Donald Phinney Gregg

Teaches at The Korea Society

Donald Phinney Gregg, born in 1927, grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He served in the Army in l945–47, graduated cum laude in philosophy from Williams College in 1951, and immediately joined CIA as a paramilitary officer. He served on Saipan and in Japan (ten years), Burma, Vietnam, and Korea, where he was chief of station. Seconded to the NSC staff at the White House in 1979, Gregg served there and as national security adviser to Vice President George Bush until going to Korea as ambassador in 1989. From 1993 to 2009, Gregg ran the nonprofit Korea Society in New York. 

He now chairs the Pacific Century Institute in Los Angeles and made his sixth trip to North Korea in February 2014. Gregg lives in Armonk, New York, with his wife of sixty years, Meg Curry Gregg.