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.