The Senate on Friday confirmed Kathleen Stephens to serve as U.S. ambassador to South Korea, setting her up to replace outgoing Ambassador Alexander Vershbow in September.

The confirmation by voice vote came moments before the Senate left for its five-week summer recess and just days before President Bush is set to visit South Korea as the first leg of his tour of Asia. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., removed his hold on Stephens late Thursday, paving the way for the full Senate to act on the stalled nomination.

Stephens is a highly regarded career diplomat, who has served two tours in South Korea and previously lived there as a Peace Corps volunteer.

She is currently a political adviser in State’s East Asian and Pacific Affairs bureau, where she was principal deputy assistant secretary from 2005 – 2007.

From 2003 to 2005, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, and has held postings in Portugal, Northern Ireland and China.

Like all ambassadors, Stephens will offer her resignation next year, as a new president takes office. But as a senior career Foreign Service officer with a strong reputation, she might be asked to stay on regardless of who wins the presidency.

“She is eminently qualified and has extraordinarily sound judgment,” said Jack Pritchard, a former Bush administration special envoy to North Korea, “You’d be hard pressed to find somebody more qualified out there.”

The Stephens nomination, which was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations committee in April, was held up by Brownback as he criticized the Bush administration’s approach to the six-party talks on North Korean nuclear disarmament.

Stephens is a former deputy to Chris Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who has been the lead U.S. negotiator for those talks.

Brownback wanted North Korea’s human rights violations to be a full part of the agenda and has often said the issue is getting short shrift in the negotiations.

Just before he released his hold, Brownback touted some limited concessions from Hill, who testified Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Specifically, Hill agreed to establish a separate human rights track as part of the bilateral Normalization Working Group between the United States and North Korea and to raise specific cases of abductions with North Korea, including that of Korean-American Reverend Kim Dong-shik.

Hill also promised to invite Jay Leftkowitz, the U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, to attend all future negotiations with North Korea, “except those specifically dealing with nuclear disarmament.”

“I must be very frank with you, the North Koreans don’t like to hear the term human rights, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t raise it,” Hill told the committee. “It is important for North Korea to understand that like it or not, this is part of the price of admission to the international community.”

Pritchard criticized the move to include Leftowitz in the six-party talks as “strange, awkward, and inappropriate,” and warned that pressing the human rights issue in the nuclear discussions could provoke a counter-productive reaction from the North Koreans.

But Brownback contended that the graveness and scope of ongoing atrocities in North Korea demanded a stronger approach, which included Leftkowitz’s presence.

“Leftkowitz has been left out of the game for a long time,” said Brownback. “We will be watching watch the implementation.”

Behind the scenes, Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., worked hard to push through the Stephens nomination. He pleaded for the Senate to confirm her at the hearing and in floor remarks Thursday.

In an interview, he said that his time serving as a Marine during the Korean War had left with him a life-long affinity for the Asian nation.

“I left a piece of myself over there in Korea, so I always try to look out for those guys,” Warner said.

Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, also had a hold on the Stephens nomination, on behalf of his constituent Richard Melanson, whose son Eddie was allegedly abducted to South Korea by the boy’s mother Kyong Mi Lee in 2007.

Voinovich released his hold earlier this month, even though the State Department has been unable to force the South Korean government to extradite Lee or return Eddie to the United States.

“The hold achieved our objective – which was to get the State Department to give this case the attention it deserves,” said a Voinovich aide, “We believe that, at this point, moving forward and having an ambassador in place can only help the case.”