Biography
Jean H. Lee is an award-winning writer, commentator, and expert on North Korea currently serving as co-host of the The Lazarus Heist podcast for the BBC World Service and as director of the Korea Center at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. A longtime journalist, Lee led the Associated Press news agency’s coverage of the Korean Peninsula as bureau chief from 2008 to 2013. In 2011, she became the first American reporter granted extensive access on the ground in North Korea, and in January 2012, she opened AP’s Pyongyang bureau. As a journalist, Lee made dozens of extended reporting trips to North Korea, visiting farms, factories, schools, military academies, and homes in the course of her exclusive coverage across the country. Lee worked as a reporter for the Korea Herald in Seoul, South Korea, before being posted with AP to the news agency's bureaus in Baltimore; Fresno, Calif.; San Francisco; New York; London; Seoul, South Korea, and Pyongyang, North Korea. She now serves as director of the Wilson Center’s Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy.