# Kim Jong-hoon

### Context

Kim Jong-hoon is a South Korean trade official and politician best known for his role in negotiating the Korea–United States Free Trade Agreement. His public significance is technical rather than populist: he helped design and defend a trade framework that reshaped rules for goods, services, investment and market access between two major economies. The [U.S. Trade Representative](https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/blog/2010/may/ambassador-kirk-and-korean-minister-kim-meet-discuss-korus-fta) recorded him meeting U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk in 2010 as South Korea’s trade minister to discuss outstanding KORUS issues. That places him squarely inside the institutional machinery of trade liberalization.

### Consequences

KORUS created durable rules for bilateral commerce and therefore outlasted Kim’s tenure. Its effects include both opportunities from lower barriers and political conflict over industries exposed to increased competition. Those distributional effects should be assessed sector by sector rather than labeled uniformly beneficial or harmful. The [U.S. Trade Representative](https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/korus-fta/legal-texts-reflecting-december-3-2010-agreement) preserves the legal texts that make the agreement’s obligations concrete. Kim’s consequence is best framed as institutional: he helped negotiate a rules-based trade relationship that subsequent governments inherited, amended and used as a platform for broader economic ties.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/kim-jong-hoon