JUNG H. PAK

Event information

JUNG H. PAK

SENIOR FELLOW & SK-KOREA FOUNDATION CHAIR IN KOREA STUDIES; 

CENTER FOR ASIA POLICY STUDIES, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

What to Expect in US-North Korea Relations in 2020

DATE: January 23, 2020 6:00 pm

Background

Professor Pak has provided the following description of her presentation: “Despite three Trump-Kim meetings since 2018, North Korea has intensified its threats and doubled-down on its defiance of US and international calls for denuclearization. After conducting two dozen short-range missile tests since May and stymieing working-level nuclear negotiations, Kim Jong Un kicked off the new year promising a “shocking actual action” to make the US “pay for the pains” suffered by the North as a result of sanctions. But he did not rule out the possibility of engagement with the United States. What does all this mean for US-North Korea ties in the coming year? How will the US calibrate its approach to North Korean denuclearization? What is the potential for a return to the “fire and fury” of late 2017?”

Professor Pak is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate and former trustee of Colgate University. Her Ph.D. is in United States History from Columbia University. She taught at Hunter College and was a Fulbright Scholar to South Korea. Before joining Brookings, she 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. Currently she is a senior fellow and SK-Korea Studies 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). At Brookings 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. She has been interviewed and provided commentaries in the nation’s major print and electronic media.

It is a great pleasure to welcome Dr. Jung H. Pak to the Council.

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