Deputy Chief of Mission
Mark Tokola
Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy
Mark Tokola has been the Deputy Chief of Mission of the American Embassy in Seoul since August 4, 2009 and is a member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister Counselor. His immediate posting before Seoul was as Economic Minister at the U.S. Embassy in London. Among his other postings were as Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S. Embassy Ulaanbaatar, two tours at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels, Economic Counselor at U.S. Embassy The Hague, and Deputy Chief of Mission in Reykjavik, Iceland. From May 2007 to May 2008, Mr. Tokola served as Director of the Iraq Transition Assistance Office (ITAO) at the American Embassy in Baghdad. Mr. Tokola received a Superior Honor Award for his work on implementing the Dayton Peace Accords while serving as Political Counselor in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, from 1997 to 1999. He joined the Foreign Service in 1976.
Mark Tokola holds a BA in International Relations from Pomona College in Claremont, California, and an LL.M. in European Community Law from the University of Edinburgh. Mr. Tokola’s spouse, Dr. Nancy S. Tokola, earned her M.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and holds post-graduate degrees from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and the University of Groningen (Netherlands). She is a medical and public health consultant. Mr. and Dr. Tokola’s eldest son, Ross, is attending graduate school at Cambridge University; their younger twins, Olivia and Glen, are students at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington; their youngest son, Kevin, is attending the Seoul American High School.
