Dr Sung Soo Lee
Key information
- Roles
- Post-Doctoral Research Associate, SOAS Centre of Korean Studies
- Qualifications
- PhD (Toronto)
- Email address
- sl9@soas.ac.uk
Biography
Dr Sung Soo Lee received her PhD in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto in 2026. Her research explores the relationships between environment, technology, and development in modern Korea, situating North Korea within the histories of decolonisation and the global Cold War.
She is currently developing her doctoral dissertation into a monograph, tentatively titled Hydropowering North Korea: The Making of a Socialist Energy Regime. The book traces how North Korea built and sustained a socialist energy system around hydropower, drawing on colonial infrastructure and transnational technical cooperation. It examines how responses to hydropower’s environmental limits shaped electricity provision and distributed access, labour, and responsibility unevenly across institutions and communities.
Research interests
- Modern Korean History and North Korea
- Global Cold War and Postcolonial East Asia
- Environmental History
- History of Science and Technology
- Infrastructure Studies