Jean H. Lee is the Executive Director of the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival. She is an award-winning writer, commentator and expert on North Korea who co-hosts the Peabody Award-nominated Lazarus Heist (Cyber Hack) podcast for the BBC World Service.
As a journalist, Lee led the Associated Press news agency’s coverage of the Korean Peninsula as bureau chief from 2008 to 2013. In 2011, she became the first American reporter to join the Pyongyang foreign press corps, and in January 2012, she opened AP’s Pyongyang bureau. From 2008 to 2017, Lee made dozens of extended reporting trips to North Korea, visiting farms, factories, schools, military academies and homes in the course of her exclusive coverage across the country.
During Lee's tenure, AP’s coverage of Kim Jong Il’s 2011 death earned an honorable mention in the deadline reporting category of the 2012 Associated Press Media Editors awards for journalism in the United States and Canada. Lee also won an Online Journalism Award in 2013 for her role in using photography, video and social media in North Korea.
Lee is a native of Minneapolis. She has a bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies and English literature from Columbia University, and a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
She worked as a reporter for the Korea Herald in Seoul, South Korea, before being posted with AP to the news agency's bureaus in Baltimore; Fresno, Calif.; San Francisco; New York; London; Seoul, South Korea, and Pyongyang, North Korea. Reporting assignments took her across Europe, North America and Asia.
After leaving AP, Lee served as a CNN contributor. She served as director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, before moving onto the East-West Center in Honolulu, where she served as the inaugural Presidential Chair. She is also a non-resident fellow at the European Centre for North Korean Studies at the University of Vienna.
Lee is a member of the Council of Korean Americans, the National Committee on North Korea and the Asian American Journalists Association. A sought-after policy analyst on Korea issues, Lee was invited to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in July 2023 and has provided reporting and commentary to a wide range of media outlets, including the New York Times, NPR, PRI, BBC, NBC News and PBS Newshour and others. She also appears in the National Geographic series “Inside North Korea,” PBS’ “Dictator’s Playbook,” Netflix’s “How to Become a Tyrant” and others.
professional affiliations
Council of Korean Americans • National Committee on North Korea • Asian American Journalists Association • European Centre for North Korean Studies