Kyung-Ae Park

Dr. Kyung-Ae Park holds the Korea Foundation Chair at the Institute of Asian Research of the University of British Columbia (UBC). She serves as the Director of the Center for Korean Research and also as the Director of the Canada-DPRK Knowledge Partnership Program (KPP). She is a former president of the Association of Korean Political Studies in North America. She is the author, coauthor, and editor of many scholarly publications on issues ranging from North and South Korean politics and foreign relations to gender and development. Notable publications include Non-Traditional Security Issues in North Korea, North Korea in Transition: Politics, Economics, and Society, New Challenges of North Korean Foreign Policy, Korean Security Dynamics in Transition, and China and North Korea: Politics of Integration and Modernization. She has also authored articles in a number of journals, including Comparative Politics, Journal of Asian Studies, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, and Pacific Review. Since the mid-1990s, she has made several trips to Pyongyang and hosted North Korean delegation visits to Canada, playing a key role in promoting track-two exchanges and diplomacy between Canada and North Korea. She recently set up the Canada-DPRK Knowledge Partnership Program at UBC, which has been hosting North Korean professors as part of a long-term knowledge exchange and thus represents an unprecedented, ground-breaking program in North America.