The Korea Now Podcast

Jed Lea-Henry has built something unusual here -- a long-form academic interview show that manages to be genuinely engaging rather than stuffy. Over 123 episodes, he has sat down with scholars, journalists, and professionals who specialize in both North and South Korea, and the conversations consistently go places you would not expect. One episode covers North Korean literature and what fiction reveals about the regime’s internal contradictions. Another digs into the Cold War history of the Korean peninsula through recently declassified documents. A third explores what Chinese-North Korean trade networks actually look like at the ground level. The format is a straight interview, usually lasting 45 minutes to an hour, and Jed does his homework. He reads his guests’ books, references their published papers, and asks follow-up questions that show genuine preparation. The show earned a 4.3-star rating from listeners who tend to be Korea studies students, expats living in Seoul, and policy researchers. It ran actively from 2018 to 2022, so the back catalog is the real treasure here -- those episodes on inter-Korean relations, the North Korean economy, and regional security dynamics remain relevant because the underlying dynamics have not changed much. Think of it as a graduate seminar you can listen to on a jog, hosted by someone who genuinely loves the subject and knows how to draw out his guests.