His granddaughter, Alice P. Albright, is serving as CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation under President Joe Biden.

[3] Though he served as a diplomat in the government of Czechoslovakia, Korbel's politics and Judaism forced him to flee with his wife and baby Madeleine after the Nazi invasion in 1939 and move to London.

[2][6] Korbel returned to Czechoslovakia after the war, receiving a luxurious Prague apartment expropriated from Karl Nebrich, a Bohemian German industrialist expelled under the Beneš decrees.

In 1964, with the benefaction of Ben Cherrington, Korbel established the Graduate School of International Studies and became its founding Dean.

[8] Yashina Tarr sees that Korbel has succeeded in providing an objective assessment of the United Nations' work and recommends it to readers.

He also observes that the huge number of footnotes and quotations testify to Korbel's vast research put into this "valuable contribution" on the Kashmir dispute.

[11] Philipp Harmer, an Austrian citizen, filed a lawsuit claiming that Josef Korbel's family is in inappropriate possession of artwork belonging to his great-grandfather, the German entrepreneur Karl Nebrich.