Dr. Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught for five decades. He is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making. Dr. Allison was the “Founding Dean” of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and until 2017, served as Director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which is ranked the “#1 University Affiliated Think Tank” in the world. As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, Dr. Allison received the Defense Department’s highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for “reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.” This resulted in the safe return of more than 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics and the complete elimination of more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads previously targeted at the United States and left in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus when the Soviet Union disappeared. Dr. Allison’s latest book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (2017), is a national and international bestseller. Dr. Allison’s first book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971), ranks among the all-time bestsellers with more than 500,000 copies in print. As “Founding Dean” of the modern Kennedy School, under his leadership, from 1977 to 1989, a small, undefined program grew twenty-fold to become a major professional school of public policy and government. As Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton and Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, he has been a member of the Secretary of Defense’s Advisory Board for every Secretary from Weinberger to Mattis. He has the sole distinction of having twice been awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal, first by Secretary Cap Weinberger and second by Secretary Bill Perry. Dr. Allison was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was educated at Davidson College; Harvard College (B.A., magna cum laude, in History); Oxford University (B.A. and M.A., First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics); and Harvard University (Ph.D. in Political Science).
Laura Bicker has been a BBC Correspondent for 20 years. She is currently based in Seoul where she reports on both North and South Korea. She has produced award winning reports on sexual abuse in South Korea and most recently took part in a documentary on the country’s COVID-19 response entitled “How to Fight Coronavirus.” Laura has reported from a number of countries across the world. In her previous role as North America Correspondent, she followed Donald Trump’s election to the White House and his first years in office, as well as a host of deployments covering a range of issues and breaking news across the United States. Laura hails from Scotland where she started her career and covered the country’s 2014 referendum on independence.
General Vincent K. Brooks is a career Army officer who retired from active duty in January 2019 as the four-star general in command of over 650,000 Koreans and Americans under arms. General Brooks, who goes by “Vince,” is a 1980 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which was the first class to include women. He led the 4,000 cadets as the cadet brigade commander or “First Captain.” A history-maker, Brooks is the first African American to have been chosen for this paramount position, and he was the first cadet to lead the student body when women were in all four classes (freshman or “plebe” to senior or “first classman”). He is also the eighth African American in history to attain the military’s top rank – four-star general in the U.S. Army. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; a Master of Military Art and Science from the prestigious U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; was a National Security Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. General Brooks also holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from the New England School of Law as well as an honorary Doctor of Humanities from New England Law | Boston. Widely respected as a speaker and leader of cohesive, innovative organizations, within and beyond the military, his areas of expertise are: leadership in complex organizations, crisis leadership, building cohesive trust-based teams, national security, policy, strategy, international relations, military operations, combating terrorism, countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and diversity and inclusion. He is a combat veteran and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In retirement, General Brooks is a Director of the Gary Sinise Foundation; a non-resident Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Texas, with both the Clements Center for National Security and also the Strauss Center for International Security and Law; an Executive Fellow with the Institute for Defense and Business; and the President of VKB Solutions LLC.
Dr. Ben Buchanan is the Director of the CyberAI Project at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) and Senior Faculty Fellow. Currently, he is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where he conducts research on the intersection of cybersecurity and statecraft. He is also the author of The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics (Harvard University Press, 2020) and The Cybersecurity Dilemma (Oxford University Press, 2017). Previously, he has written journal articles and peer-reviewed papers on artificial intelligence, attributing cyber attacks, deterrence in cyber operations, cryptography, election cybersecurity, and the spread of malicious code between nations and non-state actors. He is also a regular contributor to War on the Rocks and Lawfare, and has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other outlets. Dr. Buchanan received his Ph.D. in War Studies from King’s College London, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He earned masters and undergraduate degrees from Georgetown University.
Dr. Ash Carter is the Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. At Harvard Kennedy School, he leads the Technology and Public Purpose project and serves as the Belfer Professor of Technology and Global Affairs. He is also an Innovation Fellow and member of the Corporation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Carter served as the 25th United States Secretary of Defense from 2015 to 2017, after serving as the number two (“COO”) and number three (“weapons czar”) positions in the Pentagon. For over 35 years inside government under presidents of both political parties as well as in the private sector, Carter leveraged his extraordinary experience in national security, technology, and innovation to defend the United States and make a better world. He was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Department’s highest civilian honor, on five separate occasions. Leading the largest organization in the world with more than three million civilian and military employees and an annual budget of more than half a trillion dollars, Carter became known for his savvy leadership and for ensuring the Pentagon thought “outside its five-sided box.” At a time of global change and congressional gridlock, Carter transformed the way the Defense Department fought adversaries, stood with allies and partners, planned and budgeted, partnered with private enterprises, and managed its talent. As Secretary, Carter led the creation of the military plan and international coalition to destroy ISIS, capturing Mosul and Raqqa and eliminating the group’s leaders and plotters while simultaneously conducting operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and beyond. Carter also designed and executed the strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific, established a new playbook for confronting Russia’s aggression, and launched a defense cyber strategy. Along with directing America’s global operations, Carter spearheaded revolutionary improvements to the Department of Defense. To develop new technological and operational capabilities, he pushed investments in research and development to nearly $72 billion dollars in the fiscal year 2017 budget alone. To make the Department more innovative, Carter created the Defense Digital Service to bring tech experts into the Pentagon for a tour of duty. He opened Pentagon outposts in Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin, and other tech hubs to reconnect the government and military with private sector leaders and companies. He also created a Chief Innovation Officer position and established the Department’s first Defense Innovation Board – which attracted thought leaders such as Google Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Code for America’s Jennifer Pahlka, and many more. Dr. Carter earned his B.A. in medieval history at Yale University and his doctorate in theoretical physics at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Dr. Victor Cha joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. in May 2009 as Senior Adviser and the inaugural holder of the Korea Chair. He is Professor of Government and holds the D.S. Song-KF Chair in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University. In July 2019, he was appointed vice dean for faculty and graduate affairs in SFS. He left the White House in 2007 after serving since 2004 as Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC). Dr. Cha was also the deputy head of delegation for the United States at the Six-Party Talks in Beijing and received two outstanding service commendations during his tenure at the NSC. He is the author of five books, including the award-winning Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (Stanford University Press, 1999) (winner of the 2000 Ohira Book Prize) and The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Harper Collins Ecco, 2012), which was selected by Foreign Affairs as a “Best Book on the Asia-Pacific for 2012.” His newest book is Powerplay: Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton University Press, 2016). Dr. Cha is a former Olin National Security Fellow at Harvard University, two-time Fulbright Scholar, MacArthur Scholar at Columbia University, Hoover National Fellow, CISAC Fellow, and William J. Perry Fellow at Stanford University. He is currently a fellow in Human Freedom (non-resident) at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas. Dr. Cha received his Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University in 1994, his Master’s in international affairs from Columbia in 1988, an M.A. with honors in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University (Hertford College), and an A.B. in economics from Columbia in 1979.
Abraham M. Denmark is Director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a Senior Fellow at the Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Denmark’s research and policy expertise is in the politics and security of the Indo-Pacific, and in U.S. strategy toward the region. He is the author of Empowering Allies: A Strategy for a New Era in the Indo-Pacific, and is the co-editor of Strategic Asia 2013-14: Asia in the Second Nuclear Age (National Bureau of Asian Research, 2013) and Strategic Asia 2014-15: U.S. Alliances and Partnerships (NBR, 2014). He has testified multiple times before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Denmark previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and worked as Senior Vice President for Political and Security Affairs at The National Bureau of Asian Research, a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and held several positions in the U.S. Intelligence Community. In January 2017, Denmark received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. He is also a recipient of the Order of the Resplendent Banner from the Republic of China (Taiwan), and is an Honorary Admiral in the Navy of the Republic of Korea. He is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations. A Colorado native, Denmark holds an M.A. in International Security from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, and received a B.A. in History with Honors from the University of Northern Colorado.
Anna Fifield is the editor of The Dominion Post and Stuff’s Wellington newsroom. She was previously former Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post, covering all aspects of greater China. She was the Post's bureau chief in Tokyo between 2014 and 2018, focusing on Japan and the Koreas but periodically reporting from other parts of the region. She particularly concentrated on North Korea, trying to shed light on the lives of ordinary people there and on how the regime managed to stay in power. She is the author of The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un. She started as a journalist in her home country of New Zealand, then worked for the Financial Times for 13 years. During her time there, she reported from almost 20 countries, from Iran and Libya to North Korea and Australia. During the 2013-2014 academic year, she was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard, studying how change happens in closed societies.
Dr. Francesca Giovannini is the Executive Director of the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In addition, she is a non-residential fellow at the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Dr. Giovannini served as Strategy and Policy Officer to the Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), based in Vienna. In that capacity, she oversaw a series of policy initiatives to promote CTBT ratification as a confidence-building mechanism in regional and bilateral nuclear negotiations, elevate the profile of CTBT in academic circles and promote the recruitment of female scientists from the Global South. Prior to her international appointment, Dr. Giovannini served for five years at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston as Director of the Research Program on Global Security and International Affairs. Working to leverage academic knowledge to inform better policies, she led and promoted countless academic research on issues such as bilateral and multilateral arms control frameworks, regional nuclear proliferation dynamics, and nuclear security and insider threats. With a Doctorate from the University of Oxford, UK and two Masters from the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Giovannini began her career working for international organizations and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Dr. Van Jackson is an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), an American political scientist, and one of the world's foremost experts on Korean security. He is a professor of international relations at Victoria University of Wellington, and the Defence & Strategy Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies in New Zealand. Van also hosts the Un-Diplomatic podcast, and is an associate editor for the Texas National Security Review. He has authored two Cambridge University Press books on U.S.-North Korea relations – On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War (2018), and Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in U.S.-North Korea Relations (2016). Van previously held policy appointments with the Council on Foreign Relations (as an International Affairs Fellow), CNAS, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Pacific Forum CSIS. From 2009-2014, Van served as a strategist and policy adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), where he worked on issues ranging from defense planning for U.S. Asia strategy to nuclear negotiations with North Korea. He is the recipient of multiple awards in OSD, including the Exceptional Civilian Service Medal. Van started his career enlisted in the U.S. Air Force as a Korean linguist.
Dr. Youngmee Jee is CEO of Institut Pasteur Korea. She is Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on Health Affairs as well as Special Representative of Health and Diplomacy of the Korea Foundation. She is a member of the WHO International Health Regulation (IHR) Emergency Committee on COVID-19 Outbreak (2020-present) and the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Blueprint on Research and Development Preparedness for Epidemics (2015-present). She is also an Advisor to the Global Center for Infectious Diseases at Seoul National University College of Medicine and Long-Term Expert Advisor of the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology. From 2014 to 2019, she served as Director-General of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the Korea National Institute of Health (KNIH), the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and headed the KNIH as Acting Director between January and October 2019. During the MERS-CoV outbreak in 2015, Dr. Jee was a member of the WHO-Korea Joint Mission on MERS-CoV Outbreak in the Republic of Korea, and in 2017 was assigned the role of the National Lead for the WHO IHR Joint External Evaluation (JEE) of the Republic of Korea’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response. In 2007-2014, Dr. Jee worked as Regional Laboratory Coordinator in the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) of the WHO Western Pacific Region. She serves as a member of various national and international advisory committees, including the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization. Dr Jee received her M.D. from Seoul National University Medical School (1986), and a Diploma in Medical Microbiology (1988) and her Ph.D. in Virology from the University of London (1997).
Jenny Jun is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. Her current research interests include the bargaining model of war, strategic dynamics of cyber conflict, and security issues in East Asia. She is a co-author of the 2015 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report “North Korea’s Cyber Operations: Strategy and Responses,” published by Rowman & Littlefield. Prior to her graduate studies, she was a cybersecurity consultant at Delta Risk LLC. Ms. Jun received her M.A. and B.S. each from the Security Studies Program (SSP) and the School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University. She has presented her work on North Korea’s cyber operations at the Brookings Institution, CSIS, and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University, and has provided multiple private briefings and media interviews on the topic. From 2015-2016, she served as the President of Sejong Society, a young professional organization focused on Korea studies affiliated with the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS.
Prof. David C. Kang is Maria Crutcher Professor in International Relations, Business and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California, with appointments in both the School of International Relations and the Marshall School of Business. At USC, he is also Director of the Korean Studies Institute. Kang’s latest book is American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He is also author of East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (Columbia University Press, 2010); China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (Columbia University Press, 2007); Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies, co-authored with Victor Cha (Columbia University Press, 2003). Kang has published numerous scholarly articles in journals such as International Organization and International Security, and his co-authored article “Testing Balance of Power Theory in World History” was awarded “Best Article, 2007-2009,” by the European Journal of International Relations. Kang has also written opinion pieces in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as writing a monthly column for the Joongang Ilbo in Korean. He received an A.B. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Berkeley.
Andrew Kim is a Non-Resident Fellow with the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Mr. Kim retired in November 2018 as a Senior Intelligence Officer from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after 28 years of service. His last position was Assistant Director of CIA for the Korea Mission Center. He established the Korea Mission Center in April 2017 in direct response to a Presidential initiative to defuse North Korea’s longstanding threat to global security. He also managed and guided CIA analysts who have unique and extensive expertise on Korea to provide strategic and tactical analytic products for a range of policymakers. He successfully negotiated the foundation for the U.S.-North Korea Summit in Singapore in June 2018 – a diplomatic initiative aimed at resolving seven decades of conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Mr. Kim also held the Associate Deputy Director of CIA for Operations/Technology position. In this capacity, he led and orchestrated all efforts to update their operational technology and incorporated state-of-the-art doctrine into CIA training curricula. Mr. Kim, who served as the Chief of CIA Station in three major East Asian cities, managed the collection, analysis, production, and distribution of information that directly affected national security. In recognition of his many contributions, CIA honored Mr. Kim with the Director’s Award (2018), Presidential Rank Award (2012), and the Donovan Award (1990). He speaks fluent Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese.
Dr. Jina Kim is a Research Fellow and Chief of the North Korean Military Research Division at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA). She is also an adjunct professor at Yonsei Graduate School of International Studies. Dr. Kim specializes in U.S.-North Korea relations and nuclear non-proliferation. She serves on the Advisory Committee for the Blue House National Security Office, the Advisory Committee for the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command, and the Policy Review Committee for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also served on the Advisory Committee for the Blue House’s Public Information Committee (2017-2019), Ministry of National Unification (2015-2018), and National Policy Review Board for the Prime Minister’s Office (2014-2017). Her publications include The North Korean Nuclear Weapons Crisis (Palgrave McMillan, 2014), Korean Peninsula and Indo-Pacific Power Politics (Routledge, forthcoming co-authored book), North Korea and Asia’s Evolving Nuclear Landscape (NBR, 2017), and many others. Dr. Kim holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Victoria Kim is the Seoul correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the paper in 2007, she has covered state and federal courts, worked on investigative projects, and reported on Southern California’s Korean community. She has previously written for the Associated Press out of South Korea and West Africa, as well as for the Financial Times in New York. Kim was raised in Seoul and graduated from Harvard University with a degree in history.
Dr. Geun Lee was appointed President of the Korea Foundation in September 2019. Prior to joining the Foundation, he was a professor of International Relations at the Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University, and former Dean of Office of International Affairs, Seoul National University. From 2015 to 2016, he was visiting Super Global Professor at Keio University in Japan. He is also former Chair of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Korea at World Economic Forum (Davos Forum), and currently a member of the Global Future Council of World Economic Forum. Before joining the faculty of Seoul National University, he served as a professor at the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (which is now part of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy). He also served as President of an independent think tank, Korea Institute for Future Strategies from 2003-2007. His publications include “Clash of Soft Power between China and Japan,” “A Theory of Soft Power and Korea’s Soft Power Strategy,” “The Nexus between Korea’s Regional Security Options and Domestic Politics,” “US Global Defense Posture Review and its Implications on the US-Korea Relations.” He co-authored The Environmental Dimension of Asian Security. Dr. Lee received his B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Dr. Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Within FSI, she works primarily in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) as well. She is also a fellow in Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an inaugural Wilson Center China Fellow. Dr. Mastro is an international security expert with a focus on Chinese military and security policy issues, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. Her research addresses critical questions at the intersection of interstate conflict, great power relations, and the challenge of rising powers. She leverages process tracing, qualitative historical analysis, and the case study method with the goal of conducting policy-relevant research. She has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, International Security, International Studies Review, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly,The National Interest, Survival, and Asian Security. Dr. Mastro is the author of The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime (Cornell University Press, 2019). She also continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve, for which she works as a Strategic Planner at INDOPACOM. She has received numerous awards for her military service and contributions to U.S. strategy in Asia, including the 2020 and 2018 Meritorious Service Medal, the 2017 Air Force recognition Ribbon, and the 2016 Individual Reservist of the Year Award. Prior to her appointment at Stanford in August 2020, Mastro was an assistant professor of security studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University.
Priscilla Moriuchi is the Threat Intel Lead at Apple and non-resident Fellow with the Cyber Project and Korea Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. She was previously Head of Nation-state Research and Principal Analyst at Recorded Future. Ms. Moriuchi is an expert on state-sponsored cyber operations and Asia Pacific regional and cyber threats. She is a widely published researcher and commentator on national and cyber security issues. Her cutting-edge research on China, Russia, and North Korea has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. Ms. Moriuchi spent 12 years at the National Security Agency, most recently as the Enduring Threat Manager and top subject matter expert on East Asia and Pacific (EAP) cyber threats.
Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. An expert on the Asia-Pacific region, his research interests range from nuclear strategy, arms control, missile defense, nonproliferation, emerging technologies, and U.S. extended deterrence. He is the author of Kim Jong Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea (Hurst Publishers/Oxford University Press, 2020). Panda was previously an adjunct senior fellow in the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and a member of the 2019 FAS International Study Group on North Korea Policy. He has consulted for the United Nations in New York and Geneva on nonproliferation and disarmament matters, and has testified on security topics related to South Korea and Japan before the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is editor-at-large at The Diplomat, where he hosts the Asia Geopolitics podcast, and a contributing editor at War on the Rocks.
Dr. John Park is Director of the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also a Faculty Member of the Committee on Regional Studies East Asia, an Associated Faculty Member of the Korea Institute, and a Faculty Affiliate with the Managing the Atom Project. His core research projects focus on the political economy of the Korean Peninsula, nuclear proliferation, economic statecraft, Asian trade negotiations, and North Korean cyber activities. He previously worked at Goldman Sachs and The Boston Consulting Group. Dr. Park presented a TEDxPaloAlto talk in 2019 titled “How North Korea Inc. Evades Sanctions Through Innovation.” Dr. Park’s key publications include: “Stopping North Korea, Inc.: Sanctions Effectiveness and Unintended Consequences,” (MIT Security Studies Program, 2016 — co-authored with Jim Walsh); “The Key to the North Korean Targeted Sanctions Puzzle,” The Washington Quarterly (Fall 2014); “Assessing the Role of Security Assurances in Dealing with North Korea” in Security Assurances and Nuclear Nonproliferation (Stanford University Press, 2012); “North Korea, Inc.: Gaining Insights into North Korean Regime Stability from Recent Commercial Activities” (USIP Working Paper, May 2009); and “North Korea's Nuclear Policy Behavior: Deterrence and Leverage,” in The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia (Stanford University Press, 2008). Dr. Park received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow. He completed his pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.
Dr. Kee B. Park is a Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the Director of Korea Health Policy Project, which focuses on how geopolitical factors influence the health of the North Korean people. He has published extensively about the relationships among international security, global health, humanitarian assistance, and health diplomacy, in the North Korean context. As the Director of North Korea Program at the Korean American Medical Association, he has visited North Korea over 20 times to work alongside North Korean doctors. His last visit was in November, 2019. In his capacity as a Member of the Expert Advisory Panel for Surgical Care at the World Health Organization, he also supports the DPRK’s national surgical care strengthening efforts though the Ministry of Public Health. He is a member of the National Committee on North Korea and the Council of Korean Americans. Dr. Park received his MD from Rutgers Medical School, MPH from Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and neurosurgical training at Temple University Hospital. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Neurological Surgery.
Dr. Gary Samore is a Senior Fellow with the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and Professor of the Practice of Politics at Brandeis University. Dr. Samore was formally Executive Director for Research at the Belfer Center. He served for four years as President Obama’s White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), including as U.S. Sherpa for the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. and the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea. Dr. Samore was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls under President Clinton from 1995 to 2000. Before the National Security Council, Dr. Samore worked on nonproliferation issues at the State Department. In 1995, he received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service for his role in negotiating the 1994 North Korea nuclear agreement. Prior to the State Department, he worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the RAND Corporation. Dr. Samore was a National Science Foundation Fellow at Harvard University, where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Government in 1984.
David E. Sanger is a national security correspondent and a senior writer. In a 36-year reporting career for The New York Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age, examines the emergence of cyberconflict as the primary way large and small states are competing and undercutting each other, changing the nature of global power. He is also the author of two Times best sellers on foreign policy and national security: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, published in 2009, and Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, published in 2012. For The Times, Mr. Sanger has served as Tokyo bureau chief, Washington economic correspondent, White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, and chief Washington correspondent. He wrote many of the first articles about North Korea’s emerging nuclear weapons program. Returning to Washington, Mr. Sanger turned to a wide range of diplomatic and national security issues, especially issues of nuclear proliferation and the rise of cyberconflict among nations. In reporting for The Times and Confront and Conceal, he revealed the story of Olympic Games, the code name for the most sophisticated cyberattack in history, the American-Israeli effort to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program with the Stuxnet worm. His journalistic pursuit of the origins of Stuxnet became the subject of the documentary “Zero Days,” which made the short list of Academy Award documentaries in 2016. With his Times colleague Bill Broad, he also described, in early 2017, a parallel cybereffort against North Korea. He has also won the Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting for his coverage of the Iraq and Korea crises, the Aldo Beckman prize for coverage of the presidency, and, in two separate years, the Merriman Smith Memorial Award, for coverage of national security issues. A 1982 graduate of Harvard College, Mr. Sanger was the first senior fellow in The Press and National Security at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. With Dr. Graham Allison, he co-teaches “Central Challenges in American National Security, Strategy and the Press” at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Nick Schifrin is the foreign affairs and defense correspondent for PBS NewsHour, based in Washington, D.C. He leads NewsHour’s foreign reporting and has created week-long, in-depth series for NewsHour from China, Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Cuba, Mexico, and the Baltics. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2018 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In November 2020, Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America’s Middle East correspondent. He won an Overseas Press Club Award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage. From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011, he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow Award for its bin Laden coverage. He has a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), with a concentration in Strategic Studies.
Sydney A. Seiler is the National Intelligence Officer for North Korea at the National Intelligence Council in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Previously, he was U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) Senior Analyst and Senior Defense Intelligence Expert for North Korea, serving as the principal advisor and senior expert on Korean Peninsula security issues to the USFK Commander and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Enterprise. Mr. Seiler served as the U.S. Special Envoy for Six Party Talks (2014-2015), where he coordinated U.S. diplomacy and policy on the DPRK, and led negotiations with North Korea. Prior to that, Mr. Seiler served as the director for Korea on the National Security Council (2011-2014). A member of the Senior National Intelligence Service, Mr. Seiler has over 38 years of experience focusing on Korean Peninsula affairs in a range of executive management, intelligence, and policy positions within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Analysis, CIA’s Directorate of Operations, CIA’s Open Source Center, and the National Security Agency.
Ambassador Kathleen Stephens assumed leadership of the Korea Economic Institute as President and CEO in September 2018. Ambassador Stephens was a career diplomat in the United States Foreign Service, 1978-2015. She was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea 2008-2011, the first woman and first Korean-speaker to serve in that position. Ambassador Stephens served as acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (2012), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2005-2007), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2003-2005), and National Security Council Director for European Affairs at the Clinton White House. Korea has been a leit motif of Ambassador Stephens’ life and career since she served in rural Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer and trainer, 1975-1977. She was William J. Perry Fellow for Korea at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, 2015-2018. She is a Mansfield Foundation Distinguished Fellow, Pacific Century Institute Board Chairperson, Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Asia Foundation, and on the board of The Korea Society. Ambassador Stephens has received the Presidential Meritorious Service Award (2009) and Linguist of the Year (2010). She holds the Kwanghwa Medal of Diplomatic Merit, the Sejong Cultural Award, the Korean-American Friendship Association Award, the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul, the Korea YWCA Special Prize for Leadership, and was Hangul Goodwill Ambassador as well as Korea National Museum Goodwill Ambassador. Stephens was an undergraduate at Prescott College, University of Hong Kong. and Oxford University, and holds a B.A. Honors from Prescott. She holds a Master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School.
Dr. Sue Mi Terry joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2017 as Senior Fellow for Korea after a distinguished career in intelligence, policymaking, and academia following Korean issues. She also teaches at the Asian Studies Program at Georgetown University and is an analyst and commentator for MSNBC and NBC News programs. Prior to CSIS, she served as a senior analyst on Korean issues at the CIA from 2001 to 2008, where she produced hundreds of intelligence assessments – including a record number of contributions to the President’s Daily Brief. She has received numerous awards for her leadership and mission support, including the CIA Foreign Language award in 2008. From 2008 to 2009, Dr. Terry was the Director for Korea, Japan, and Oceanic affairs at the National Security Council under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In that role, she formulated, coordinated, and implemented U.S. government policy on Korea and Japan, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania. From 2009 to 2010, she was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council. In that position, she led the U.S. Intelligence Community’s production of strategic analysis on East Asian issues and authored multiple National Intelligence Estimates. From 2010 to 2011, she served as the National Intelligence Fellow in the David Rockefeller Studies Program at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Since leaving government, Dr. Terry has been a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute (2011-2015) and a Senior Adviser for Korea at BowerGroupAsia (2015-2017). Dr. Terry holds a Ph.D. (2001) and an M.A. (1998) in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a B.A. in political science from New York University (1993). She was born in Seoul and raised in Hawaii and Northern Virginia.
The Honorable Susan Thornton is Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale University. In 2018, she retired from the State Department after a 28-year diplomatic career focused primarily on East and Central Asia. In leadership roles in Washington, she worked on China and Korea policy, including stabilizing relations with Taiwan, the U.S.-China Cyber Agreement, the Paris Climate Accord, and led a successful negotiation in Pyongyang for monitoring of the Agreed Framework on denuclearization. In her 18 years of overseas postings in Central Asia, Russia, the Caucasus, and China, her leadership furthered U.S. interests and influence, and maintained programs and mission morale in a host of difficult operating environments. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, she was among the first State Department Fascell Fellows and served from 1989–90 at the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad. She was also a researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute from 1987–91. She holds degrees from the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Bowdoin College. She speaks Russian, Mandarin Chinese, and French, is a member of numerous professional associations, and is on the Board of Trustees for the Eurasia Foundation.
William Tobey was Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration from 2006-2009. There, he managed the U.S. government’s largest program to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism by detecting, securing, and disposing of dangerous nuclear material. Mr. Tobey also served on the National Security Council Staff under three presidents, in defense policy, arms control, and counter-proliferation positions. He has participated in international negotiations ranging from the START talks with the Soviet Union to the Six-Party Talks with North Korea. He also has ten years of experience in investment banking and venture capital. He serves on the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine. He chairs the board of the World Institute for Nuclear Security. Mr. Tobey received his MPA degree from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Robin Wright, a U.S. Institute of Peace-Wilson Center Distinguished Fellow, is a highly decorated journalist. She is a longtime writer for The New Yorker, a former diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post, and has reported from more than 140 countries. Wright has been a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as well as Yale, Duke, and the University of California. The American Academy of Diplomacy selected Wright as the journalist of the year for her “distinguished reporting and analysis of international affairs.” She also won the National Press Club Award for diplomatic reporting and has been the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant. Wright has written or edited eight books, including the widely acclaimed Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World. She has been a television commentator on morning and evening news programs on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN and MSNBC as well as “Meet the Press,” “Face the Nation,” “This Week,” “Nightline,” “PBS Newshour,” “Frontline,” “Charlie Rose,” “Washington Week in Review,” “Hardball,” “Morning Joe,” “Anderson Cooper 360,” “The Situation Room,” “The Colbert Report,” and HBO’s “Real Time.” She is a prolific analyst and was the recipient of the U.N. Correspondents Gold Medal for international reporting and the National Magazine Award.
Prof. Hyon Joo Yoo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity University. Her research interests include the U.S. alliance, East Asian security, China’s foreign policy, Korean politics, and international relations theory. Prof. Yoo was an East Asia Institute (EAI) Fellow on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia, a Korea Foundation Fellow, a visiting Fellow at the East West Center, Washington, D.C., and a Social Science Research Council’s Abe Fellow in 2013-14. Her articles appeared in various journals, including Australian Journal of International Affairs, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, and Asian Perspective. She was a specialist in the Korean Development Institute in Seoul, Korea. She is native Korean and can speak and read Chinese. Prof. Yoo received her Ph.D. from Georgetown University.
Minister Young-kwan Yoon is a Senior Visiting Scholar with the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Seoul National University. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea from 2003 to 2004. Before he joined the faculty of Seoul National University in 1990, he taught at the University of California at Davis. He served as Korea’s Eminent Representative to, and co-chair of, the East Asia Vision Group II from September 2011 to October 2012. He has published several books and some 70 articles in the fields of international political economy, Korea’s foreign policy, and inter-Korean relations, some of which appeared in World Politics, International Political Science Review, Asian Survey, and Project Syndicate. Minister Yoon received his doctoral degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
