Former U.S. diplomat Morse H. Tan will not be at his grandmother's funeral. The 103-year-old matriarch was laid to rest in the United States last week, and Tan — barred from leaving South Korea for more than four months under a government exit ban — was forced to grieve from afar.

On October 8, the Seoul Administrative Court rejected Tan's plea to suspend the ban so he could travel home for the service. According to Korean outlet NewsDaily, the court acknowledged the urgent personal need but cited risks to the public interest while Tan's defamation trial moves forward.

Tan served as the U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice under President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2021. He traveled to South Korea in late May to observe local elections amid allegations of irregularities, and was subsequently swept into a reopened criminal investigation. He was charged without detention in July, and his first trial hearing is scheduled for Friday.

The charge is criminal defamation — allegedly defaming South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in remarks Tan made on American soil at a June 2025 event on Korean election integrity at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. In South Korea, defamation is a criminal offense carrying potential prison time and heavy fines.

Tan rejects the proceedings on jurisdictional and constitutional grounds, arguing that South Korean authorities have no authority over speech by a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil — speech he says is protected by the First Amendment and by international safeguards for expression believed to be true and in the public interest.

His plight has drawn condemnation from fellow defenders of liberty. Former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, who served alongside Tan at the State Department, told the Christian Post he was stunned. “Here's a former U.S. diplomat, a respected legal scholar and professor who's being arrested and persecuted in a democracy,” Brownback said. “If he were traveling to North Korea or Russia, I wouldn't be surprised at all. But he's not. It's South Korea.”

Members of Congress have also weighed in, urging Seoul to lift the ban. In an August letter, lawmakers called Tan “an American citizen unable to return home” and warned that the case raises serious concerns about freedom of expression and due process between two allies bound by “a shared commitment to representative government, individual liberty, freedom of expression, and the rule of law.”