About
I am an Associate Professor of International Business Economics at Incheon National University, where I study the North Korean economy using empirical methods. Before joining INU in 2019 I was an economist at the Economic Research Institute of the Bank of Korea, and earlier a researcher at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP).
My work runs along four lines: the domestic North Korean economy and its marketization; foreign economic relations with China and Russia; unification, inter-Korean geopolitical risk and economic integration; and the economic adaptation of North Korean refugees in South Korea. Much of it is a measurement problem — official statistics on North Korea are scarce, so I build indices from news text, work with administrative big data, and use cohort and panel designs to get at questions that direct data cannot answer. See Research for current projects and Publications for the full list.
인천대학교 동북아국제통상물류학부에서 북한경제, 북·중·러 대외경제관계, 통일과 경제통합, 북한이탈주민의 경제적 적응을 연구합니다.
Featured Data
Two datasets on the North Korean economy, free to download with attribution. See all data →
The GPRNK index, 1995–2025. A monthly measure of geopolitical risk from North Korea, built from article counts in 18 South Korean news outlets: it rises around nuclear tests and military confrontations and falls around summits. Constructed for Lee, Lee and Jung (2026), Applied Economics Letters. Explore and download the data →
The North Korean marketization index, 1990s–2020. Price liberalization, privatization and financial development. Each score is a share of respondents rescaled to run 0–5, so 2.91 means about 58% describe market pricing and 1.09 means 22% report private ownership. Privatization rises without pause — fastest in 2016–2020, the years of the heaviest sanctions — while price liberalization flattens and finance stays near the floor. Rebuilt from public survey data using the method of Jung, Yang and Kim (2022), Asian Perspective. Explore and download the data →