pacific forum History of Pacific Forum

James Jongsoo Lee

A finance professional and business consultant, James Lee is a scholar and expert in national security, foreign policy, and Indo-Pacific, Eurasian and global affairs.  Trained as a historian and a political scientist, James is passionate about contributing creative policy solutions to challenges facing the Indo-Pacific region and the wider world.  

A Partner and Senior Managing Director at Brock Group, a boutique investment bank and business advisory firm, James is a Center Associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and held research appointments at Harvard’s Korea Institute and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.  He also served as a Senior Research Fellow at Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, where he coordinated Track II trilateral policy dialogues on nuclear and national security issues co-organized with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, D.C.) and the Japan Institute of International Affairs (Tokyo).

Author of The Partition of Korea After World War II: A Global History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and other published works, James served as the Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Asia Quarterly.  A regular contributor to American Historical Review (Oxford University Press) and Journal of Cold War Studies (MIT Press), James leads the National Security Group at Harvard Club of New York.  His opinion pieces have been published by Financial Times, Newsweek, The National Interest, Council on Foreign Relations, and Center for Strategic and International Studies, among others.

A graduate of Williams College (B.A.) and Harvard University (M.A., Ph.D.), James also studied at Beijing University, Moscow State University, and International Christian University (Tokyo).