WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) ― Working as the chief legal adviser of the U.S. State Department, Harold Hongju Koh calls Secretary of State Hillary Clinton his “client,” rather than the boss.

Koh, a prominent Korean-American expert on international law, starts his working day by meeting with Clinton.

“I am the legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State, which means that I am a lawyer for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and I do the international law work for the U.S. Department of State. I supervise a law firm of about 200 international lawyers, which I think is the best international law firm in the world,” he said in an interview at his office in the department.

The Korean national flag Taegeukgi sitting on his desk, along with that of the United States, is a token of his ethnic background.

Koh, who was the dean of Yale Law School from 2004 to 2009, has a global jurisdiction.

“She is not my only client here at the State Department,” he said, adding that all other senior officials at the department are his clients as well.

One of the biggest issues for him these days is the so-called Arab Spring.

“This is a historic change,” he said.

He said there are also many international legal issues with Libya. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations.

He would not be drawn into questions over specifics, including his view on the controversial naming of the waters between Korea and Japan.

Koh, whose parents were born in Korea, made clear that there is no “conflict of interest” in dealing with Korea-related issues as a professional legal expert and officials working at the U.S. government.

He served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under President Bill Clinton from 1998 till 2001.

He was appointed to the current post by President Barack Obama in 2009 after a Senate confirmation hearing.

In private, however, Korea means a lot to him.

He noted Korean people are known for their respect for education, family and the elderly as well as commitments to peace, democracy and the rule of law.

“So, I am very proud of the country,” he said, as Koreans here marked the Korean-American Day on Jan. 13.

It is to commemorate the arrival of 102 pioneer immigrants to Hawaii from Korea in 1903. Currently, an estimated 2 million Korean-American people live in the United States.

Koh said he began studying international law at the advice of his father, who was also a professor, international lawyer, diplomat and human rights advocate.

“He said you are between two cultures ― East and West. So this is a very good line of work. And I started to do it and I started to realize that he was right,” he said.

He said there was no major challenge to his career due to his ethnicity in a nation with many different races and people from around the world.

“This is a country where everyone is hyphenated American,” he said. “My parents said this is the only country they knew where if you work hard you can achieve anything. And I think they were right.”

Koh said South Koreans have become global citizens and that means they have “global importance and global responsibilities.”

He advised the youths in Korea not to worry about success but to care about doing the right thing.

“If you do the right thing, it does not matter if you are successful or not,” he said. “And if you don’t do the right thing, who cares if you are successful.”