Sung-Yoon Lee is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Previously, he taught Korean history and politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He has also served as a Faculty Associate at the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations in the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He is the author of The Sister: The Extraordinary Story of Kim Yo Jong, North Korea’s Most Powerful Woman (London: MacMillan, 2023).

​​​​​​​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, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and other outlets. He is a regular contributor to The Hill.

Dr. Lee has testified as an expert witness at the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs and Subcommittee on Asia Hearings on North Korea policy and has advised senior officials and elected leaders, including the President of the United States. He has also testified as an expert witness on behalf of the plaintiffs in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the Warmbiers v. DPRK case, in which the plaintiffs were awarded $501 million, and on behalf of the defendant in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (LA) in the USA v. Christopher P. Ahn extradition hearing.

Dr. Lee has a B.A. in American and British literature from the New College of Florida, and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.