Speaker Biographies
EAI Participants:
CHUN, Chaesung is the chair of the National Security Research Center at the East Asia Institute, and a professor of the department of political science and international relations at Seoul National University. He received his PhD in international relations at Northwestern University and serves on the policy advisory committee to the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Unification. His main research interests include international political theory, the ROK-US alliance, and Korean Peninsular affairs.
HA, Young-Sun is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the East Asia Institute (EAI) and Professor Emeritus of the Seoul National University. Dr. Ha served as a member of senior advisory group for the inter-Korean summit talks preparation committee and a member of the Presidential National Security Advisory Group (2008-2016). He received his BA and MA from Seoul National University and holds a PhD in international politics from the University of Washington. He was Professor of International Relations at Seoul National University (1980-2012). He was a research fellow at the Center for International Studies at Princeton University and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. His recent books and edited volumes include: World Politics of Love: War and Peace (2019), A New Perspective on the Diplomatic History of Korea: Tradition and Modernity (2019), U.S.-China Competition in the Architecture of a Regional Order in the Asia-Pacific (2017).
KIM, Lami is Assistant Professor in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College. She is also serving as a Security and Statecraft Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington, a Mansfield-Luce Asia Scholar, and an Adjunct Fellow at Pacific Forum. Her research interests are all things nuclear, emerging technologies and international security, and security issues in East Asia. Her work has appeared in The Washington Quarterly, Global Governance, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, War on the Rocks, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Bureau of Asian Research, Routledge, the National Interest, and the Diplomat. She has also provided commentaries regarding Asian security affairs to media outlets, such as Washington Post, Newsweek, Time magazine, BBC, Al-Jazeera, LA Times, and Voice of America, among others. She has served as a research fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, the Wilson Center, Pacific Forum, and the Stimson Center; as a Nuclear Scholar as well as a U.S.-Korea NextGen Scholar at CSIS; as a Visiting Fellow at Seoul National University; and also as a South Korean diplomat. She has taught at Harvard University, Boston College, and the University of Hong Kong. She holds a PhD degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a Master’s degree from Harvard University.
KIM, Yang Gyu is a Principal Researcher at East Asia Institute and a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Seoul National University. He holds a PhD in International Relations from Florida International University (2019) and received his Master’s (2014) and Bachelor’s degrees (2008) in International Relations from Seoul National University. Kim was a Visiting Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University (2020-2021). He also taught IR theory, security, and foreign policy courses at Florida International University as an Adjunct Professor (2020-2021). Kim joined the PhD program with a Fulbright Graduate Study Award and received the Smith Richardson Foundation’s “World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship” award for his dissertation work. Kim’s research focuses on international security, including coercive diplomacy, nuclear weapons strategy, power transition, U.S.-China relations, and North Korea. His recent works include “At the Brink of Nuclear War: Feasibility of Retaliation and the US Policy Decisions During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis” and “The Feasibility of Punishment and the Credibility of Threats: Case Studies on the First Moroccan and the Rhineland Crises.”
SHEEN, Seong-ho is Professor of International Security and East Asia, and former Dean for Office of International Affairs in Seoul National University. Professor Sheen was a visiting fellow at the East-West Center DC, a CNAPS fellow at the Brookings Institution, an assistant research professor at Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS), Honolulu, Hawaii, and a research fellow at Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA), Cambridge, Mass. He has taught at University of Massachusetts Boston. In addition, he advised various government organizations including ROK National Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Unification and Committee on Foreign Affairs and Unification, and the ROK National Assembly. His area of interest includes International Security, U.S. Foreign Policy, Northeast Asian Politics, and the Korean Peninsula. He received his PhD and MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and his BA from Seoul National University.
SOHN, Yul is President of the East Asia Institute and Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS) and Underwood International College at Yonsei University, Seoul Korea. He served as the President of the Korean Association of International Studies (KAIS) in 2019, served as Dean of GSIS from 2012 to 2016, and was President of the Association for Contemporary Japan in 2012. Before joining Yonsei University, Sohn taught at Chung-Ang University and was a visiting scholar at institutions in the University of Tokyo, Waseda University, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and University of California, Berkeley. Sohn has served on a number of government advisory committees, including the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and ROK Ministry of Trade, the Korean National Diplomatic Academy, the Northeast Asian History Foundation, and the Korea Foundation. Sohn has written extensively on Japanese and East Asian political economics, East Asian regionalism, and global governance. His recent publications include Japan and Asia’s Contested Order (2018, with T.J. Pempel), and Understanding Public Diplomacy in East Asia (2016, with Jan Melissen) both from Palgrave MacMillan, and South Korea under US-China Rivalry: the Dynamics of the Economic-Security Nexus in the Trade Policy Making (2019, The Pacific Review). Sohn received his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.
Belfer Participants:
Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making. Prof. 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, he 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.” Prof. Allison’s latest book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (2017), is a national and international bestseller. His 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. He was educated at Davidson College; Harvard College (BA, magna cum laude, in History); Oxford University (BA and MA, First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics); and Harvard University (PhD in Political Science).
Matthew Bunn is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His research interests include nuclear theft and terrorism; nuclear proliferation and measures to control it; the future of nuclear energy and its fuel cycle; and policies to promote innovation in energy technologies. Before joining Harvard in 1997, he served for three years as an adviser to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he played a major role in U.S. policies related to the control and disposition of weapons-usable nuclear materials in the United States and the former Soviet Union, and directed a secret study for President Clinton on security for nuclear materials in Russia. Previously, he was at the National Academy of Sciences, where he directed the two-volume study Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium. He is the winner of the American Physical Society’s Joseph A. Burton Forum Award and the Federation of American Scientists’ Hans Bethe Award, and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a member of the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee and a consultant to Pacific Northwest and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Arms Control Association. He is the author or co-author of more than 25 books and book-length technical reports (most recently Insider Threats), and over 150 articles in publications ranging from Science and Nuclear Technology to Foreign Policy and The Washington Post. Prof. Bunn holds a doctorate in technology, management, and policy from MIT.
Mariana Budjeryn is a Senior Research Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Formerly, she held appointments as a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at MTA, a fellow at Harvard Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and as a visiting professor at Tufts University and Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Mariana’s research focuses on the international non-proliferation regime, arms control, nuclear crises, and post-Soviet nuclear history. Mariana leads MTA’s diversity, inclusion, and belonging program, including the Atomic Voices seminar series that provides a forum for marginalized voices and perspectives in the nuclear field. She is an affiliate of the Davis Center Negotiations Task Force, where she is one of the architects and organizers of ACONA (Arms Control Negotiations Academy), an immersive course in arms control history, technology, and negotiations skills. Mariana’s research and analytical contributions appeared in the Journal of Cold War Studies, Nonproliferation Review, World Affairs Journal, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, War on the Rocks, Arms Control Today, and in the publications of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where she is a Global Fellow. Mariana’s book Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine is forthcoming in December 2022 with Johns Hopkins University Press. She holds a PhD in Political Science and an MA in International Relations from Central European University (formerly) in Budapest, Hungary, and a BA in Political Science from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine.
Francesca Giovannini is the Executive Director of the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. 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.
Steven Miller is Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal, International Security and also co-editor of the International Security Program’s book series, Belfer Center Studies in International Security (which is published by the MIT Press). Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Miller is editor or co-editor of more than two dozen books, including, most recently, The Next Great War? The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict. Miller is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he is a member of their Committee on International Security Studies (CISS). He currently co-directs the Academy’s project On the Global Nuclear Future. Dr. Miller is also cochair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee and a member of the Council of International Pugwash. Dr. Miller received his undergraduate degree at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He received a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) and a PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Alex O’Neill is Coordinator of the Korea Project and an Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also a Co-Founder of the Belfer Center’s North Korea Cyber Working Group. As Coordinator, Alex helps oversee all Korea Project events and initiatives, including the annual Harvard Korean Security Summit. He previously worked as Research Assistant to Prof. Matthew Bunn at the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom. Alex’s work focuses on North Korean financially motivated cyber operations, as well as links between North Korean and Russian-speaking criminals. His most recent research publication is “Cybercriminal Statecraft: North Korean Hackers’ Ties to the Global Underground.” Alex is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Refugee Assistance Project and of the Young Professionals Briefing Series at the Council on Foreign Relations. He speaks fluent Spanish and has advanced proficiency in Russian. Alex holds an MSc in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in History from Yale University.
John Park is the Director of the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Earlier, Dr. Park worked at Goldman Sachs and The Boston Consulting Group. He also directed Northeast Asia Track 1.5 policy dialogues at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He advises Northeast Asia policy-focused officials in the U.S. government. Dr. Park’s key publications include: “Where Do Divergent U.S. and Chinese Approaches to Dealing with North Korea Lead?” in The China Questions 2: Critical Insights into U.S.-China Relations (Harvard University Press, 2022); “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); 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’s current research projects examine deterrence dynamics on the Korean Peninsula and the North Korean regime’s accumulated learning in evading sanctions via cyber operations. He has testified on North Korea before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, House Financial Services Committee, and Senate Banking Committee. Dr. Park received his PhD from the University of Cambridge. He completed his predoctoral and postdoctoral training at the Harvard Kennedy School.
William Tobey is the Director of the Office of National Security and International Studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is also a Senior Fellow with the Avoiding Great Power Wars Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. From 2009-2021, Tobey was a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Tobey served as 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. He 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. Tobey also has a decade of experience in investment banking and venture capital. He currently chairs the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, and the board of the World Institute for Nuclear Security. He is also on the executive committee of the nonproliferation division of the American Nuclear Society. Tobey received his Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Heather Williams is the director of the Project on Nuclear Issues and a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and an Associate with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Prior to joining CSIS, she was a Visiting Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow in the Security Studies Program at MIT. Until 2022, she was a senior lecturer (associate professor) in defense studies at King’s College London and taught on arms control, deterrence, and disarmament. From 2018 to 2019, Dr. Williams served as a specialist adviser to the House of Lords International Relations Committee inquiry into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and disarmament, and until 2015 she was a research fellow at Chatham House. She previously worked in the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses, where she remains an adjunct research staff member. She is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a senior associate fellow with the European Leadership Network, and a member of the Wilton Park Advisory Council. Dr. Williams has a PhD in war studies from King’s College London, an MA in security policy studies from the George Washington University, and a BA in international relations and Russian studies from Boston University.
Kijun You serves in the Consul General in the Korean Consulate General in Boston. His previous positions in the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs include: Director-General for International Legal Affairs; Deputy Director-General for International Legal Affairs; Minister-Counsellor, Korean Embassy in the Republic of Kenya; Counsellor, Korean Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York; Director, Territory and Oceans Division, Treaties Bureau. Consul General You received his B.A. in French Language and Literature at Korea University, Master of Law from Korea University, LL.M. from the University of Edinburgh, and LL.M. from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
