Professional Affiliation

Deputy Chief, Foreign Policy and Bilateral Affairs Unit, U.S. Embassy Tokyo - ‎U.S. Embassy in Tokyo; Former North Korea Analyst, U.S. State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research

Expert Bio

Patrick McEachern is a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in residence at the Wilson Center from September 2017-August 2018. He most recently served as the Deputy Chief of the Foreign Policy and Bilateral Affairs Unit at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. He previously served as a political officer in Seoul, an analyst in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Northeast Asia Division, a Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholar, and a consular and political-military affairs officer in Bratislava, Slovakia. Patrick speaks Korean and Slovak and holds a PhD from Louisiana State University. He is the author of Inside the Red Box: North Korea’s Post-totalitarian Politics (Columbia University Press, 2010) and co-author with Jaclyn McEachern of North Korea, Iran, and the Challenge to International Order (Routledge, 2017). He is currently writing a new book with John Delury entitled Survivor: North Korea from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Un.

Wilson Center Project

Survivor: North Korea from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Un

Project Summary

Survivor charts the political vicissitudes of the three Kim rulers from the origins of the DPRK to the present. It leverages this history to help explain contemporary challenges stemming from North Korea’s quasi-command economy, hostile foreign relations, nuclear weapons drive, in/out group social system, zero tolerance for civil society (including religion), approach to human rights, and other core features that continue to perplex policy makers. Underlying all these peculiarities is the ultimate riddle that many analysts, unable to solve, simply wish way—the exceptional durability, against all odds, of the DPRK regime. Our book searches for answers to that mystery in a comprehensive study of the nation’s three paramount leaders.

Major Publications

• 1.North Korea, Iran, and the Challenge to International Order (Routledge, 2017)
• 2.Inside the Red Box: North Korea’s Post-totalitarian Politics (Columbia University Press, 2010)