Brownback Asks Trump to Help Detained Diplomat Morse Tan
Sam Brownback, who has served as Kansas governor and senator and U.S. ambassador at large for religious freedom, is asking the Trump administration to intervene on behalf of former diplomatic colleague Morse H. Tan, who has been barred from leaving South Korea for months.
Tan has been prohibited from leaving South Korea since June and is scheduled to face trial in the country on October 16 for allegedly defaming its president on American soil last year. He was swept up into the reopened criminal investigation against him when he traveled to South Korea in late May to observe local elections amid allegations of irregularities and Chinese interference.
“Here’s a former U.S. diplomat, a respected legal scholar and professor, who’s being arrested and persecuted in a democracy,” Brownback said as reported in “The Christian Post.” “If he were traveling to North Korea or Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. But he’s not. It’s South Korea, and so I was really stunned when first heard about it.”
Tan was charged without detention in July with criminally defaming South Korean President Lee Jae Myung during a June 2025 event about Korean election integrity at the National Press Club. In a viral social media clip at the time, Tan noted at the event that there have been rumors and reports that Lee was involved in “gang-raping and murdering a young lady” when he was a teenager and that he consequently was unable to attend junior high and high school after being put in juvenile detention.
Tan has been an outspoken critic of the current South Korean government, which he called “a rising dictatorship.” He alleged that the key American ally is increasingly subject to “massive infiltration by Chinese Communist Party and North Korean spies, operatives and agents flooding the country.”
Tan, a devout Christian, also said he believes he is potentially being targeted because of his faith. South Korea recently has imprisoned multiple religious leaders, including Pastor Son Hyun-bo, who leads the conservative Christian movement Save Korea.
“I’m really concerned about the trend right now, particularly toward religious leaders or religious-affiliated people,” Brownback said. “They’ve arrested a number of religious leaders, tried them and are certainly trying to intimidate religious figures and leaders. And I think it’s a horrible trend line for that democracy. I don’t understand it.”
–Lee Hartman
