Editor in Chief – Professor Hazel Smith

Professorial Research Associate in Korean Studies, SOAS University of London
Professor Emeritus in International Security, Cranfield University
Advisory Fellow, Korea Development Institute (KDI) (North Korea Economic Studies section)

Professor Hazel Smith is Professorial Research Associate in Korean Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Professor Emeritus in International Security at Cranfield University and Advisory fellow at the North Korea Economic Studies section of the Korea Development Institute (KDI). Professor Smith has researched and published on North Korea’s international relations, domestic politics, economic and society of North Korea for over 30 years. She received her PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics, beginning her academic career at the University of Kent where she was Director of the London Centre of International Relations before moving to the University of Warwick, where she directed the Master’s course in International Relations for ten years, and was appointed full Chair and Professor of International Relations in 2002. Professor Smith served as Director of the University’s International Resilience Centre at Cranfield University; and then appointed by UCLAN as Director of the International Institute of Korean Studies which she founded and established, and which is now the largest Centre of Korean Studies in the UK. Professor Smith has been awarded multiple competitive international fellowships; including at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2019/20 and 2012/2013), the East-West Center, Honolulu (2008 and 2015), Kyushu University, the United States Institute of Peace (2001/2002), and Stanford University (1994/95). Professor Smith’s recent publications include ‘The return of famine to North Korea? An evidence-based assessment of the economic and humanitarian impact of United Nation sanctions’, in Suk Lee (ed). DPRK Sanctions. Seoul. KDI. 2022; The impact of sanctions on international humanitarian assistance to the DPRK. ONN-CENESS, Vienna, 2022; North Korea’s Food Security Strategy: Analytically Flawed, Inherently Fragile, in Robert Carlin and Chung-in Moon (eds). Understanding Kim Jong-un’s North Korea: Regime Dynamics, Negotiation, and Engagement, Lanham: Lexington, 2022); The ethics of United Nations sanctions on North Korea: effectiveness, necessity and proportionality, Critical Asian Studies, 52 (2), 2020; North Korea: Markets and Military Rule (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Professor Smith is regularly called on to advise government agencies worldwide and international organisations, and isa frequent broadcaster for global media on North Korea and East Asian security. Professor Smith lived in North Korea for two years while working for UN WFP and UNICEF; earning a (still valid) North Korean driving license.

For further information, please refer to:

https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/hazel-smith and https://soas.academia.edu/SmithHazel

Managing Editor – Dr Robert Winstanley-Chesters

University of Edinburgh, University of Leeds, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
r.winstanley-chesters@leeds.ac.uk | www.robertwinstanleychesters.com

Robert Winstanley-Chesters is a geographer, Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds and a Member of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Robert was formerly a Research Fellow at Australian National University and a Post-Doctoral Fellow of Cambridge University (Beyond the Korean War). Robert obtained his doctorate from the University of Leeds with a thesis later published as “Environment, Politics and Ideology in North Korea” in 2014. Robert’s second monograph ‘Vibrant Matters(s): Fish, Fishing and Community in North Korea and her Neighbours’  was published in December 2019 by Springer. His third “New Goddess of Mount Paektu: Myth and Transformation in North Korean Landscapes” was published in June 2020 and is available from Amazon’s KDP platform. Robert has published in a wide variety of peer reviewed academic journals including: North Korean Review, Capitalism Nature Socialism, the Extractive Industries and Society, Asian Cultural Studies and Asian Perspective. Robert is currently researching the geographies of Manchukuo and colonial Korea, fishing and animal/creaturely geographies in North Korea and the colonial mineralogical and forest inheritances of the Korean peninsula.

Robert Winstanley-Chesters Amazon authors page: https://tinyurl.com/yyawtj67