Yoon Appoints Kim Hyun-wook, KDI Professor, as New Economic Security Secretary

Macroeconomics Expert with a PhD from Columbia University

President Yoon Suk-yeol has appointed Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at the Graduate School of International Policy at the Korea Development Institute (KDI) (age 57), as the new Secretary for Economic Security.

According to the presidential office on the 8th, Secretary Kim was recently selected as the new Secretary for Economic Security under the Third Deputy Director of the National Security Office and is currently working at the Yongsan Presidential Office.

Secretary Kim graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in economics and earned his master's and doctoral degrees in economics from Columbia University in the United States. He is a macroeconomics expert who has served as a researcher at the Bank of Korea, an advisor to the Monetary Policy Committee, and since 2000, as a senior research fellow and head of the Macroeconomic Research Department at KDI.

From 2011 to 2017, he served as the head of the Economic Research Office at SK Economic Management Research Institute, and in May 2017, he returned to KDI, where he worked as a professor at the Graduate School of International Policy and as director of planning. The SK Economic Management Research Institute where Secretary Kim worked is also where Wang Yoon-jong, the Third Deputy Director of the National Security Office, previously worked.

Kim Hyun-wook, Secretary for Economic Security at the Presidential Office / Photo by KDI

Earlier, in January, President Yoon appointed Professor Ahn Se-hyun of the University of Seoul as the successor after Wang Yoon-jong, then Secretary for Economic Security, was promoted to Third Deputy Director of the National Security Office.

After former Secretary Ahn resigned for personal reasons, a successor was sought again, and Secretary Kim was selected. The Secretary for Economic Security, responsible for economic security including building global supply chains, was newly established under the First Deputy Director when the Yoon Suk-yeol administration was launched by reorganizing the National Security Office. Later, in January of this year, with the creation of the Third Deputy Director as the economic security control tower, the department was moved under the Third Deputy Director.

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