Dr. June Park is a South Korean political economist working on geopolitical risk and emerging technologies, observing East Asia, the U.S., Europe and the Persian Gulf. She focuses on geoeconomic conflicts among nation states in digital and green transitions, ranging from semiconductor export controls/EV subsidies, AI regulations /data governance, to crypto regulations under sanctions/CBDCs. She analyzes different policy outcomes as a response to pressures based on industrial capacity and governance structures.

She serves as a 2023-2024 Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs (formerly Brookings Doha Center) for her project, ‘South Korea-GCC Relations: Energy, Technology, Security,’ while serving as Expert PI (Principal Investigator) and Convener of the Emerging Technologies Workshops for a multi-year project for the Small States Research Program at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q). She concurrently serves as a non-resident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) in Washington, DC. Dr. Park has served as a 2021-2022 Fung Global Fellow (Early-Career Scholar Track) at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) at Princeton University and a 2022-2023 inaugural Asia Fellow for the International Strategy Forum at Schmidt Futures.

She is finalizing her first book manuscript, DIGITAL TRADE WARS & CURRENCY CONFLICT: China, South Korea and Japan’s Responses to U.S. Protectionism since COVID-19. The book is currently supported by the International Strategy Forum (ISF) Fellows Individual Impact Grant of Schmidt Futures and has also been enriched by the Next Generation Researcher Grant of the National Research Foundation of Korea. Developing a framework of institutional variance focusing on the three entities for digitization – industry-state-bureaucracy – across jurisdictions, her book manuscript attempts to answer why the three East Asian economies have formulated different policy responses upon encountering U.S. pressures in the digital economy on the path toward AI since the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain reshuffling, focusing on the cases of semiconductors, EVs and batteries, biotech/vaccines, data governance, and digital currencies. It provides a mechanism for predicting countries’ policy moves in digital transformation and energy transition.

Outside academia, she advises public and private sectors with analyses at global, regional, and domestic levels. She provides expert commentary to various international media outlets. She also serves as an expert for global consulting firms Duco Experts and has consulted for the South Korean government on CBDCs and Ernst & Young Japan on the AI related regulations in South Korea.

Dr. Park earned her BA and MA in political science with a focus on international security from Korea University and has held an internship at the UN Security Council Sanctions Subsidiary Organs Branch. She received her PhD in Political Science with a focus on international political economy from Boston University as a Fulbright Fellow and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.