Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee: North Korea’s Calculated History of Militarism and Diplomacy

Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee’s career as a leading expert on North Korean affairs is a testament to the value of history in informing policymaking. He has devoted his work to this, educating students and advising policy leaders on North Korea’s calculated approaches to militarism and diplomacy. He is a frequent Wilson Center speaker and most recently was selected as a Wilson Center International Competition Fellow to work on his current book, Pyongyang’s Playbook: North Korea’s Provocations, Peace Ploys, Propaganda, and Unification Policy.  

Born in Seoul, South Korea when the country was very poor, Lee saw the world thanks to his father’s job with the Korean foreign ministry. His family moved to England when he was eight, where he learned English from scratch, before spending a year in Geneva, Switzerland, then moving to the US at age 16.  

While attending New College of Florida, Lee majored in British and American Literature. He finds that his studies of old wordsmiths like Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Faulkner lent him the tools to develop his characteristically sardonic tone when critiquing North Korean totalitarianism. “They have nuclear weapons; I only have irony and literary skills and humor,” he says. 

In his youth, Lee was regrettably ignorant of conditions in North Korea until he learned of the political prisoner concentration camps located just 50 miles north of Seoul. Entire multigenerational families are “dragooned into these modern-day Gulags for no crime whatsoever other than maybe complaining about how hard life is.” Moreover, most North Koreans are subjected to “deliberate mass starvation” at the hands of a regime that is capable of, but neglects to feed its people.  

Rattled by these conditions, Lee completed his master’s degree and PhD at the Tufts University Fletcher School and returned there to teach, offering Fletcher’s first semester-length course on North Korea, among others on US-East Asia relations. 

Given the intentional brutality North Korea perpetrates on its people, Lee rejects the US’s patronizing approaches to the regime. “We tend to think they’re crazy.” The US response to absurdist provocation from North Korea has been one of appeasement and courtesy, hoping North Korea will one day “come around.” The regime leverages this. “[It] is the main factor in our failure on the scorecard of nuclear diplomacy over the past 30 years.” 

In April 2013, US President Barak Obama asked for Lee’s input in a White House advisory committee to predict China’s next move after being targeted by a North Korean nuclear test over Lunar New Year. The four other experts told the President that China would want North Korea to pay for its insulting threat and would sever many ties. When asked his thoughts, Lee applied historical precedent to predict that China would give North Korea a “slap on the wrist” before actually increasing aid to the country. This proved true. 

Dr. Lee’s renowned application of historical patterns to understand and predict future conditions found a home at the Wilson Center. Lee has grown fond of the Center’s nonpartisan, rigorous scholarship with an emphasis on history. He spoke at events in 2006, 2009, and 2010 before being appointed National Asia Research Program Fellow and selected as a 2023-2024 Wilson Center International Competition Fellow. He called the Fellowship “the single greatest honor of my life and of my career.” Lee has much gratitude for memories shared with his third floor “neighbors” such as Dr. Klaus Larres and State Department Fellow Lou Crishock, as well as the Scholars Academic Relations Program staff.  

With his Fellowship ending in August 2024, Lee’s next steps are unclear. His first book titled The Sister, which details the rise of Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong and her role in regime cruelty, has been translated into 11 languages. A documentary film deal is even in the works. Meanwhile, he continues his second book, Pyongyang’s Playbook. 

Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee hopes to remind people and US politicians not to confuse the people of North Korea for their brutal government, and not to fall into its trap by patronizing this brutal government. The actions they inflict both internationally and to their own people “are calculated and predicable, not random and crazy.” Dr. Lee anticipates a future where North Korea sends Kim Yo Jong to the White House as a diplomatic representative, counting on the US underestimating the beautiful, young woman. If this happens, “see her as who she is,” Lee implores, “a co-crime boss of a very cruel regime.” 

This blog post was researched and drafted by Bella Wexler.