Andrei Lankov

Andrei Nikolaevich Lankov (Андре́й Никола́евич Ланько́в; born 26 July 1963) is a Russian scholar of Asia and specialist in Korean studies and Director of Korea Risk Group, the parent company of NK News and NK Pro.

Early life and education
Lankov was born on 26 July 1963, in Leningrad, Soviet Union (modern day Saint Petersburg, Russia). He completed undergraduate and graduate degrees at Leningrad State University in 1986 and 1989, respectively. He also attended Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung University in 1985.

Career
Following his graduate studies, Lankov taught Korean history and language at his alma mater. In 1992, he went to South Korea for work; he moved to Australia in 1996 to take up a post at the Australian National University but moved back to Seoul to teach at Kookmin University in 2004. Lankov has written in Russian (his native language), Korean, and English. He runs a North Korea-themed Livejournal blog in Russian, where he writes about life in North (and South) Korea, together with his musings and links to his publications. He has written a column for the English-language daily The Korea Times for 15 years and also for Bloomberg News and Al Jazeera English.

Since 2012, Lankov has been a regular contributor to NK News and its premium research platform NK Pro. In May 2017, he became a director of Korea Risk Group, the parent company of these platforms, and committed to writing exclusively for the group outside of his academic commitments.