Chung Min Lee

Chung Min Lee is Professor of International Relations at the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS), Yonsei University in Seoul, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, D.C.) and a member of the council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). From March 2018, Dr. Lee will be moving full-time to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as a senior fellow to head a new program on Korean foreign policy and security. Lee served as Ambassador for National Security Affairs (2013-2016) in the Park Geun-hye Administration and Ambassador for International Security Affairs (2010-2011).

He is a specialist in Asian security and defense policy analysis, intelligence and net assessments, defense technologies and force modernization assessments, political risk estimates, crisis management, and WMD proliferation. Dr. Lee also has extensive experience in conflict scenario planning. Lee is also a columnist for the “Global Opinions” section of the Washington Post. Dr. Lee’s most recent book was published by the  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 2016 entitled Fault Lines in a Rising Asia and is working on his next book tentatively entitled War Machine: Decoding North Korea’s Strategic Strengths and Weaknesses which will be released in the fall of 2018.

Lee served as Dean of the GSIS (2008-2012) and the Underwood International College (2010-2012), a Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (2005-2007), Visiting Professor at the Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo (2004-2005), Policy Analyst at the RAND Corporation (1995-1998), Visiting Research Fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies, Tokyo (1994-1995), Research Fellow at the Institute of East and West Studies, Yonsei University (1988-1989), Research Fellow at the Sejong Institute, Seoul (1989-1994) and a Research Associate at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1985-1988).

He received his MALD and his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University in 1988 and his B.A. in political science from Yonsei University in 1982. Since the late 1980s, he has written extensively on Asian security, strategic developments in Northeast Asia, and the political-military balance on the Korean Peninsula.

Lee has written for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and has conducted numerous interviews for CNN, BBC and other major international news organizations. He has lived in ten countries including the United States, Mexico, Uganda, Indonesia, the Republic of Congo, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and Korea with extensive research trips to Australia and has visited over 60 countries.