Andrei Lankov was born 26 July 1963 in Leningrad (now Petersburg). He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Leningrad State University (PhD in 1989). In 1996-2004 he taught Korean history at the Australian National University, and since 2004 he teaches at Kookmin University in 2004, Seoul (currently a professor at the College of Social Studies). His major research interest is North Korean history and society. His major English language publications on North Korea include: From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945-1960 (Rutgers University Press, 2003); Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956 (University of Hawaii Press, 2004), North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea (McFarland and Company, 2007), The Real North Korea (Oxford University Press, 2013). He contributed to ‘Wall Street Journal’, ‘New York Times’, ‘Financial Times’, ‘Newsweek’, and published a number of academic articles.