Jung H. Pak

Jung H. Pak is a senior fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies at the Brookings Institution and the author of Becoming Kim Jong Un: A CIA Analyst’s Insights into North Korea’s Enigmatic Young Dictator (Ballantine, forthcoming April 2020). She focuses on the national security challenges facing the United States and East Asia, including North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities, the regime’s domestic and foreign policy calculus, and internal stability. She also has expertise in US-South Korea relations and northeast Asia geopolitical dynamics. Prior to Brookings, Pak held senior positions at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence where she led the U.S. intelligence community’s strategic analysis on Korea issues as the Deputy National Intelligence Officer. She has appeared on Face the Nation, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, PBS Newshour, as well as CNN, BBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC. In addition to interviews with Fareed Zakaria and Christiane Amanpour, Pak has lent her expertise for numerous documentaries and podcasts. Her comments have appeared in major U.S. news media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Vox, and The National Interest, and in Asian and European outlets. Prior to her work in national security, she taught history at Hunter College in New York City and studied in South Korea as a Fulbright Scholar. A graduate and former trustee of Colgate University, Pak received her PhD in U.S. history from Columbia University.