Undoing 70 years of war: A roundtable on advancing peace in Korea

Katharine (Kathy) H.S. Moon is a professor of Political Science and the Wasserman Chair of Asian Studies at Wellesley College, where she has taught since 1993. She was the inaugural holder of the Korea Chair at The Brookings Institution. She is a member of the Harvard Kennedy School Korea Working Group, the Steering Committee of the National Committee on North Korea, and is an affiliated faculty at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. Moon is a member of the National Committee on North Korea and affiliated faculty at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. Her publications include Protesting America: Democracy and the U.S.-Korea Alliance and Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations. She received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Smith College and a doctorate in Politics from Princeton University. She was born in San Francisco.

Davis retired from the U.S. Army as a Lt. Col. after 21 years of active service and currently serves as Senior Fellow and Military Expert for Defense Priorities. He was deployed into combat zones four times in his career, beginning with Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and then to Iraq in 2009 and Afghanistan twice (2005, 2011). He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for Valor at the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991, and awarded a Bronze Star Medal in Afghanistan in 2011. Davis gained some national notoriety in 2012 when he returned from Afghanistan and published a report detailing how senior U.S. military and civilian leaders told the American public and Congress the war was going well while in reality it was headed to defeat. Events since have confirmed his analysis was correct.

Henri Féron is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. He focuses on security and legal issues in East Asia, in particular peace and alliance treaties, sanctions, nuclear disarmament, maritime disputes, and human rights. He currently advises several national and international advocacy groups on the Korean nuclear crisis. He is the co-editor of Pathways to a Peaceful Korean Peninsula (Korean Institute for National Unification, 2016) and the author of a critical evaluation of The Chinese Model of Human Rights (2015), his doctoral dissertation at Tsinghua Law School, Beijing. He earned an LL.M. Degree from Columbia Law School in 2016 (Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar), a Ph.D. in Law from Tsinghua Law School in 2015 (Outstanding Student, First Class), as well as an LL.B. in English Law and French Law from King’s College London and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2009.

Jessica J. Lee is a Senior Research Fellow in the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute. Her research focuses on the Korean Peninsula, Japan, as well as alliances and strategy in East Asia. Previously, Jessica led the Council of Korean Americans (CKA), a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance the national voice and influence of the Korean American community. Prior to CKA, Jessica was a Resident Fellow at the Pacific Forum in Honolulu, where she published articles on security and economic relations in East Asia. She was previously a senior manager at The Asia Group, LLC, a strategy and capital advisory firm, as well as its first chief philanthropy officer. Prior to The Asia Group, Jessica served as a staff member in the House of Representatives for six years. Jessica holds a B.A. in Political Science from Wellesley College and an M.A. in Regional Studies – East Asia from Harvard University.

Adam Mount, Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists, where his work covers U.S. nuclear strategy and force structure, global nuclear politics, deterrence, and North Korea. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2015-16, he directed the CFR Independent Task Force on U.S. Policy Toward North Korea, a group of seventeen experts chaired by Adm. Mike Mullen and Sen. Sam Nunn. He now directs, with Andrea Berger, the FAS International Study Group on North Korea Policy, a group of twelve emerging experts from allied countries working to develop a sustainable strategy to manage a nuclear-armed North Korea. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the Department of Government at Georgetown University, and a B.A. from Reed College.

Professor Hazel Smith (PhD FRSA) is Fellow at the Wilson Center (2019/20); Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, the University of London; Professor Emerita in International Security, Cranfield University; member of the World Economic Forum Global Futures Council on the Korean peninsula; and member of the Council of the British Association of Korean Studies. Professor Smith received her PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics. Her publications include North Korea: Markets and Military Rule; Reconstituting Korean Security; and Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in the DPRK. Smith has advised government agencies worldwide on North Korea, including those in the US, the UK, South Korea, Japan, Switzerland, and the Vatican. She frequently broadcasts for global media on North Korea, which she first visited in 1990, and where she lived and worked for two years with the United Nations.