Dr. Jae H. Ku is the Director of the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS. Before joining the U.S.-Korea Institute, he was the Director of the Human Rights in North Korea Project at Freedom House. He has taught at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Brown University, Yonsei University (Seoul, Korea), and Sookmyung Women’s University (Seoul, Korea). His research interests are as the following: Inter-Korean Relations, U.S.-Korea relations, Democracy in Asia, and Human Rights in North Korea. He has been a recipient of both Fulbright and Freeman fellowships and has researched at various think tanks, including the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC), the Korean Institute of International Studies, (Seoul, Korea), and the Institute for International Relations (Hanoi, Vietnam).

Dr. Ku holds a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and A.B. from Harvard University. He speaks fluent Korean and has a working knowledge of Vietnamese. He was the editor of Change and Challenge on the Korean Peninsula, Vol. 5 (CSIS, 1996) and his writings have appeared in the Washington Quarterly, World and I, Scripps Howard News, The Chosun Ilbo, and The Korea Herald.