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Professor Sung-Yoon Lee of Tufts University on US/DPRK Relations

6:30 PM - 8:30 PM Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Location:
Main Library
449 Broadway
Lecture Hall
Cambridge

Event image for Professor Sung-Yoon Lee of Tufts University on US/DPRK Relations

Sung-Yoon Lee is Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Mr. Lee is a former Associate in Research at the Korea Institute, Harvard University, and former Research Fellow of the inaugural National Asia Research Program, a joint initiative by the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Dr. Lee’s essays on the international politics of the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia have been published multiple times in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Christian Science Monitor, CNN.com, The Hill, etc. His most recent publications are “Forgotten Borders: Japan’s Maritime Operations in the Korean War and Implications for North Korea,” in Geoffrey f. Gresh, ed., Eurasia’s Maritime Rise and Global Security: From the Indian Ocean to Pacific Asia and the Arctic (Palgrave, 2018), and "Getting Tough on North Korea: How to Hit Pyongyang Where it Hurts,” in the May/June 2017 issue of Foreign Affairs.

Dr. Lee has testified as an expert witness at the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Hearings on North Korea policy and has advised senior officials and elected leaders. In 2013, the Guardian called Lee “[a]mong the most insightful and prescient chroniclers.

In June 2018, President Trump met with President Kim Jong Un in Singapore. The summit was a hopeful sign of an improving relationship between two nations which, on the eve of the summit, had ratcheted up hostile rhetoric against each other. What are the ramifications of improved US - DPRK relations for longtime allies like Japan and South Korea? What does this mean for 28,000 US forces stationed in South Korea, and 40,000 stationed in Japan? Will this new dispensation lead to a treaty formally bringing an end to the Korean War? Will North Korea give up its nuclear weapons? Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee, Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at Tufts University will walk us through the complex relationship between the United States and the Democratic Peolple Republic of Korea.