Keun Lee is Distinguished Professor of Seoul National University (economics), and Head of the Center for Comparative Economic Studies. He is a Fellow of the CIFAR (Canada), and founding director of the Center for Economic Catch-up (now chairmen of the board). He is the winner of the 2014 Schumpeter Prize for his monograph on Schumpeterian Analysis of Economic Catch-up (2013 Cambridge Univ. Press). He is also an editor of Research Policy.

In 2021, He served as the Vice-chairman of the National Economic Advisory Council for the President of Korea (Chairman of the Council). He is also a regular writer for Project Syndicate. He served as the President of the International Schumpeter Society (2016-18), a member of the Committee for Development Policy of UN (2013-18), a GFC member of the World Economic Forum (2016-19). He obtained Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. His total citations received is about 12,000 with H-index of 49 (Google Scholar).