1. Changkeun Lee's paper, "Paying It Forward: Vaccine Provision and Generalized Reciprocity in Foreign Policy Opinion," was accepted into Public Opinion Quarterly, a political science journal. Co-authored with Joobum Bae, a former KDIS professor, this study examines how American vaccine provision influenced perceptions in South Korea, using panel survey data from 2021–2022. It finds that being vaccinated with American shots, whether donated or purchased, did not improve views of the US. However, vaccinated citizens—especially those who received donated doses—were more supportive of South Korea providing vaccine aid abroad, and information about US assistance further strengthened this support. While vaccine aid does not directly enhance the donor’s image, it generates indirect effects that can advance American interests and facilitate global vaccine distribution, highlighting the importance of considering such second-order impacts.

2. "Work-from-Home in Korea: Expansion, Persistence, and Inequality," accepted at Journal of the Korean Official Statistics

Professor Changkeun Lee and his students — Sehoon Kim (PP), Jiye Kang (DP), Soomin Lim (MPP), Haeun Kim (MDP graduate), Jisu Jung (MDP), Hyuk An (MPP), and Seolyeon Moon (MDP) — published a paper in the Journal of the Korean Official Statistics (통계연구), the official journal of Korea’s Ministry of Data and Statistics. Based on a collaborative reading project, the study uses microdata from the Economically Active Population Survey to show that working from home (WFH) remains prevalent after COVID-19 among employees in large firms, unionized workplaces, digitally intensive sectors, and occupations involving routinized cognitive tasks. Before the pandemic, low-wage workers were more likely to work from home, but in the post-COVID period, high-wage workers gained greater access to and benefits from working from home.