Her doctoral dissertation was awarded the Kang Man-gil Research Grant (2011) and later expanded into the monograph The Korean War and the Recovered Areas, which was designated an Outstanding Academic Book by the National Academy of Sciences of Korea (2018). She was awarded the DMZ Peace Prize in the Academic Division (2021), and her subsequent work, A History of the DMZ: The Korean Peninsula’s Armistice Regime and the Demilitarized Zone (2023), was selected for the Sejong Book Award in the academic category (2024). Her most recent publication is Life Histories of the Residents of Daeseong-dong Village in the DMZ (2025).

Professor Hahn is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies, Seoul National University. In the public and civic sectors, she currently serves as a Research Fellow at the Kim Dae-jung Academy, a board member of the Korea Peace Forum, a policy advisor to the Ministry of Unification, a member of its Committee on Peaceful Unification and Democratic Education, and an advisory committee member for forest ecosystem restoration at the Korea Forest Service.

Her primary research focuses on the Korean War, the history of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and border regions, and the division and reunification of the Korean Peninsula. Actively engaged in public history, she also led the conceptualization and production of the “DMZ Peace Map,” the first comprehensive digital map documenting the DMZ and border regions.