense ideological disputes over Korea policy, "from my perch, it is all what the president decides. He wanted to see if the North Koreans were serious about implementing the September 2005 joint statement." Cha was referring to a deal that had gone dormant for more than a year. "Part of trying to decide whether they are serious is that you pull on the negotiating thread a bit harder."

Cha, a fluent Korean speaker whose father-in-law was a general and minister in the Roh Tae Woo government of South Korea, was also responsible for policy to Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands, reporting to Dennis Wilder, senior director for Asian affairs. But Cha has made his mark on North Korea policy, particularly after he was elevated last year to be the deputy U.S. negotiator at the North Korea talks, working closely with Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the chief negotiator.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hired Cha when she was national security adviser in Bush's first term, but it took Cha almost a year to get his security clearance. He had crossed paths with Rice at Stanford University, where she was provost and he was a fellow at two Stanford think tanks, and then caught the attention of senior officials when he wrote a defense of the administration's North Korea policy in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2002.

"People were trying to interpret what the administration's policy was," he said. "It was largely a black interpretation, that they were trying to scuttle everything that the previous administration was doing. I thought that wasn't right, and that it was a much more subtle policy."

Within the government, Cha was regarded as remarkably self-effacing, without having a hidden agenda, and thus was seen as a bridge between the warring policy centers within the administration on North Korea. "He had trust on all sides," said Michael J. Green, a former White House official who has known Cha for 15 years.

Last month, Cha became the first U.S. official to visit Pyongyang in almost five years when he was assigned to accompany New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) on a trip to recover the remains of U.S. soldiers. It was Cha's first visit to the country he had studied for so long.

"On the drive from Pyongyang to the DMZ, you really get a sense of how poor the country is," Cha said. "There is no farming equipment, people walking on the road, no tractors. It reminded me of South Korea in 1960 -- but everything had stopped after that."