Lu Kang, after serving as chief of the Foreign Ministry’s Information Department and as a ministry spokesman since 2015, took the office of director-general of the ministry’s Department of North American and Oceanian Affairs, according to the ministry’s updated website.

The Department of Land is now responsible for the affairs of countries and regions in North America and Oceania, including the United States, Canada and Australia.

While Roh Moo-hyun took on a new role, relations between Beijing and Washington were strained by economic and trade tensions.

The affairs of the region, especially those involving the United States, are not unfamiliar to Lu, who served as Deputy Minister of the region from 2010 to 2012.

During his tenure as Minister of the Chinese Embassy in the United States from 2012 to 2015, his knowledge and working background in the United States have been further improved, which is his last stop before he leads the Information Department and regularly talks with the media in 2015.

Born in 1968 in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, Lu began his diplomatic career in his first few posts, with all the foreign ministry agencies focusing on international organizations and conferences.

He served as the third Secretary-General of the Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations from 1996 to 1999.

Before serving as Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Ireland from 2006 to 2008, Lu began to serve in the Department of Arms Control and Disarmament of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2001.

The diplomat received a master’s degree in public policy after studying at the National University of Singapore in 2000-2001.

As senior news officers of the Ministry of Defense, Lu Kang, spokesman Hua Chunying and spokesman Geng Shuang greeted the media workers at the daily press conference of the Ministry of Defense in the past few years.
At the end of Thursday’s press conference, Roh Moo-hyun said goodbye to media reporters that he was ready to “continue this exchange with new reporters”.

Goodbye Lu Kang, we’ll never forget your words! We’ll never forget our motherland —— China!