Youngjun Kim
January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023
Youngjun Kim is a Professor of National Security College of the Korea National Defense University. He has been a member of National Security Advisory Board of the Republic of Korea President’s Office, Central Committee of the Presidential Peaceful Unification Advisory Board, the ROK-US Combined Command Forces’ Strategic Shaping Board, Performance Review Committee at the Prime Minister’s Office, an international senior research fellow of the Foreign Military Studies Office of the U.S. Army and a policy advisor for Ministry of National Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Intelligence Office, the Joint Chief of Staff, the U.S. Senate and Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon and Intelligence Agencies.
He leads the ROK-US nuclear expert network, Nuclear Policy Leadership Initiative, and a managing editor of the Korean Journal on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Energy sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has been appeared in a global media, including BBC TV news, Fox News TV, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, CBS News TV, the Guardian, Al Zazeera News TV, WION TV News of India, Kyoto Tongshin of Japan, KBS, MBC, Younhap News TV, Defense TV and Arirang TV news and a regular columnist for Joongang Daily Newspaper and Segye Daily Newspaper.
He published a book titled “Origins of the North Korean Garrison State: the People’s Army and the Korean War” at Routledge, “Why negotiating Nuclear Arms Control with North Korea: Why and How?” with Toby Dalton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and others. Sponsored by the ROK and the US government, he has mainly organized numerous conferences and joint research project on the Korean Peninsula Security with think tanks and universities in the U.S., including the GWU, SAIS, CEIP, the Wilson Center, CSIS, IISS, NBR, the Hudson Institute, the Mansfield Foundation, NDU, the U.S. Army War College, the USIP, ISDP, NCAFP, CNAP, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the RAND Corporation and others, in Washington DC and Seoul.
Jisoo Lim
January 1, 2023 – December 21, 2023
Jisoo Lim is a prosecutor in Korea. He majored in law at Ajou University, and has worked as a prosecutor since passing the bar exam in 2010. He is currently working at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
During his 13-year career as a prosecutor, he has investigated various cases such as corporate crime, tax, intellectual property, and economic crimes. He recently won a conviction in a breach of trust case where a company drove work to the owner’s children’s company in anticipation of huge profits. As there is no plea bargain system in Korea, he plans to study the plea bargain system of the U.S. He will study the practical application of the system and the necessity of introducing it in Korea.
Sung Soo Hong
January 1, 2023 – January 1, 2024
Sung Soo Hong is a professor at Sookmyung Women’s University. His main areas of research are jurisprudence, socio-legal studies, and human rights law, and he has recently studied the issues of human rights, discrimination, hate speech, and hate crimes. He has focused on the role of law in these areas. His recent Korean publications include Reason in Law: Understanding Law with Films (2019), Human Rights Systems and Institutions (with Kim and Park, 2018), and When Words Hurt: What is Hate Speech (2018), which has been translated into Japanese (『ヘイトをとめるレッスン』). His most recent English publication is “Discovering diversity: the anti-discrimination legislation movement in South Korea”(co-author with Jihye Kim), in Rights Claiming in South Korea (2021).
In 2008, he received a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics (LSE) for research on national human rights institutions and was a visiting researcher at the Human Rights Consortium University of London, the Center for Socio-Legal Studies University of Oxford, and the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (Spain). He has served on various advisory boards of public authorities in Korea, including the Ministry of Justice, the National Police Agency, the Ministry of National Defense, the National Assembly, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the Korea Communications Standards Commission, the Seoul Metropolitan Government, and the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. He has also served as a commissioner or advisor to human rights NGOs in Korea such as the Rainbow Foundation, the Catholic Human Rights Commission, the Korea Human Rights Foundation, and the Center for Military Human Rights.
Dong-Gu Suh
January 28, 2023 – January 27, 2024
Dong-Gu Suh is a former diplomat and previously served as the Ambassador to the State of Israel from 2019-2022 and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan from 2016-2017. Between his two ambassadorial terms, he served as the First Deputy Director of National Intelligence Service. Throughout his career, he pursued academic positions as a visiting professor and fellow at Pukyong National University and Korea Institute for National Unification(a government-funded think tank) respectively. He earned a Master’s degree in political science from George Washington University and holds a doctorate degree from Kyungnam University.
Based on his experience, his research at GWIKS will focus on the analysis of the continued nuclearization of North Korea and the deepening strategic competition between US and China in terms of security implications for Seoul.
