[Profile] Han Hwajin, Minister of Environment Nominee... 30 Years of Environmental Policy Research

Han Hwa-jin, Nominee for Minister of Environment

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol announced on the 13th that he has nominated Han Hwa-jin, Honorary Research Fellow at the Korea Environment Institute, as the inaugural Minister of Environment.

Candidate Han was born in 1959 in Daejeon and graduated with a bachelor's and master's degree in Chemistry from Korea University. She earned her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Graduate School.

Han is an expert in the environmental field who worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Korea Environment Institute from 1993 to 2019. From 2009 to 2010, during the Lee Myung-bak administration, she served as the Environmental Secretary in the Office of the President’s Senior Secretary for Social Policy.

Since then, she has held positions such as Deputy Director of the Korea Environment Institute, member of the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, and from 2018 to the present, a member of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance’s Emissions Trading Allocation Committee. Since 2020, she has been serving as an Honorary Research Fellow at the Korea Environment Institute. She has conducted environmental policy research for about 30 years.

[Education and Career]

▲ Origin: Daejeon ▲ Bachelor’s in Chemistry, Korea University ▲ Ph.D. in Chemistry, UCLA ▲ Director of Policy Research Headquarters, Korea Environment Institute ▲ Environmental Secretary, Office of the President ▲ Deputy Director, Korea Environment Institute ▲ Member, Nuclear Safety and Security Commission ▲ Director, 2nd Korea Center for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology