David Fields, Ph.D. - Understanding North Korea
Program Date: November 4, 2026
David Fields is the Associate Director of East Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he earned his Ph.D. in history specializing in US Korean relations. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. He returns to CEA to explore how the North Korean regime uses ideology and underdevelopment to maintain itself in power and what implications North Korean stability has for US policy towards the Korean Peninsula.
He is the author of Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of Korea (University Press of Kentucky, 2019), He is the editor of The Diary of Syngman Rhee, published by the Museum of Contemporary Korean History, and the book review editor of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations. He has been published in the Washington Post, The National Interest, North Korea Review, Journal of American-East Asian Relations, SinoNK.com, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society-Korea Branch and in the Working Papers Series of the Cold War International History Project. His commentary and analyses have appeared on National Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, C-SPAN, and CNN.
David Fields – Badger Talks – UW–Madison
https://eastasia.wisc.edu/staff/fields-david