Kang-Kook Lee is a Professor in the College of Economics at Ritsumeikan University. His research interests encompass economic growth, inequality, financial globalization and the East Asian economy. He graduated from the Department of Economics and the Graduate School of Economics at Seoul National University. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts, with a focus on capital account liberalization and economic development.

He published several books and numerous papers in academic journals including the Cambridge Journal of economics. As a visiting scholar, he has been affiliated with Columbia University in 2009, the University of Cambridge in 2018, and Seoul National University in 2019. He also serves as a co-editor of The Japanese Political economy.