Andy Kim, a Korean-American Democrat, has been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday (local time) by beating Republican Representative Tom MacArthur in New Jersey’s 3rd district.

The 36-year-old Democrat challenger garnered 49.9 percent of the vote to unseat the two-term Republican incumbent who earned 48.8 percent. According to the New York Times tally, Kim was 31,000 votes behind MacArthur in Republican-leaning Ocean County, but received 33,600 more votes in Democrat-leaning Burlington County.

The final result came about a week after the U.S. midterm elections held on November 6. He recently told Korean reporters that his top priority is North Korean issues and he hopes to focus on diplomatic policies in the Congress.

He graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in political science and went on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned a PhD in international relations. He served as a civilian advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan before working at the White House from 2013 to 2015 as a director of Iraq issues in the Obama Administration.

By Kim In-oh and Choi Mira

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