John Park is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative and Economic Statecraft Initiative. Park serves as a senior policy advisor at the Department of the Treasury. Previously, he was a senior Asia analyst at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where he served as director of the Korea Project. His core research projects focused on economic statecraft, deterrence, nuclear proliferation, North Korean cyber operations, and Asian alliances. 

Park was the 2012-2013 Stanton nuclear security junior faculty fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Security Studies Program. He previously directed Northeast Asia Track 1.5 projects at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. He currently advises Northeast Asia policy-focused officials in the US government. He has testified before the Senate Banking Committee, House Financial Services Committee, and House Foreign Affairs Committee. He earlier worked in Goldman Sachs’ headquarters in New York. Prior to that, he worked in Goldman Sachs’ Mergers and Acquisitions Advisory Group in Hong Kong and the Boston Consulting Group’s Financial Services Practice in Seoul. 

Park’s key publications include “The North Korea-Russia relationship is blossoming into a common market of autocracies,” the New Atlanticist (October 2024); “Where Do Divergent US and Chinese Approaches to Dealing with North Korea Lead?” in The China Questions II: Critical Insights into US-China Relations (Harvard University Press, August 2022); “Micro Deterrence Signaling: Policy Innovation During the 2017 Korean Missile Crisis,” (Korea Project Report, Harvard Kennedy School, April 2022, coauthored with General Vincent K. Brooks); “Stopping North Korea, Inc.: Sanctions Effectiveness and Unintended Consequences,” (MIT Security Studies Program, 2016, coauthored with Jim Walsh); “The Key to the North Korean Targeted Sanctions Puzzle,” the Washington Quarterly (Fall 2014); “Assessing the Role of Security Assurances in Dealing with North Korea” in Security Assurances and Nuclear Nonproliferation (Stanford University Press, 2012); “North Korea, Inc.: Gaining Insights into North Korean Regime Stability from Recent Commercial Activities” (United States Institute of Peace Working Paper, May 2009); and “North Korea’s Nuclear Policy Behavior: Deterrence and Leverage,” in The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia (Stanford University Press, 2008). 

Park received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council doctoral fellow. He completed his predoctoral and postdoctoral training at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.