Dr Jieun Baek is a leading expert on North Korea whose research, teaching, and publications focus on the country’s information ecosystem, the emergence of high-risk dissent, and potential sources of regime instability. She is a course co-convenor for the North Korea Crisis Simulation at the Blavatnik School of Government, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security (Indo-Pacific Security Initiative), and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Baek is the author of North Korea’s Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground is Transforming a Closed Society (Yale University Press, 2016) and Keys to the Hermit Kingdom: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal Regime Vulnerability (Yale University Press, forthcoming 2025). Her forthcoming books include North Korea’s Provinces: Hidden Layers Beyond Pyongyang (Yale University Press) and North Korea’s Digital Frontier: Myths, Realities, and the North Korean People’s Struggle for Information Freedom (Columbia University Press), co-authored with Nat Kretchun and Martyn Williams.

Her work draws from over 15 years of research on North Korea’s subnational governance, digital controls, information flows, and the lived experiences of its citizens. She founded the Technology and Human Rights in North Korea research program at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Earlier, she worked at Google where, among other roles, she served as the company’s North Korea specialist.

Baek is the founder of Lumen, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing information access for North Koreans, and formerly led Labs at Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), overseeing efforts to develop technologies and content for North Korean audiences. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, NPR, BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera.

She holds a BA and Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University and a DPhil in Public Policy from the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. She completed a research fellowship and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. Beginning in autumn 2025, she will begin her JD studies at Georgetown University Law Center. More information is available at www.JieunBaek.com.