Lee Joowhee is a PhD candidate at the School of Culture, History & Language, in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. After two years of conducting interviews in Korea and Japan between 2018 and 2019, she is now in the final examination process for her PhD dissertation. Her doctoral thesis title is “Memories of Repatriates from Japan to North Korea: Stories of Separated Families and Narratives of Reunification.”

The research aims to understand the experiences of ‘North Korean migrants’ using a case study of the Zainichi, who were ‘repatriated’ from Japan to North Korea between 1958 to 1984. Ms. Lee Joowhee obtained an MA in Cultural Anthropology from Hanyang University (Korea) in 2012. Her research interests include contemporary Korean studies, North Korean migration studies, North Korean socio-cultural history and everyday life, Korean diaspora (especially Zainichi Korean) studies (national and ethnic identity), oral history and family, and Cold War/Hot War culture and political violence in East Asia.