Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate in comparative politics at the Department of Government of Cornell University and a recent graduate of the University of Chicago Law School's Master of Legal Studies program.

My research interests include political corruption, the politics of anti-corruption reform, legislative decision-making, agency independence, and executive branch dynamics. I am a recipient of the Korea Foundation Scholarship for Graduate Studies. My most recent publication is “The Partiality Norm: Systematic Deference in the Office of Legal Counsel” in the Cornell Law Review.

My doctoral dissertation explores the intersection between anti-corruption policymaking and post-enactment statutory interpretation. In explaining why legislators enact self-binding anti-corruption statutes, I show that political will to enact self-constraining reforms turns on lawmaker expectations of future enforcement. Policymakers expecting weaker enforcement are likely to adopt stronger anti-corruption statutes, while those anticipating aggressive enforcement are likely to eschew dramatic reform in favor of unambiguous and under-inclusive statutes. This study uses Bayesian process-tracing to examine the drafting of prominent South Korean anti-corruption legislation in the early 2000s and 2010s, employing legislative records and in-depth interviews with South Korean lawmakers, bureaucrats, prosecutors, and judges. The study finds that policymakers' expectations about enforcement are stronger determinants of political will than are electoral benefit or public interest. This research has been supported by the Korea Foundation, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell, and Cornell University Graduate School. 

My secondary research on prosecutorial independence and accountability employs an original dataset of corruption investigations of South Korean public officials to measure politicization in high-level prosecutions. 

I have presented my research at the American Political Science Association, Society for Empirical Legal Studies, American Society of Comparative Law, International Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, Asian Law and Society Association, and others.

I received my M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and B.A. in East Asian Studies from Columbia University.