JOO Hyung-hwan

Vice Chair, Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy

JOO Hyung-hwan
Times of the Remarks 2024. 11. 12. 10:55-11:05
Title A Vision and Solutions for Ensuring Attractiveness as a Country in the Age of Ultra-low Birth Rates

JOO Hyung-hwan, Vice Chair of the Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy (Deputy Prime Minister-level), is a career civil servant in the area of economics heading up the presidential committee tasked with acting as a control tower for policies to address population decline and structural changes as a result of low birth rates and population aging. He graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in business administration and earned his PhD in business administration from the University of Illinois. He became a civil servant in 1985 after passing the 26th civil service exam in economic affairs and went on to serve as Secretary for Economic and Financial Affairs in the Office of the President, the First Vice Minister of Strategy and Finance, and the Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy. In a career spanning over 30 years, he was responsible for creative policies concerning the real economy, including economic, industrial, and energy policies, as well as those on international trade through FTAs and domestic and international finance. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii’s College of Social Sciences, a distinguished professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy at Sejong University, and a director of the Pony Chung Foundation.


[Session Title and Description]

A Vision and Solutions for Ensuring Attractiveness as a Country in the Age of Ultra-low Birth Rates

Korea has become a country at risk of extinction, due to population decline driven by ultra-low birth rates on the one hand and regional imbalances stemming from an overconcentration of the population in the greater Seoul metropolitan area on the other. We have entered an era where ultra-low birth rates could fundamentally destabilize Korea’s industrial and demographic structure. As an emerging power within the international community, what must Korea do to overcome this crisis and not lose its competitiveness? This session will look at the government’s response to the strategies for national survival put forward by the joint research teams.