In 1962, Ban Ki-moon came to the White House and met President John F. Kennedy. Then, Ban was the 18-year-old winner of an English-language speech contest from rural South Korea. Today he is on the threshold of becoming the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations.

Ban says the visit to the White House inspired him to become a diplomat, and he pursued that training and career with vigor. He graduated from South Korea's Seoul National University Department of International Relations in 1970 and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1985. His 35 years of government and international service include time as South Korea's foreign minister and ambassador to the United States.

He also served in a variety of posts connected to the United Nations including in South Korea's New York and Vienna UN missions. In 1999 he was chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. And in 2001 he was the principal aide to the president of the United Nation's 56th General Assembly.

Ban's rise to the post of secretary-general comes following some surprising transparency in the effort to name a successor to Kofi Annan. Annan's second and final term in the office expires on December 31, 2006.

The process is normally shrouded in secrecy while the five major powers of the Security Council (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) wrangle over candidates who probably are (a) fluent in English and French, (b) not from one of the big five countries, and (c) represent the appropriate region of the world. Conventional wisdom says it is now "Asia's turn" to hold the job.

This time around, however, a little sunlight crept into the backroom dealing. The Security Council decided that all candidates for the job must be publicly nominated by a member country. And council members took "straw polls" where they could vote to "encourage" or "discourage" as many of the official candidates as they like. These polls were intended to preview the council's thinking, highlight consensus where it exists, and send a signal to candidates with little chance of winning.

A handful of candidates in addition to Ban, almost all from Asia, were officially nominated:

• Jayantha Dhanapala, senior adviser to the president of Sri Lanka and a former UN under-secretary-general
• Surakiart Sathirathai, deputy prime minister of Thailand
• Shashi Tharoor, UN under-secretary-general for communications and public information
Vaira Vike-Freiberga, president of Latvia
• Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, ambassador of Jordan to the United Nations
• Ashraf Ghani, chancellor of Kabul University in Afghanistan

All of these candidates withdrew in the days after a straw poll revealed Ban to be the only candidate with the full support of all five, veto-wielding, permanent members of the council. The UN General Assembly approved Ban in mid-October and he will begin his term on January 1, 2007.

Ban Ki-moon addressed the Council of Foreign Relations in May 2006 and revealed these thoughts about his new office:

"The secretary-general's leadership holds together the cooperation among principal organs of the United Nations. It is also the catalyst in rallying the political will of the member states. In particular the commitment of the United States is vital. It is the host country, it is the most important country in the world at this time. Also, in our times now, global challenges call for global responses. The United States cannot do it alone. The United States needs the United Nations, and vice versa.

"Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, looking ahead, I'm an optimist, and am convinced that the best days for our global organization have yet to come. Confidence in the face of adversity comes naturally to Koreans. We Koreans have quite literally risen from the ashes of this war. We have done so through hard work, commitment, dedication and the help of friends, and particularly the United Nations. Now we stand ready to pay back what we have owed to the United Nations and international community. We wish to become the strongest advocate of the agendas of the United Nations, be it peace, development or human rights."