THE KOREA SOCIETY

Keith Luse is the Executive Director of the National Committee on North Korea. Previously, Luse was the Senior East Asia Policy Advisor for Chairman and later Ranking Member Senator Richard G. Lugar at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2003 until 2013. Luse also served as Staff Director for Mr. Lugar at the Senate Agriculture Committee from 1999 through 2002, where the Senator also served as Chairman and later Ranking Member. While at the Senate Agriculture Committee, Luse made the first of eventually five trips to North Korea. In addition to assisting Senator Lugar at the Foreign Relations Committee on legislative initiatives, Luse directed or participated in several oversight projects and investigations. They included the integrity of the U.S. - funded humanitarian assistance distribution process inside North Korea; the murder of Americans in Papua, Indonesia; corruption and transparency challenges at The Asia Development Bank and The World Bank, and an evaluation of the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance to countries in East Asia with an emphasis on Cambodia and Indonesia. Luse has traveled extensively in East Asia including five visits to North Korea, and has participated in numerous Track 1.5 and Track 2 sessions about North Korea or with North Korean officials outside of their country. Luse’s Bachelor of Arts degree in political science is from Indiana University. His graduate certificate in public management and additional graduate studies were obtained at Indiana University – Purdue University, Indianapolis.

Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research interests include nuclear strategy, escalation, missiles and missile defense, space security, and U.S. alliances. He is the author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon (Polity, 2025), Indo-Pacific Missile Arsenals: Avoiding Spirals and Mitigating Risks (Carnegie, 2023), and Kim Jong Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea (Hurst/Oxford, 2020). Panda is co-editor of New Approaches to Verifying and Monitoring North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal (Carnegie, 2021). Panda has consulted for the United Nations in New York and Geneva, and his analysis has been sought by U.S. Strategic Command, Space Command, and Indo-Pacific Command. Panda is among the most highly cited experts worldwide on North Korean nuclear capabilities. He has testified on matters related to South Korea and Japan before the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Panda has also testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. Before joining Carnegie, Panda was an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and a journalist covering international security. Panda is a frequent expert commentator in print and broadcast media around the world on nuclear policy and defense matters. His work has appeared in or been featured by the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Economist, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Atlantic, the New Republic, the South China Morning Post, Politico, and the National Interest. Panda has also published in scholarly journals, including Survival, the Washington Quarterly, and India Review, and has contributed to the IISS Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment and Strategic Survey. He is editor-at-large at the Diplomat, where he hosts the Asia Geopolitics podcast, and a contributing editor at War on the Rocks, where he hosts Thinking the Unthinkable With Ankit Panda, a podcast on nuclear matters. 

Rachel Minyoung Lee is a Senior Fellow for the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North. She is also co-chair of the North Korea Economic Forum, which is part of the policy program at the George Washington University’s Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS). Lee was a North Korea collection expert and analyst with Open Source Enterprise (OSE; formerly known as Open Source Center) in the US government from 2000 to 2019. During that time, she wrote on the gamut of North Korean issues, from leadership, domestic politics and economy, and foreign policy, to social and cultural developments. As Analysis Team Lead, Lee led a team of collection officers and analysts to track and analyze North and South Korean issues with implications for Pyongyang’s regime stability and regional security. Most recently, from 2022 to early 2024, Lee headed engagement and network-building efforts at the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network (ONN). In July 2025, she was a POSCO Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii. Lee earned her B.A. in English literature and her M.A. in international law, both at Korea University in Seoul. 

Susan A. Thornton is the Director of the Forum on Asia-Pacific Security at the NCAFP, Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center. In 2018, she retired from the State Department after a 28-year diplomatic career focused primarily on East and Central Asia. In leadership roles in Washington, Thornton worked on China and Korea policy, including stabilizing relations with Taiwan, the U.S.-China Cyber Agreement, the Paris Climate Accord and led a successful negotiation in Pyongyang for monitoring of the Agreed Framework on denuclearization. In her 18 years of overseas postings in Central Asia, Russia, the Caucasus and China, Thornton’s leadership furthered U.S. interests and influence and maintained programs and mission morale in a host of difficult operating environments. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, she was among the first State Department Fascell Fellows and served from 1989–90 at the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad. She was also a researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute from 1987–91. Thornton holds degrees from the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Bowdoin College. She speaks Russian, Mandarin Chinese and French, is a member of numerous professional associations and is on the Board of Trustees for the Eurasia Foundation.