Victor Cha

Victor Cha is president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is also a distinguished university professor and professor of government at Georgetown University. From 2021 to 2025, he was appointed by the Biden administration to serve on the Defense Policy Board in an advisory role to the secretary of defense. From 2004 to 2007, he served on the National Security Council (NSC), where he was responsible for Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Island nations. Dr. Cha was the U.S. deputy head of delegation at the Six Party Talks and received two outstanding service commendations during his tenure at the NSC. He is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States–Korea–Japan Security Triangle (Stanford University Press, 1999), which won the 2000 Ohira Book Prize, and The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Ecco, 2012), selected by Foreign Affairs as a “Best Book on the Asia-Pacific for 2012.” His book Korea: A New History of South and North (Yale University Press, 2023) has been translated into nine languages, including Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. His other books are Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (Columbia University Press, 2003); Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia (Columbia University Press, 2009); Powerplay: Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton University Press, 2018); The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea (Columbia University Press, 2024); North Korea’s Sea-Based WMD Capability (Bloomsbury, 2025); and China’s Weaponization of Trade: Resistance through Collective Resilience (Columbia University Press, 2026). Dr. Cha is a two-time Fulbright scholar and a former Olin fellow at Harvard University, as well as a former Hoover, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Koret fellow at Stanford University. He currently serves on the editorial boards of ten academic journals and is coeditor of the Contemporary Asia book series at Columbia University Press. He serves on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy and the Korea Society and is a senior fellow at the George W. Bush Institute. Dr. Cha received his PhD, MIA, and BA from Columbia University and a BA with honors from Oxford University.
 

Celeste Arrington

Celeste Arrington is the Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, where she also serves as Director of the GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) and Co-Director of the East Asia National Resource Center. Her research spans public policy, law and social change, social movements, and governance, with a regional focus on the Koreas and Japan; she is also interested in Northeast Asian security and transnational activism. She is the author of Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Government Accountability in Japan and South Korea (Cornell University Press, 2016) and co-editor, with Patricia Goedde, of Rights Claiming in South Korea (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Her latest book, From Manners to Rules: Advocating for Legalism in South Korea and Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2025) analyzes the legalistic turn in Korean and Japanese governance through paired case studies on tobacco control and disability rights. She has held fellowships at Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Princeton's Program in Law and Public Affairs, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and is a Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. Dr. Arrington received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an A.B. summa cum laude from Princeton University.
 

CHUN Chaesung

CHUN Chaesung is President of the East Asia Institute (EAI) and a Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Seoul National University (SNU). He is a past president of the Korean Association of International Studies (2021) and has previously served as Director of the Center for International Studies at SNU and Vice President of the Institute of Peace and Unification Studies. He has held visiting professorships at Keio University in Tokyo (2010–2011 and 2017–2018) and currently serves on the advisory committees of the Ministry of Unification, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of National Defense, and the ROK Army and Navy. His major monographs include The Future World Political Order and a Theory of Topos (2025), Sovereignty and International Relations: Northeast Asian International Relations Theory—Politics among Incomplete Sovereign States (2020), Sovereignty and International Relations: The Modern Sovereign State System and the Evolution of Empire (2019), East Asian International Relations (2011), and Is Politics Moral? Reinhold Niebuhr's Transcendental Realism (2012). Dr. Chun received his Ph.D. in international relations theory from Northwestern University and his B.A. and M.A. in international relations from Seoul National University.
 

Julie Chung

Julie Chung is Vice President for Strategy and Global Affairs at ISC2, a leading global cybersecurity consortium. She is also a distinguished fellow jointly affiliated with the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs. She is also a senior advisor for the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University and a member of its advisory council. Before joining the Atlantic Council, she was the U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka from 2022 to 2026, strengthening maritime security partnerships in close coordination with Quad partners. Chung served as Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs from 2019 to 2021. Prior to that, she was Director of the Office of Japanese Affairs. She traveled to North Korea numerous times between 2001 and 2003 as a key member of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) negotiations with North Korea, and also served as special assistant on Asia to Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage in 2003. Ambassador Chung holds a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego, and an M.A. from Columbia University. She is the recipient of the Presidential Rank Award for leading repatriation efforts of U.S. citizens during COVID-19 and the State Department's Distinguished Honor Award. 
 

Stephan Haggard

Stephan Haggard is Distinguished Research Professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and Research Director for Democracy and Global Governance at the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) at the University of California San Diego. He has written widely on the political economy of East Asia, including most recently Developmental States (2018). His work on North Korea includes three books with Marcus Noland: Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (2007), Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea (2011), and Hard Target: Sanctions, Inducements, and the Case of North Korea (2017). Recently, he has published a review of how to extract information from economic “black holes” like North Korea. With David Kang, he co-edited to interdisciplinary volumes on the IR of East Asia: East Asia in the World: Twelve Events That Shaped the Modern International Order (2020) and East Asia and the Modern International Order: From Imperialism to Cold War(2025). A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has provided commentary for outlets such as CNN International and served on the board of the Korea Economic Institute, where he also contributes to their policy publications. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and taught in the Government Department at Harvard University before joining UC San Diego.
 

Edgard Kagan

Edgard Kagan is senior adviser and Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He served as U.S. ambassador to Malaysia for Presidents Trump and Biden from December 2023 until February 2026. He previously served as special assistant to the president and senior director for East Asia and Oceania at the National Security Council. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Ambassador Kagan also served as chargé d'affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India, and as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is a former deputy assistant secretary for Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs and has also served as U.S. consul general in Mumbai, India, as deputy director of the Washington office of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and as a political officer and political external unit chief at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Ambassador Kagan is the recipient of the Presidential Meritorious Award and numerous State Department performance awards. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and French and holds a B.A. from Yale University.
 

KIM Sung-han

KIM Sung-han is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Korea University, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, and Chief Executive Director at the Institute for Economy, Technology, and Security (IETS) in Seoul, Korea. He served as the ROK National Security Advisor in 2022–2023 and as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2012–2013. In 2013–2014, Dr. Kim was the Chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction). He also served as Director of the Ilmin International Relations Institute at Korea University and Dean of GSIS from 2017 to 2021. Before then, he had been a professor from 1994 to 2007 at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS), Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Following the North Korean attack on the Cheonan naval corvette in March 2010, he advised as a member of the Presidential Commission for National Security Review and the Presidential Commission for Defense Reform. His scholarly articles include "Comprehensive Extended Deterrence with the ROK," "Denuclearizing North Korea: Time for Plan B?," and "From Blood Alliance to Strategic Alliance." He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Texas at Austin.
 

Yuri Kim

Yuri Kim is Senior Director for International Government Relations at ExxonMobil, a role she assumed in 2025 following the conclusion of a 29-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service. A career diplomat who rose to the rank of Career Minister, she served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Albania from 2020 to 2023 and concluded her State Department career as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, briefly serving as Acting Assistant Secretary. Ambassador Kim worked on key foreign policy and national security challenges across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Earlier in her career, she was director of Southern European Affairs; director of the Office of European Security and Political-Military Affairs; and director of the Center for the Study of the Conduct of Diplomacy. She also served as Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, in Baghdad, and as a special assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Born in South Korea and raised on Guam, she was the first Korean American woman and the first person from Guam to represent the United States as an ambassador. She holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge.
 

LEE Ji-Young

LEE Ji-Young is an Associate Professor of International Relations at American University's School of International Service, where she holds the C. W. Lim and Korea Foundation Professorship of Korean Studies and is Founding Director of the SIS Korea in Global Affairs Initiative. She has also served as the Korea Policy Chair and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, and as a nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. Trained as a political scientist, she writes on Asian historical international relations, regional security order and the U.S. alliance network. She is the author of China's Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination (Columbia University Press, 2016), and her second book, The Great Power Next Door: The Past and Present of Chinese Military Intervention in the Korean Peninsula, is under contract with Columbia University Press. She has published in Security Studies, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, and The Pacific Review among others, and previously taught at Oberlin College as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Lee received her Ph.D. in Government and an M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University, an M.A. in Political Science from Seoul National University, and a B.A. in Political Science and Diplomacy from Ewha Womans University.
 

LEE Shin-wha

LEE Shin-wha is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Korea University, and served as the Republic of Korea's Ambassador-at-Large for International Cooperation on North Korean Human Rights, a post to which she was appointed in 2022. Her broader career has centered on the United Nations, global security including non-traditional security, and inter­national peace operations. She served as special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's independent inquiry into the Rwandan genocide, as a member of the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Group of the Peacebuilding Fund, and as president of the Korea Academic Council on the United Nations System. She has also served as Vice President for International Affairs at Korea University and as chair's advisor of the East Asian Vision Group. Earlier appointments include post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, full-time visiting professor at Columbia University, and visiting scholar at MIT's Center for International Studies. Dr. Lee received her B.A. from Ewha Womans University and her Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Maryland, College Park.
 

LEE Sook Jong

LEE Sook Jong is President Emeritus and Senior Fellow of the East Asia Institute and a Professor at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul. She served ten years as President of the East Asia Institute, an independent Seoul-based think tank. She holds several advisory positions in the South Korean government, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Lee also participates as a member of the Trilateral Commission, Council of Councils, and many other transnational networks on research and policy studies. Since 2015, she has been serving as a Steering Committee member of the World Movement for Democracy. She created the Asia Democracy Research Network with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy and is representing the Network as a Co-representative. Her research interests include multilateralism, democracy/civil societies, and foreign policy nexus with domestic politics and public opinion. Previously, Dr. Lee was research fellow at the Sejong Institute, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, professorial lecturer at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, and visiting fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. Her recent publications include Populism in Asian Democracies: Features, Structures, and Impacts (eds. 2021) and Collaborative Governance in East Asia: Evolution Towards Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (eds. 2020), Dr. Lee received her Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University.

 

Mark Lippert

Mark Lippert is a senior advisor (non-resident) with the Korea Chair at CSIS. He had a distinguished career in the United States government that spanned approximately two decades and included a series of senior-level positions across multiple agencies. From 2014 to 2017, he served as the United States ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Republic of Korea, based in Seoul. He previously held positions in the Department of Defense, including as chief of staff to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (2013–2014) and as assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs (2012–2013), the top official in the Pentagon for all Asia issues. Lippert also worked in the White House as chief of staff to the National Security Council in 2009. An intelligence officer in the United States Navy, he mobilized to active duty from 2009 to 2011 for service with the Naval Special Warfare (SEAL) Development Group, including deployments to Afghanistan; from 2007 to 2008 he deployed as an intelligence officer with SEAL Team One to Anbar Province, Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Earlier in his career, Lippert served as a staff member in the United States Senate, working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for then-Senator Obama and on the Senate Appropriations Committee's State-Foreign Operations Subcommittee for Senator Leahy. His awards include the Bronze Star Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and the Department of Defense's Distinguished Public Service Award. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a B.A. in political science and holds an M.A. in international policy studies from the same institution.
 

Jung Pak

Jung Pak is a Distinguished Associate Fellow at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy at the Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She previously served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs and, concurrently, as the U.S. Senior Official and Deputy Special Representative for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (2021–2024), working closely with the Republic of Korea and Japan on global outreach, counter-proliferation, sanctions, and countering North Korea's cyber activities. Before entering government service, she was a senior fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies at the Brookings Institution, focusing on the Korean peninsula, East Asian regional dynamics, and transnational threats. Earlier, she was a senior officer at the Central Intelligence Agency and served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Korea at the National Intelligence Council, and she taught U.S. history at Hunter College. She is the author of Becoming Kim Jong Un (Ballantine, 2020), which draws on her experience as an intelligence officer and has been translated into multiple languages, and co-editor, with Ramon Pacheco Pardo, of East Asia's Grand Strategies: A Twelve Case Comparison (Georgetown University Press, 2025). Dr. Pak received her Ph.D. from Columbia University and studied in South Korea as a Fulbright Scholar.

 

PARK Jin

PARK Jin served as the 40th Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea (2022–2024) and is currently a Senior Advisor at the Kim & Chang law office and a Distinguished Invited Professor at KAIST, where he teaches "Science Diplomacy." He began his public career as a young diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later served as Presidential Secretary for Press Affairs and for Political Affairs under the Kim Young-sam administration (1993–1998). He was subsequently elected to the National Assembly, where he served four terms (2002–2012 and 2020–2024) representing the Jongno and Gangnam districts of Seoul. During his legislative career he served on several key committees, and as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification Committee (2008–2010) he led the passage of major legislation, including the ROK–U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the Korea–EU Free Trade Agreement, and the North Korean Human Rights Act. Before entering the National Assembly, he served as a politics lecturer at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. He passed the Korean foreign service examination and earned his LL.B. from Seoul National University, an M.P.A. from the Harvard Kennedy School, an LL.M. from New York University School of Law, and a D.Phil. in Politics from St Antony's College, University of Oxford. He is an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
 

Evan Ramstad

Evan Ramstad has served as one of the leading analysts of the economic and business scene in Korea. A journalist since 1987, he is currently a business columnist at The Minnesota Star Tribune in Minneapolis, where he has worked since 2013 and has written a column since 2023. Before that, he was chief Korea correspondent for the Wall Street Journal from 2006 to 2013, covering the full range of South Korea's alliance, trade, security, business, social, and political issues, and made numerous appearances in South Korean and international media while lecturing to university and civic groups around the country. Mr. Ramstad previously wrote for the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong and Dallas and for the Associated Press in Dallas, Minneapolis, Washington, and New York. He grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, where his first job was at the town radio station, and he was a licensed FCC radio operator before the industry was deregulated. He holds a B.A. in political science and journalism from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
 

Kathleen Stephens 

Kathleen Stephens  is Global Senior Advisor at McLarty Associates, where she advises clients on issues in Asia and Europe. She was President and CEO of the Korean Economic Institute of America (KEI) from 2018 to 2023. Ambassador Stephens was a career diplomat in the United States Foreign Service, 1978-2015. She was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2011, the first woman and first Korean speaker to serve in that position. Other overseas assignments included postings to China, Korea, the former Yugoslavia, Portugal, and Northern Ireland, where she was U.S. Consul General in Belfast (1995–1998) during the negotiations culminating in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and India, where she was U.S. Chargé d'Affaires (2014–2015). Ambassador Stephens served in a number of policy positions in Washington at the Department of State and the White House, including 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. She was the William J. Perry Fellow for Korea at Stanford University from 2015 to 2018 and has also been Endowed Chair Professor for Language and Diplomacy at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul and Senior State Department Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Ambassador Stephens studied at Prescott College, the University of Hong Kong, and Oxford University, holds a B.A. Honors from Prescott, and earned a Master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea from 1975 to 1977.
 

Andrew Yeo

Andrew Yeo is a senior fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation Chair at the Brookings Institution's Center for Asia Policy Studies. He is also a professor of politics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Yeo is the author or co-editor of six books, including Great Power Competition and Overseas Bases: Chinese, Russian, and American Force Posture in the 21st Century (Brookings Institution Press, 2024), Asia's Regional Architecture: Alliances and Institutions in the Pacific Century (Stanford University Press, 2019), and State, Society, and Markets in North Korea (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His scholarly work has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, the European Journal of International Relations, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, the Journal of East Asian Studies, and International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, among others, and his other writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Hill, The National Interest, and The Diplomat. He has offered commentary across a range of media outlets, including CNN, NBC, BBC, NPR, Voice of America, and the New York Times. Yeo is a member of the National Committee on North Korea and a two-time recipient of a U.S. Fulbright scholar award, conducting research in the Philippines in 2020 and in South Korea in 2005–06. He is also part of the first cohort of the Mansfield-Luce Asia Scholars Network (2020-21) and the first cohort of the Korea Foundation-Mansfield Foundation Scholar-Policy Nexus (2013-14). He received his doctorate in government from Cornell University and his bachelor's degree in psychology and international studies from Northwestern University.
 

Yoon Young-kwan

Yoon Young-kwan is the chairman of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. He is also a professor emeritus at Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Seoul National University. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea (2003-2004). Before joining the faculty of Seoul National University in 1990, he taught at the University of California at Davis for 3 years. Dr. Yoon established and served as the president of the Korean Institute for Future Strategies, a private non-profit research institute. He was also the founding member and the director of the Korea Peace Institute. He has also been a board member of UniKorea Foundation. He served as Korea’s eminent representative to and the Co-chair of the East Asia Vision Group II (ASEAN+3 Summit) (2011- 2012) and chairman of the National Assembly Advisory Council for Diplomatic Affairs (2019 – 2020). He was Senior Visiting Scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School (Dec. 2020 – Jul. 2021) and Kim Koo Visiting Professor at Department of Government, Harvard University (Jul. 2021- Dec. 2021). He published numerous books and articles in the field 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, The National Interest, Project Syndicate, etc. Dr. Yoon received his B.A. and M.A. in international relations from Seoul National University, and a Ph.D. in international studies from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the Johns Hopkins University.