Ryan Beane is in his first year of graduate school at George Washington University, studying security policy. His academic interests include U.S. foreign policy, East Asia, and North Korea. He has always found North Korea interesting, especially concerning its vast human rights abuses, self-imposed isolation, and the dynamics of the Kim regime. He studied abroad at Yonsei University during the spring 2022 semester, and this experience piqued his interests in politics on the Korean Peninsula and relevant foreign policy issues. During his internship, he seeks to learn about and research Pyongyang’s human rights abuses, along with how the regime funds its nuclear program through illicit activities.