Jean H. Lee Joins the Wilson Center's NKIDP as a Public Policy Fellow
Veteran foreign correspondent Jean H. Lee has joined the Wilson Center's North Korea International Documentation Project as a public policy fellow.
Veteran foreign correspondent Jean H. Lee has joined the Wilson Center's North Korea International Documentation Project as a public policy fellow.
Lee led the Associated Press news agency’s coverage of the Korean Peninsula as bureau chief from 2008 to 2013. In 2011, she became the first American reporter granted extensive access on the ground in North Korea, and in January 2012 opened AP’s Pyongyang bureau, the only Western text/photo news bureau based in the North Korean capital. Since 2008, she has made dozens of extended reporting trips to North Korea, visiting farms, factories, schools, military academies and homes in addition to interviewing top officials in the course of her exclusive reporting across the country.
During Lee's tenure, AP’s coverage of Kim Jong Il’s 2011 death earned an honorable mention in the deadline reporting category of the 2012 Associated Press Media Editors awards for journalism in the United States and Canada. Lee and her team also won an Online Journalism Award in 2013 for their use of photography, video and social media in North Korea, and she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in feature reporting in 2013. Lee also was part of the award-winning AP team honored by APME for coverage of the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan.
Lee is a native of Minneapolis. She has a bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies and English literature from Columbia University, and a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She worked as a reporter for the Korea Herald in Seoul, South Korea, before being posted by AP to the news agency's offices in Baltimore; Fresno, Calif.; San Francisco; New York; London; Seoul, South Korea, and Pyongyang, North Korea. Her reporting with AP has taken her on assignments across the United States, Europe and Asia.
Lee was a fellow with the Alicia Patterson Foundation in 2014, and serves frequently as a guest speaker and commentator on North Korea-related topics.
She can be reached at jean.lee@wilsoncenter.org and is on Twitter and Instagram as @newsjean.
NKIDP is a part of the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program
Contributor
Jean H. Lee
Journalist and former Pyongyang Bureau Chief, Associated Press
North Korea International Documentation Project
The North Korea International Documentation Project serves as an informational clearinghouse on North Korea for the scholarly and policymaking communities, disseminating documents on the DPRK from its former communist allies that provide valuable insight into the actions and nature of the North Korean state. It is part of the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. Read more
History and Public Policy Program
The History and Public Policy Program makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs. Read more
Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy
The Center for Korean History and Public Policy was established in 2015 with the generous support of the Hyundai Motor Company and the Korea Foundation to provide a coherent, long-term platform for improving historical understanding of Korea and informing the public policy debate on the Korean peninsula in the United States and beyond. Read more
