YoonJoo Lee

YoonJoo Lee is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in 20th-century U.S. international history with a focus on the history of development in Asia. She earned her B.A. in 2020 and M.A. in 2024 at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Her master’s dissertation scrutinizes the U.S. modernization project in Asia, with a particular focus on Wolf Ladejinsky, a Soviet exile and agricultural economist. Through an analysis of Ladejinsky’s land reform efforts, it argues that the Cold War eroded aspirations for modernization and the Global New Deal. 

Her research interests include U.S.-led economic development projects in Asia, with a particular focus on Vietnam, South Korea, and India from the 1950s to the 1980s. She is particularly interested in how the interplay between business and government drives modernization. From the mid-1950s, the Global New Deal shifted away from state-led planning as New Deal policymakers in Washington became less prominent and more involved with private sector agencies. She addresses the irony by shedding light on how New Dealers during the Cold War aimed to modernize the Asian region and implemented various strategies on the ground, all within the complex context of Cold War tensions and decolonization.