Dr. Katy Oh Hassig

Kim Jong-un’s North Korea: Old Politics, New Economy, and Porcupine Policy

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Dr. Kongdan (Katy) Oh Hassig is a Senior Asian Scholar at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA).  She was formerly a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Bookings Institution and a member of the political science department of the RAND Corporation and has taught courses at a number of universities.  She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Directors of the United States Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, and she is the co-founder and former co-director of The Korea Club of Washington, D.C.  She is co-chair of the Board of Directors of the Sejong Society in Washington, DC.

She received her B.A. at Sogang University and an M.A. at Seoul National University.  She subsequently earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.  She is the co-author of North Korea through the Looking Glass (2000) and The Hidden People of North Korea (2009).

Her recent articles include “The United States between Japan and Korea,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, June 2010, “Kim Jong-un Inherits the Bomb,” International Journal of Korean Unification Studies, 2011,  “Military Confrontation,” Joint Force Quarterly, February 2012,  “The ROK President of 2013-2018: Who Should Lead the Nation at This Critical Time?” The Journal of East Asian Affairs, Spring/ Summer 2012, “The Costs of Korean Division and the Benefits of Korean Unification of US National Security,” and “The Costs and Benefits of Korean Unification for the United States,” in edited books by Korea Institute for National Unification, respectively December 2012 and December 2013.    She served as the task leader for the US Government & Japanese Government to revise the US-Japan defense cooperation guidelines from 2013-14.  The second edition of her book, The Hidden People of North Korea was published in April 2015.