Kibum Han is a political scientist with a PhD who worked for more than two decades as a North Korea analyst in the South Korean government, including as first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) from 2013 to 2016. He is currently a distinguished research fellow at the Institute for North Korean Studies and a visiting senior research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. Previously, Han served as an adjunct professor at Korea University and as a distinguished research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU). He received his doctorate from Kyungnam University with a dissertation titled “Organizational Behavior and Bureaucratic Politics in North Korea’s Policy‑Making Process.” In 2023, he published the book Why Does North Korea’s Economic Reform Fail?