ABOUT
Jeongwook Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Administration at Seoul National University. His research focuses on local governance, policy analysis, and program evaluation. He applies data science to evaluate and forecast the economic power of local governments, integrating spatial econometrics, machine learning and deep learning, and policy analytics. His work spans applications from nowcasting and forecasting city-level economic indicators—such as GDP, residents’ income and consumption, and merchants’ sales—to evaluating local government performance and analyzing public health systems, with particular attention to local governance, equity, and health disparities.
Education
Dissertation: Three Essays on Economic Power of Local Governments: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Forecasting
Advisor: Professor Kilkon Ko
Thesis: Factors Affecting Open Data Initiatives in Local Governments in Korea: A Spatial Econometric Analysis
Advisor: Professor Kilkon Ko
Undergraduate Thesis: How Homeownership and Housing Prices Influence Voting Behavior in South Korea: Evidence from Presidential, General, and Local Elections in the 2000s
Graduated with a major in English and additional coursework in Japanese and Chinese.
U.S. Department of State Exchange Program.
Publications
Works in Preparation
Presentations & Conferences
American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) Annual Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Role: Presenter (Oral Presentation)
SNU-VUW Conference 2024, Victoria University of Wellington, Auckland, New Zealand.
Role: Presenter (Oral Presentation)
Korean Association for Policy Analysis and Evaluation (KAPAE) Annual Fall Conference, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju-si, Jeollabuk-do, Korea.
Role: Presenter (Oral Presentation)
Government Research Projects
In-depth Assessment of Fiscal Projects: Projects of Building Big Data Platforms.
Job Analysis in Local Healthcare Organizations and Research on Strategies to Secure Adequate Human Resources.
Synthesized presentations and discussions from the National Statistical Platform and Digital Innovation Forum and authored a final report summarizing key insights and recommendations.
A Study on Enhancing Compatibility of Recruitment Systems in the Public Sector.
Academic Experience
Developed Python scripts to automate data collection, cleaning, processing, and statistical analysis in support of advisor’s research.
Provided statistical consulting to master’s students working on their theses by advising on study design, data management, statistical methods selection, and results interpretation.
Open Source Software Contributions
Jeongwook contributed this module to Kolabpy—a Python package developed by members of KOLAB at Seoul National University that offers tools for SAS integration, geographic identifier standardization, and geospatial mapping. The module standardizes region names and codes across diverse datasets, ensuring that all tables, regardless of their original naming conventions, align seamlessly for merges and downstream analysis.
Jeongwook contributed this module to Kolabpy, leveraging GeoPandas and Folium to generate interactive national choropleth maps at both city and province levels. The module merges region-coded data with a GeoJSON boundary layer and renders a fully customizable Folium map complete with color scales, tooltips, and interactivity.
This Python widget, presented at the 2024 KAPAE conference, provides a streamlined workflow for retrieving and interactively exploring Korean government fiscal data within a Jupyter notebook. It automatically downloads all budget and expenditure tables from an online repository. Its integrated, widget-based interface enables users to select datasets and apply filters by year, department, or other criteria through a graphical panel. All controls are generated dynamically from the loaded data, allowing seamless inspection of any subset of fiscal records without manual coding.
AWARDS & HONORS
Seoul National University–Korea Land & Housing Corporation (SNU–LH) City Data Analysis Program, Seoul, Korea.
Brain Korea 21 (BK21) is a government scholarship program funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF).
Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering (WYSE) 2005, organized by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; competition held at Rend Lake College, Ina, Illinois, USA.
7th Annual Accounting Challenge, School of Accountancy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois, USA.
Teamed with Jeff Schneider and Austin Morgan. Computer Science Day, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois, USA.