KEI Contributor

Youngjae Kim is a Korean government official and diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since December 2020, he serves as Economic Minister at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Washington, DC. Prior to this post, he was Director-General for International Economic Affairs (2019-2020) in Seoul, in which capacity he oversaw Korea’s participation in multilateral fora such as G20, APEC, OECD, and WEF (World Economic Forum) including summit meetings, and supervised the negotiation, conclusion and implementation of economic treaties on the avoidance of double taxation and investment protection, as well as on trade. Before that, he was Deputy Director-General for Bilateral Economic Affairs (2018) managing economic relations with Korea’s major economic partners.

He was Minister-Counselor at the Korean Embassy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2016-2018), where he worked on the bilateral Korea-Saudi political relationship and regional Middle Eastern affairs. Before that, he was the Economic Counselor in the Embassy in Washington, DC (2013-2016), where he focused on the Korea-U.S. bilateral trade relationship, including the implementation of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), Korea’s possible participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and global trade issues including negotiations and dispute settlement at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

He has also served in the headquarters of the then Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade as Director of the Trade Dispute Settlement Division (2012-2013), Director of the WTO Division (2010-2012), and Director of the FTA Implementation Division (2009-2010).

He has 27 years’ experience in international trade policy and negotiations, beginning with antidumping investigations with the Korea Trade Commission (1994-1996). He has experience in a number of injury investigations in antidumping and safeguards cases and was involved in changing the bifurcated (dumping and injury) system to the unitary system in 1996. He was the lead negotiator on trade remedies during the KORUS FTA negotiations (2006-2007) and also played a key role in follow-up processes including legal scrubbing and additional negotiations, as well as political ratification process in both the Korean National Assembly and the United States Congress (2008-2011). Before his work on the KORUS FTA, a major portion of his career involved implementation of WTO agreements, WTO dispute settlements, preparations for new WTO rounds, and the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations (1998-2004).

His earlier overseas assignments include the Korean Mission in Geneva (2004-2007) and the Embassy in Cote d’Ivoire (2007-2009).

He received his Master’s degree (LLM) from Harvard Law School (2001) and Bachelor’s degree (LLB) from Seoul National University (1992).

He is a member of the New York Bar, and is married with three children.