Professor Won Gon PARK graduated from Yonsei University in South Korea before earning a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Southwest Baptist University in the United States and a Master's degree in Political Science from Boston College. He pursued a Ph.D. program in International Relations at Ohio State University and obtained Ph.D. in International Politics from Seoul National University.
From 1995 to 2009, he conducted research on Northeast Asian security, the South Korea-U.S. alliance, and North Korea issues at the Security Strategy Research Center of the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis (KIDA). He served as the Director of External Cooperation at KIDA from 2009 to 2012 and has been a professor of International Area Studies at Handong Global University since 2013.
Since 2021, he has been a professor in the North Korean Studies department and the director of the Institute for Unification Studies at Ewha Womans University. He is also a policy advisory board member for the President's National Security Office, the Ministry of National Defense, and the Ministry of Unification. He is active as the head of the North Korea Center at the East Asia Institute (EAI) and serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Peace and Unification His research interests include the South Korea-U.S. alliance, North Korean politics, diplomacy, and military affairs, as well as Northeast Asian international relations.
Among his recent publications are works such as "North Korea's Perception and Strategy: Kim Jong-un's 'Frontal Breakthrough'" (2023), "The Changing World Order and the Korean Peninsula: The Emergence of a New Cold War?" (2022), "Sustained Equilibrium: Kim Jong Un's 10-Year Strategy toward the U.S." (2022), and "Kim Jong Un’s Policy Direction or 'Line': Heading for Radicalization" (2022).