Rachel Minyoung Lee

Rachel Minyoung Lee is a Senior Fellow for the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North. She is also co-chair of the North Korea Economic Forum, which is part of the policy program at the George Washington University’s Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS).

Lee was a North Korea collection expert and analyst with Open Source Enterprise (OSE; formerly known as Open Source Center) in the US government from 2000 to 2019. During that time, she wrote on the gamut of North Korean issues, from leadership, domestic politics and economy, and foreign policy, to social and cultural developments. As Analysis Team Lead, Lee led a team of collection officers and analysts to track and analyze North and South Korean issues with implications for Pyongyang’s regime stability and regional security. Most recently, from 2022 to early 2024, Lee headed engagement and network-building efforts at the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network (ONN). In July 2025, she was a POSCO Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii.

Lee earned her B.A. in English literature and her M.A. in international law, both at Korea University in Seoul.

Listen to Dominic Bowen and Rachel Minyoung Lee unpack how North Korea calibrates risk, balances military signalling with strategic restraint, and navigates sanctions pressure, and read our analysis on why Pyongyang’s actions are often more calculated than chaotic, as regime survival, economic constraints, and shifting geopolitical dynamics shape North Korea’s behaviour on the global stage.