Sung-Yoon Lee

Sung-Yoon Lee 이성윤
Native name	이성윤
Born	Seoul, South Korea
Citizenship	South Korea
Fields	Korean studies, East Asian studies
Institutions	The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
Alma mater	New College of Florida (B.A.) The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (M.A.) The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Ph.D.)
Doctoral advisor	John Curtis Perry[1]

Sung-Yoon Lee (Hangul: 이성윤; hanja: 李晟允) is a scholar of Korean and East Asian studies, and specialist on North Korea. He is the Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.^[2] He is an Associate in Research at the Korea Institute, Harvard University.^[3] He is a former Research Fellow at the National Asia Research Program.^[4]

Education

Lee majored in American and British literature at New College in Sarasota, Florida, graduating in 1991. He pursued his graduate studies at the Fletcher School, completing his Master of Arts in 1994, and his Ph.D. in 1998.^[2] In his dissertation "The antinomy of divine right and the right to resistance: tianming, dei gratia, and vox populi in Syngman Rhee's Korea, 1945-1960", Lee analyzed the interplay between Confucianism and democracy in defining political authority and statecraft during the early years of the Republic of Korea.^[1]

Career

Lee first joined the faculty of The Fletcher School as the Adjunct Assistant Professor of International Politics in 1998 and until 2005. Concurrently he was also the Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Tufts university starting in 2000 and until 2005. Between 2005 and 2006 he was the Kim Koo Research Associate at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. In 2007 he resumed his position at the Fletcher School, and in 2012 became the first holder of the newly created chair Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Korean Studies.^[2][5]

He teaches International Relations of the United States and East Asia 1945 to Present, United States and East Asia, Politics of the Korean Peninsula: Foreign and Inter-Korean Relations, and North Korean State and Society.^[6]

Lee has also been an adjunct Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at Bowdoin College in 2000,^[7] and the visiting Professor of Korean Studies at Sogang University in 2007, and at Seoul National University in 2012, 2013 and 2014.^[8][9]

Sung-Yoon Lee with David Asher (to his right) and Ambassador Joseph De Trani (to his left), giving testimony at the US Congress' House of representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, on the North Korean nuclear program

Since 1999 Lee has been an Associate in Research at the Korea Institute, Harvard University.^[2][3][10] There he launched a new seminar series, the “Kim Koo Forum on U.S.-Korea Relations”, in 2005.^[2][11] He is a former Research Fellow with the National Asia Research Program, a joint initiative by the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.^[4]

Lee has attended numerous conferences as a speaker, moderator and interpreter.^[2] He is also a frequent commentator on Korean affairs on radio, television and print.^{[12][13][14][15]} Lee has also testified in the United States Congress to provide expert advice on North Korea policy issues.^[16][17]

Policy views on North Korea

Lee has advocated for a strategy of stern treatment of the North Korean government, while engaging the North Korean people. That includes economic pressure aimed at the elite, especially targeting its palace economy that depends on illicit activities including proliferation, smuggling, counterfeiting, and money laundering. It also means availing substantial humanitarian aid, provided it reaches the intended recipients, increasing efforts to disseminate more information from the outside world into North Korea, facilitating defections, and pressing for a global campaign of human rights.^{[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2][lower-alpha 3][lower-alpha 4]}

Lee has frequently urged policymakers not to fall for the "self-defeating"^{[lower-alpha 5]} trap of short-term concessionary diplomacy,^{[lower-alpha 6]} and instead take the long view of an unwavering strategy of pressure. Lee sustains that refraining from making concessions in exchange for North Korea halting its cyclical belligerence is the most effective way to deter future provocations.^{[lower-alpha 7][lower-alpha 8][lower-alpha 5]}

United States

Lee supports a continued commitment by the US, asserting that the "US has always had in its diplomatic toolbox various useful implements like financial sanctions, measures to prevent illicit activities and weapons proliferation, freeze fuel oil delivery and unconditional aid, and human rights campaigns through the international media in concert with other civilized nations of the world, not to mention UN Resolutions".^{[lower-alpha 9][lower-alpha 1]}

Lee has also proposed the US "hold quiet consultations with Beijing to prepare jointly for a unified Korea under Seoul’s direction, a new polity that will be free, peaceful, capitalist, pro-U.S. and pro-China".^{[lower-alpha 5][lower-alpha 10]}

Lee opposes the signing of a peace treaty between the US and North Korea (frequently demanded by the latter) absent substantial changes in the regime.^{[lower-alpha 11]} He has stated that "North Korea is not seeking peace, but rather a change in the military balance of power on the Korean peninsula",^{[lower-alpha 5]} and that "real peace is won by resolve and sacrifice, while ephemeral peace is all too often concocted only by vowels and consonants".^{[lower-alpha 12]} Lee maintins that the US military presence in Korea has brought decades of geopolitical stability in the broader region and should remain in the peninsula regardless of the eventual signing of a peace treaty.^{[lower-alpha 5]}

South Korea

Lee advocates for a stronger lead by South Korea, reinforcing programs for resettlement of refugees, and pressing on in the global campaign for human rights.^{[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 3][lower-alpha 13]} Lee also supports a South Korean policy of exercising a "resolute mix of stoicism and principled apathy"^{[lower-alpha 14]} when faced with North Korea's attempts at provocation and brinksmanship.

Lee was a strong critic of the Sunshine Policy (in force between 1998 and 2008), calling it a failed policy,^{[lower-alpha 15]} and the "under the table" financial aid "misguided, unprincipled, and criminal".^{[lower-alpha 16]}He stated that the North Korean regime would not be appeased by blandishments, further, such concessions prop the regime and prolong its oppression of the people. ^{[lower-alpha 17]}

Reconciliation should be sought from a position of strength. South Korea should remain pragmatic, recognizing that "peace in the region has been kept for the last 50 years by the commitment on the part of the United States to the defense of South Korea".^{[lower-alpha 17]}

Lee has stated that "amnesia or apathy"^{[lower-alpha 18]} of the new Korean generations towards their history "can be reversed through sustained education and the public ritual of remembrance",^{[lower-alpha 18]} so that "the lessons of the most traumatic past must be learned and continually relearned, not only to prevent such a tragedy from repeating itself, but also to honor, as one nation, those who made our freedom possible, and to remember that freedom is certainly never free".^{[lower-alpha 18]}

Denuclearization and Six Party Talks

Lee has repeatedly called negotiations on denuclearization "nuclear blackmail"^{[lower-alpha 13]} by North Korea, and believes that the regime is very unwilling to give up its nuclear capability as it is of vital interest for its survival. Therefore, "short of change in the Pyongyang regime, further fits of nuclear negotiations are all but an exercise in futility",^{[lower-alpha 13]} Kim Jong-Il "treating the six-party talks as a perpetual multilateral forum for receiving economic and political aid".^{[lower-alpha 9]} Furthermore, "deprived of its nuclear program, North Korea would likely be relegated to a status befitting its insignificant economy and unattractive political system",^{[lower-alpha 19]} therefore "the challenge for other six-party negotiators is to exploit these weaknesses. Only a sustained, credible program of financial pressure and a human-rights campaign in tandem with nuclear negotiations will move the North to make difficult decisions".^{[lower-alpha 19][lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 20][lower-alpha 11]}

Regime and post-collapse planning

Lee characterizes the North Korean regime as "uniquely unique",^{[lower-alpha 1]} for being the world's sole communist hereditary dynasty; the only literate, industrialized and urbanized peacetime economy to have suffered a famine; the most cultish totalitarian system; the most secretive, isolated country; and the largest military in terms of manpower and defense spending proportional to its population and national income.^{[lower-alpha 1]} Lee has also called the regime a criminal enterprise, for activities including money laundering, human enslavement by having the world's largest prison and slave labor camps, and for nuclear extortion.^{[lower-alpha 1]}

Lee further asserts that North Korea is the most systematic violator of human rights, having committed nine out of the ten crimes against humanity as specified in article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.^{[lower-alpha 14][lower-alpha 18]}

Lee anticipates that in case of collapse, "a power vacuum in Pyongyang will require the immediate dispatch of South Korean and U.S. troops. Next will come other regional powers -- Chinese peacekeeping forces securing the northern areas, followed by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force transporting people and supplies along the Korean coastlines. In the short term, a multiparty international presence north of the 38th parallel under the nominal banner of the United Nations will enforce order and provide aid."^{[lower-alpha 21]}

Lee also supports a US-South Korea joint "emergency response measures such as securing the North's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, maintaining public safety, controlling borders, and providing humanitarian aid to displaced North Koreans", as well as long-term development similar to post-WWII reconstruction of Japan.^{[lower-alpha 21]}

Publications

Articles

• North Korean Exceptionalism and South Korean Conventionalism: Prospects for a Reverse Formulation? (Asia Policy, 2013)
• The Pyongyang Playbook (Foreign Affairs, 2010)
• Engaging North Korea: The Clouded Legacy of South Korea’s Sunshine Policy (AEI Asian Outlook, 2010)
• The United States Should Make North Korean Human Rights a Priority in Louise Gerdes, ed., Opposing Viewpoints: North Korea and South Korea (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2007).
• The Folly of Fabled Sentimentality: South Korea’s Unorthodox Courtship of North Korea (The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Special Report, 2006)
• Dependence and Defiance: Historical Dilemmas in U.S.-Korea Relations (Korea Policy Review, 2005)
• The Mythical Nuclear Kingdom of North Korea (The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 2005)
• Nuclear Diplomacy vis-à-vis the DPRK: A Dead-End Street (The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 2003)

Short essays

• A North Korean Con Job co-authored with Joshua Stanton (The New York Times, 2014)
• Luxury cars and cognac for...North Korea? co-authored with Joshua Stanton (CNN, 2014)
• The danger of North Korea is no joke, co-authored with Joshua Stanton (CNN, 2014)
• Pyongyang's Hunger Games, co-authored with Joshua Stanton (The New York Times, 2014)
• Financial sanctions could force reforms in North Korea, co-authored with Joshua Stanton (Washington Post, 2014)
• Abe’s Profane Pilgrimage (The New York Times, 2014)
• World must awaken to North Korea's camps of horror, co-authored with Joshua Stanton (CNN, 2013)
• South Korea's Chomskyite flunkeys (Asia Times Online, 2013)
• Rodman just a toy for N. Korea's Kim (CNN, 2013)
• North Korea is far from suicidal (CNN, 2013)
• Seoul Mates? (Foreign Policy, 2013)
• Hit Kim Jong Eun where it hurts: His wallet co-authored with Joshua Stanton (The Washington Post, 2013)
• Don’t engage Kim Jong Un — bankrupt him co-authored with Joshua Stanton (Foreign Policy, 2013)
• South Korea’s New President Must Challenge the North (The New York Times, 2012)
• Why North Korea’s Rocket Mattered (The New York Times, 2012)
• Pyongyang's Latest Ploy (The Wall Street Journal, 2012)
• The Boy Who Would Be King: Can Kim III Last? (National Bureau of Asia Research, 2011)
• Containing the Young Kim, co-authored with Sue Terry (The Wall Street Journal, 2011)
• North Korea's Carrot-and-Stick Policy (Los Angeles Times, 2011)
• The winter of Kim Jong-il's discontent (The Christian Science Monitor, 2011)
• An American Peace in Korea (USA Today Magazine, Mar 2011, Vol. 139, Issue 2790)
• Keeping the Peace: America in Korea 1950-2010 (Imprimis, 2010)
• Life After Kim: Preparing for a Post-Kim Jong Il Korea (Foreign Policy, 2010)
• US misses history lessons on Korea (Asia Times Online, 2010)
• Hitting the North (Los Angeles Times, 2010)
• Life After Kim: Planning for a Post-Kim Jong Il Korea (Foreign Policy, 2010)
• Ain’t No Sunshine: The Failings of Kim Dae Jung (Foreign Policy, 2009)
• Pyongyang Home Truths: Does Hillary Clinton understand the North Korean regime and how to deal with it? (The Wall Street Journal Asia, 2009)

Other works

• Testimony of Sung-Yoon Lee, Hearing on "North Korea’s Criminal Activities: Financing the Regime" (United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 2013)^[18]
  • Full trascript of hearing

References

Notes

Sung-Yoon Lee's policy views on North Korea are sourced from the following works

External links

• Video Does North Korea's purge signal rising instability? (PBS Newshour, 2013)
• Audio North Korea's Threats Grow More Ominous (NPR Talk of the Nation, 2013)
• Video House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearing on "North Korea’s Criminal Activities: Financing the Regime" (C-SPAN, 2013)
• Audio Is Status Quo Destiny? China's Interests in Post-Kim Dynasty Korea Wilson Center, 2011
• Video What is Happening Inside North Korea? (Amanpour, CNN, 2010)
• Video Will North Korea's Pattern of Provocation, Concession Continue After Shellings? PBS Newshour, 2010
• Video Korean Peninsula crisis AlJazeera, 2010
• Kim Koo Foundation official website
• Korea Foundation official website
• The Fletcher School