Sungmin Cho is a nonresident senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is also an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. Previously, he worked for six years as a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, an academic institute of the US Department of Defense.

His areas of expertise include US-China competition, Chinese politics, and the geopolitics of northeast Asia. Cho has published articles in peer-reviewed journals, including World Politics, Journal of Contemporary China, the China Journal, Asian Security, Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, and Korea Observer. His policy analysis has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Washington Quarterly, and War on the Rocks. Cho has contributed commentaries at the invitations of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Brookings, and other think tanks. Prior to his academic career, Cho served in the Korean Army as an intelligence officer for three years, including a seven-month deployment to Iraq.

Cho earned a PhD in government from Georgetown University, an MA in international relations from Peking University, and a BA in political science from Korea University.