Sung-Yoon Lee

Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. In part due to his father being a South Korean diplomat, Lee spent part of his youth in England, Switzerland, and the US.^[17]

Lee majored in American and British literature at New College in Sarasota, Florida, graduating in 1991. He pursued his graduate studies at the Fletcher School, completing his Master of Arts in 1994, and his Ph.D. in 1998.^[14] John Curtis Perry became his doctoral advisor and developed a lifelong mentor-mentee relationship.^[2][20] In his dissertation "The antinomy of divine right and the right to resistance: tianming, dei gratia, and vox populi in Syngman Rhee's Korea, 1945–1960", Lee analyzed the interplay between Confucianism and democracy in defining political authority and statecraft during the early years of the Republic of Korea.^[2][21]

Upon completing his PhD, Lee joined the faculty of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy as the adjunct assistant professor of international politics in 1998 and until 2005. Concurrently he was also the visiting assistant professor of history at Tufts University starting in 2000 and until 2005. Between 2005 and 2006 he was the Kim Koo Research Associate at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. In 2007 he resumed his position at the Fletcher School, and in 2012 became the first holder of the newly created chair Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Korean Studies.^[14][22] He held that position until 2023,^[23] afterwards becoming a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for one year.^[12][24][25] In 2025 he joined the Korean think tank Sejong Institute's Center for Korean Peninsula Strategy, as a Principal Fellow.^[10][11]

He has taught International Relations of the United States and East Asia 1945 to Present, United States and East Asia, Politics of the Korean Peninsula: Foreign and Inter-Korean Relations, and North Korean State and Society.^{[6][26][27][17]}

Lee has also been an adjunct assistant professor of Asian studies at Bowdoin College in 2000,^[28] and the visiting professor of Korean studies at Sogang University in 2007, and at Seoul National University from 2012 to 2016.^[29][30][31]

From 1999 until 2013 Lee was an associate in research at the Korea Institute, Harvard University.^[14][15][32] There he launched a new seminar series, the "Kim Koo Forum on U.S.-Korea Relations", in 2005.^[14][33] He is a former research fellow with the National Asia Research Program, a joint initiative by the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.^[16] Lee has attended numerous conferences as a speaker, moderator and interpreter.^[14] He is also a frequent commentator on Korean affairs on radio, television and print,^{[34][35][36][7][37]} with The Guardian calling him "among the most insightful and prescient chroniclers" on the behavior of North Korea's regime.^[8] Lee has also testified in the United States Congress to provide expert advice on North Korea policy issues.^{[37][38][39][40][41][42][43]}

Since 2013 Lee has been advising the U.S. government on legislation and other executive action against the North Korean regime, including strengthening US sanctions. He has advised both the US President^[17] and legislators, including participating in Congressional hearings for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee.^{[44][45][46][47]}

He has frequently contributed to media outlets, also making there a case for sanctions.^[44][45][47]

These efforts contributed towards a bill, passed in 2016, of unprecedented tough sanctions primarily aimed at restricting cash flows into the country in an effort to undermine its nuclear warhead and long-range missile development, and constrict Pyongyang's ability to pay (and retain the loyalty of) its party elites, security forces, and military.^[44][45]

In 2018 Lee participated in the Warmbier v. DPRK trial in Washington D.C. as an expert witness for the plaintiffs.^[48][49][50] The judge ruled against the DPRK, in the torture, hostage taking, and extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier.^[51]

Lee argues that the actions the regime takes both internationally and against its own people “are calculated and predicable, not random and crazy,” and he is known for using the application of historical patterns to understand and predict future conditions in North Korea.^[b]

Lee has advocated for a strategy of stern treatment of the North Korean government, while engaging the North Korean people. That includes economic pressure aimed at the elite, especially targeting its palace economy that depends on illicit activities including proliferation, smuggling, counterfeiting, and money laundering.^[c][d][e] It also means availing substantial humanitarian aid, provided it reaches the intended recipients, increasing efforts to disseminate more information from the outside world into North Korea, facilitating defections, and pressing for a global campaign of human rights.^[c][d][f][g]

Lee has underscored that the only non-military way to force North Korea into a real negotiation on denuclearization and human rights is to exert sustained economic and propaganda pressure to "destroy the Kim regime’s instruments of self-preservation":^[h] A nuclear program, a loyal ruling class, and a submissive society.^{[h][i][j][k][l][c][m][n]} That is, by on the one hand pushing more outside information into the North so its society can turn against the regime, and on the other hand by exerting sanctions that limit the cash used to prop the military and ruling apparatus, the regime would weaken to the point of near-collapse, forcing it to negotiate a transition, including a pragmatic way out for the Kim family.^{[k][l][c][m][n]}

Lee has frequently urged policymakers not to fall for the "self-defeating"^[o] trap of short-term concessionary diplomacy;^[p][17] patronizingly thinking that the regime can be persuaded through diplomacy and appeasement.^[17] Instead he urges taking the long view of an unwavering strategy of pressure. Lee sustains that refraining from making concessions in exchange for North Korea halting its cyclical belligerence is the most effective way to deter future provocations.^{[q][r][o][s][t][u]}

Lee commented frequently on the corruption scandal that led to Park Geun-hye's removal from office. On the day the Constitutional Court upheld her impeachment in March 2017, he told The Washington Post that the case was "a major landmark in the young political history of the South Korean state", saying that it spoke to collusion between government and big business and amounted to a victory for the rule of law.^[13] He told CNBC that the indictment of Samsung vice chairman Lee Jae-yong was "a blow to the chaebol and shady government-business collusion", while questioning whether the proceedings would narrow the gap between elites and the public in South Korea's hierarchical society.^[52]

In December 2018, Lee gave the closing address at an American Enterprise Institute conference in Washington, "The Open Society and Its Enemies in South Korea: From Right Authoritarianism — to Left?", which examined freedom of speech under the Moon administration, and afterwards joined a conversation with Nicholas Eberstadt.^[53] He argued that the view that South Korea's progressive administrations — those of Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in — had produced substantive improvements in press freedom, censorship and abuse of power was "unfounded", citing Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders indices, and said that a comparable "holier-than-thou" imperiousness had been present in every South Korean administration.^[9] He further contended that earlier right-wing authoritarian governments, whatever their own abuses, had not underwritten North Korea's weapons programs, citing Kim Dae-jung's transfer of $500 million to Kim Jong Il shortly before the 2000 inter-Korean summit and aid provided under Roh, whose posture at the 2007 summit he described as "that of a supplicant".^[9] He also criticized the Moon administration's "three nos" policy — no further THAAD deployments, no participation in a US-led missile defense network and no trilateral alliance with the United States and Japan — arguing that earlier conservative governments had not aligned with China on fundamental questions of national security.^[9]

In the same address, Lee characterized the 2016–17 candlelight protests as "democracy in action" rather than a revolution, stated that Park Geun-hye had been impeached and removed "through constitutional process" and was "justifiably removed from office", and described her 33-year sentence as excessive.^[9] Asked at the same event whether South Korea could be characterized as authoritarian, he replied that no panelist had said so, distinguishing "authoritarian tendencies, not authoritarian".^[9]

In February 2022, ahead of the South Korean election, Lee was listed as a panelist at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on a breakout session titled "Is South Korea the Next Venezuela?", alongside Bill Hagerty, Gordon Chang, Grant Newsham and Morse Tan.^[54]

Commenting on Yoon Suk-yeol's victory in the 2022 South Korean presidential election, Lee described him as "a maverick" and said South Korean public opinion had swung sharply away from China, while judging that Beijing's economic leverage meant Yoon could not afford to be aggressively anti-China.^[55] He told Stars and Stripes that US diplomats had welcomed the outcome, assessing that Yoon's foreign policy platform "coincides far better with America's interests" than that of his opponent Lee Jae-myung, and that Yoon's stated intention to repair relations with Japan mattered because conservatives had traditionally valued Japan's place in the US-led alliance structure.^[56]

Writing in The Hill days after the election, Lee argued that Yoon's first task was to reverse democratic backsliding under Moon, whom he accused of having "waged an impressive war on the universal freedoms of speech and information".^[a] He cited defamation actions brought against private citizens who had mocked or insulted the president, a law criminalizing the sending of leaflets and goods into North Korea, and cuts in funding and what he described as pretextual audits directed at organizations researching North Korean human rights abuses. He characterized the Moon administration's campaign to eradicate "deeply-rooted evils" as political revenge against opponents, and attributed Yoon's narrow victory more to public appetite for change than to the president-elect's own political skill.^[a]

Speaking to The World in Seoul in January 2025, during the crisis that followed President Yoon Suk-yeol's declaration of martial law, Lee said the declaration had been "completely uncalled for" and a betrayal of the nation's trust, and that Yoon deserved to be impeached, with his fate resting on the Constitutional Court.^[57] At the same time, he described the push to arrest Yoon as something of an overreach, observing that Yoon had already been impeached and suspended, was subject to a travel ban and was not a flight risk, and said voters were growing skeptical of the opposition after it had impeached a record number of officials.^[57]