Today’s guest is Jean Lee, one of the world’s foremost experts on North Korea and a journalist whose reporting has reshaped how we understand one of the most secretive countries on earth.
Jean co-hosted the BBC World Service’s acclaimed podcast The Lazarus Heist, the gripping true-crime investigation into the billion-dollar cyberattacks tied to North Korea — from the Sony Pictures hack to global financial crime rings and crypto-gangsters.
She led The Associated Press coverage of the Korean Peninsula as bureau chief from 2008 to 2013, and in 2012 became the first American reporter to join Pyongyang’s foreign press corps, opening AP’s Pyongyang bureau. Over the years, she has made dozens of extended reporting trips into North Korea, visiting farms, factories, schools, military academies, and private homes — gaining rare access and insight into daily life inside the country.
