Biographies

J. James Kim is a Research Fellow in the American Politics and Policy Program in the Center for Regional Studies at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. Dr. Kim is also a lecturer in the Executive Master of Public Administration program at Columbia University. Previously, he was an assistant professor of political science at the California State Polytechnic University (Pomona). He also served as a summer research associate at the RAND Corporation and as a statistical consultant for the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Planning at the School of International and Public Affairs in Columbia University. His primary research interests include political economy, energy, security, public opinion, democracy, methodology, and media. Dr. Kim received a BS and MS in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University and an MPhil and PhD in political science from Columbia University.

Thomas J. Byrne joined The Korea Society as its President in August of 2015. He comes to the Society from Moody’s Investor Services, where he was Senior Vice President, Regional Manager, Spokesperson, and Director of Analysis for the Sovereign Risk Group in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions. Before moving to Moody’s in 1996, he was the Senior Economist of the Asia Department at the Institute of International Finance in Washington, D.C. Mr. Byrne has an MA degree in International Relations, with an emphasis on Economics from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Before his graduate work, he served in South Korea for three years as a US Peace Corps volunteer. President Byrne will teach as an adjunct professor graduate-level Sovereign Risk at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in Fall 2016.

Scott Snyder is Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where he had served as an Adjunct Fellow from 2008 to 2011. Previously, he was Senior Associate in the International Relations Program of The Asia Foundation, where he founded and directed the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy and served as The Asia Foundation’s representative in Korea (2000-04). He was also Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Pacific Forum. Mr. Snyder has written extensively on Northeast Asia, Korean politics, and Asian regionalism and is the author of The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States with Brad Glosserman (Columbia University Press, 2015), China’s Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009), and Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (The Academy of Political Science, 1999). Mr. Snyder received a BA from Rice University, an MA from Harvard University, and was a Thomas G. Watson fellow at Yonsei University in South Korea.