On August 13, 2025, the President’s Office announced that President Lee nominated Professor Biung-Ghi Ju of Seoul National University(“SNU”)’s Department of Economics as the new Chairperson of the Korea Fair Trade Commission (“KFTC”). In announcing the nomination, Chief of Staff to the President Kang Hoon-sik explained that “Professor Ju will be the new Chairperson of the KFTC, who will meticulously implement the national policy of overcoming chronic unfairness, such as subcontracting issues, collusion, and unfair internal transactions, and establishing a fair market.”
A graduate of SNU (B.A./M.A., Economics) and the University of Rochester (Ph.D., Economics, focus on social choice theory in microeconomics), Professor Ju is a lifelong scholar of theoretical microeconomics known for his reasonable and soft-spoken nature who devoted his career to studying distributive justice, income inequality and fair economy system. He is also the Director of SNU’s Center for Distributive Justice, a nonpartisan institution fostering academic and policy research on distributive justice, income distribution and inequality. Prior to joining SNU’s faculty in 2010, he taught at the University of Kansas from 2001 to 2006 and at Korea University from 2006 to 2010.
Professor Ju’s interest in issues relating to distributive justice led him to participate in the development of the ruling Democratic Party’s antitrust policies. He played a key role in designing the current administration’s presidential pledges and national fair trade agenda and was also named as a member of the President’s National Policy Planning Committee (acting as the de facto transition committee for President Lee, who had to take office without the benefit of a transition period).
Professor Ju is particularly interested in the issues of abuse of superior bargaining position (so-called gap-eul relationship) under Korea’s competition and fair trade laws and tunneling by large conglomerates, both of which are related to distributive justice, one of the key policies of the current government. Professor Ju also pays close attention to the digital transformation of the Korean economy and places importance on both preemptive regulations, such as the proposed Online Platform Act, and the enforcement of ex post facto regulations of unequal bargaining positions.
