Su-Mi Lee, Associate Professor of Political Science
Associate Professor Lee researches international conflict management, including negotiation and mediation strategies, and space politics.
Posted on July 12, 2024
Su-Mi Lee is an associate professor of political science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. The primary topics of her research are international conflict management, including negotiation and mediation strategies, and space politics. She also is collecting biographies of Peace Corps volunteers with ties to Hawaiʻi Island.
“I enjoy conducting research not only for my own curiosity but also its effects on policy,” she says.
Lee received her master of arts from the University of Missouri in 2001 and her doctor of philosophy in political science from the University of Kentucky in 2013.
Lee has held a variety of international fellowships including the Field Research Fellowship of the Korea Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Seminar Abroad Program in Chile in 2017, and the Emergent Scholar Seminar of the Asia Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership in Thailand.
In 2021, Lee was nominated by the consulate general of the Republic of Korea in Honolulu to serve as a member of the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, a constitutional governmental organization to advise the president of South Korea on the formulation of Korean peaceful unification policy. Lee was appointed by the president of South Korea for a two-year term.
Lee serves as an editorial review board member for Negotiation and Conflict Management Research and for Journal of Korean Space Association for National Defense. She also is a member of the Board of Directors of the Korean Space Association for National Defense.
Negotiation dynamics to denuclearize North Korea
One of Lee’s main research topics is about the negotiation strategies used by the six parties involved in the North Korea denuclearization talks launched in 2003 and stalled since 2008.
Having delved deeply into the topic, Lee received a research grant in August 2019 to speak publicly on it, and in May of 2021, she hosted a virtual public forum, “Strategy and Negotiations for Denuclearizing North Korea: Was There Ever a Chance?” where several experts on each country’s politics and foreign relations participated in the discussion. Participants said that lack of agreement and cohesion among the countries resulted in unsuccessful negotiations with North Korea.
“Country experts provided all contexts — domestic matters — that negotiation scholars could analyze and use to evaluate negotiations,” says Lee. “It was a perfect collaboration effort.”
While Lee continued to advance her research, she became co-editor of the book, Negotiation Dynamics to Denuclearize North Korea: Cohesion and Disarray (SUNY Press, May 2023), a collection of essays from experts in the field that comprehensively examines — through the lens of negotiation theory — the goals, strategies, and motives of the six parties involved in the North Korea denuclearization talks. In addition to co-editing, Lee also co-authored two essays in the book, where she applies her research to North Korea’s nuclear negotiations.
“The book is about the challenges with bilateral multiparty negotiations in general that were exhibited in North Korea’s case,” explains Lee. “The challenges discussed are that five countries on one side, trying to denuclearize North Korea on the other side, could not share the same goals, motives, and thus strategies. This disarray created confusion and weakened the leverages five countries used to induce more concessions from North Korea.”
- Learn more about the research: UH Hilo political scientist Su-Mi Lee is co-editor of new book on North Korea denuclearization process (UH Hilo Stories, May 2023)
International conflict management tools
Lee is also investigating the success of mediation deals that use “track one-and-a-half diplomacy,” or T1.5D, as a conflict management tool. Track one diplomacy (T1D) refers to communication between governmental officials, whereas civilians from different countries interact with each other in track two diplomacy (T2D). T1.5D involves both official and unofficial participants.
“The mediation literature suggests that T1.5D combines the strengths of T1D and T2D,” explains Lee. “T1.5D’s non-political figures or bodies with international visibility and influence can be seen as trustworthy and resourceful to gain trust of the disputants. T1.5D allows a safe environment where participants can have candid talks and resolve the underlying causes of the dispute rather than managing it, thereby helping reduce political violence in the post-settlement period and preventing the recurrence of conflict.”
Nonetheless, Lee says, empirical analysis of her research shows that the utility of T1.5D is not universal.
“T1.5D would not be as effective in authoritarian regimes, where the leaders are not accustomed to taking advice from low-ranked officials or individuals with no political position, as it is in democracies,” she says.
“T1.5D should also be used with caution,” Lee adds. “Unless both parties are fully committed to adhering to the agreed terms of the peace settlement, political violence is more likely to take place in the post-settlement period after T1.5D is used than when T1D is. Although T1.5D offers motivations for the adversaries to adhere to the agreed terms of the settlement, it possesses no military resources to deter political violence from taking place if one side decides to use political violence in response to the other’s defection.”
Lee says this is an unexpected discovery in her research because many people had advocated for the use of T1.5D and T2D as an alternative to, or a supplement tool for, T1D.
This research is now being “polished,” says Lee, and will soon be sent to journals for review.
Biographies of Peace Corp volunteers
In 2023, with financial support from UH Hilo’s College of Arts and Sciences where the Department of Political Science is housed, Lee launched a project collecting biographical stories of Peace Corps volunteers who have ties to Hawaiʻi Island. The project is a collaborative effort with input and help from elected officials, former Peace Corp volunteers, members of the Hawaiʻi Island community who have ties or interest in the Peace Corps, and UH Hilo students.
This inquiry is significant to UH Hilo because Hawaiʻi Island was chosen as a primary training location for thousands of Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s and the university’s precursor — University of Hawaiʻi-Hilo Branch — contributed greatly to that training. Many of those Peace Corps volunteers, who spent years forming connections abroad during their Peace Corps work, returned to Hawaiʻi Island, enriching local communities with their professional lives and service.
Lee’s goal is to document these stories for future generations to read and learn about the personal and professional value of direct engagement with people in other countries. Several of Lee’s students have assisted with collecting the biographies and filming interviews.
To learn more about Lee’s Peace Corps project, see:
- UH Hilo political scientist Su-Mi Lee compiles biographies from Peace Corps volunteers with ties to Hawaiʻi Island (UH Hilo Stories, April 2023)
- 2024 Peace Corps Week: Video interviews with former Peace Corps volunteers (UH Hilo Stories, Feb-March 2024)
New frontiers
Lee currently has four ongoing research projects related to space security and international security.
She is editing a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal to which she and her co-editor have submitted manuscripts about the rise of South Korea in the international relations of space.
In another project, she is writing a book on South Korea’s space policy for which she has received support through a UH Hilo College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Professional Development Award.
“Space has become a new arena in international security in recent years,” she says. “With the establishment of the U.S. Space Force in December 2019, outer space has become one of many fronts where the U.S.-China rivalry is pronounced.”
For the book, she is investigating Japan’s transformation a decade ago from a market-focused space program into a security-focused industry (military). Meanwhile, Lee points out, “South Korea is currently right at the inflection point transitioning into a space power using its space technology for military purposes.”
“In the book, I will review the milestones in South Korea’s space development and identify major actors and space policies [and] programs that have contributed to the country’s current status as a space power before discussing the country’s focus on space security and defense capability,” says Lee.
Lee also plans to build a website about space security; she calls space “a new frontier in the international security arena.” Her hope is that the website will serve as a one-stop shop where scholars and policymakers can easily find information they need about space policies and programs as well as their implications on international security. A student research assistant of Lee’s has already compiled hundreds of journal articles, news articles, and reports sorted by region and country that are archived and ready for launch of the website.
And the fourth project is about the United States-China rivalry. Lee says that ranging from rallying their allies against their counterpart, to displaying contempt for each other in public, to enacting war-game scenarios against each other, the signs of the US-China rivalry are commonplace in recent years.
“In particular, close to home, the U.S.-China rivalry is pronounced in the South Pacific,” she says. “I hope to investigate how the U.S.-China rivalry affects the Pacific region and what it will lead us to in the end.”
By Susan Enright, a public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of Keaohou and UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
