Female Minister Yoo Myung-hee: The conqueror of the 'Korean dream' at the WTO

Veteran negotiator

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy of South Korea is home to many “women”, as 30% of its nearly 1,300 employees are female. But Ms. Yoo Myung-hee is the only woman in the ministry’s senior leadership, and was also the first woman to be appointed as Minister in 2018 - exactly 70 years since the ministry was established.

South Korean Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee officially announced her candidacy for the position of WTO Director-General. Photo: Yonhap/Kyodo

Being chosen as Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy is an affirmation of Ms. Yoo Myung-hee's "top-notch" negotiating ability.

In South Korea, appointing women to important positions with the goal of “gender balance” is not uncommon, and that is what happened to Ms. Yoo Myung-hee when she was selected to work at the Ministry of Trade in 1996 (then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Korea, later split into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy). But after 20 years, her selection as Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy is no longer for “gender balance”, but rather an affirmation of her “superior” negotiating ability, considered a testament to the brilliance of Korean women in positions that are traditionally the “territory” of men.

Mr. Kim Eui-kyeom, spokesman for the President of South Korea, commented that Ms. Yoo Myuyn-hee is a person capable of solving trade-related issues with strong leadership thinking and the ability to control every detail based on her extensive experience from the positions she has held in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy of South Korea for more than 20 years.

In the eyes of her colleagues, Ms. Yoo Myung-hee has both the toughness of her predecessor - former Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Kim Hyun-jong - and the flexibility and ingenuity of a woman. These two qualities have helped her conquer extremely difficult negotiations, most notably the recent trade negotiations with the US and Japan. These are negotiations in which South Korea has to balance between protecting national interests and maintaining relations with close allies. When Mr. Donald Trump became President of the United States in 2016, he called the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement a "terrible deal" and demanded that it be reviewed.

After the negotiation efforts of Ms. Yoo Myung-hee, South Korea signed a revised Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Photo: Getty

Ms. Yoo Myung-hee admitted that renegotiating the trade agreement with the US is really a difficult job.

Ms. Yoo Myung-hee admitted that renegotiating the trade agreement with the US was really a difficult job that required her to work through the night and fly back and forth between Korea and the US countless times. Finally, the agreement was saved with the signing of the agreement between President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late September 2018, which included some amendments that were more favorable to the US but still within the acceptable range for Korea.

The Japan-South Korea trade conflict last year was also a “difficult problem” for Ms. Yoo - Myung Hee. It started with Tokyo imposing regulations to control some key materials of the Korean semiconductor industry, removing South Korea from the “White List” of trusted trade partners. But after just over a month, people saw Japan approve the first shipment of semiconductor materials to South Korea - the first step showing Japan's efforts to reduce tensions.

Public opinion later explained that, in addition to promoting negotiations, Ms. Yoo Myung-hee combined with a "strong blow", which was to strongly accuse Japan of using trade as a weapon to resolve political disputes related to the comfort women issue, and at the same time announced to sue Japan at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The Japan-South Korea trade conflict was also a "difficult problem" for Ms. Yoo - Myung Hee. Photo: AFP/TTXVN

Aspirations for WTO reform

Ms. Yoo Myung-hee announced her candidacy for the position of Director-General of the WTO at a time when the WTO is facing its biggest crisis since its founding - a situation that many people call the WTO paralyzed, "clinically dead". The problems of the WTO are viewed from three aspects: First, this institution does not operate effectively to resolve disputes; Second, the WTO's rules have not kept up with the pace of modern world trade, such as not including the field of digital trade, cross-border data flows, etc.; Third, this organization seems powerless before the unilateral decisions of members like the US. Ms. Yoo Myung-hee especially noted that the WTO has lost the ability to resolve trade disputes since the end of last year due to the crisis in the Appellate Body.

The position of WTO Director-General is not a position to support one side in disputes.

Therefore, Ms. Yoo Myung-hee pledged that if she is elected to the position of WTO Director-General, she will restore the WTO system, ensure that the WTO can protect the basic principle of free trade in goods and services, especially in the context of the world economy facing terrible consequences caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and at the same time prevent the protectionist trend that is increasingly evident in world trade. Ms. Yoo Myung-hee affirmed that the position of WTO Director-General is not a position to support a certain party in disputes, but to encourage and create a bridge so that all members can carry out trade activities in an appropriate direction, with the basic foundation being to conduct negotiations.

South Korean Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee speaks at a meeting in Seoul on May 27, 2020. Photo: Yonhap/VNA

As a candidate for the position of WTO Director General, in addition to her proven negotiating ability, Ms. Yoo Myung-hee's advantage is her experience dealing with many issues that may arise in trade transactions between countries, stemming from the realities of the Korean economy. Currently, the Korean economy is heavily dependent on international trade activities, with import and export sectors accounting for 63.7% of GDP in 2019.

South Korea is the world's seventh-largest exporter and the world's ninth-largest importer. In addition, the number of countries that have established free trade agreements with South Korea accounts for 78% of the world's GDP, so a Korean WTO Director-General can be a bridge between developed and developing economies. Therefore, Ms. Myung-hee is confident that she has the capacity and experience to restore order in the world's multilateral trade organization, the WTO, to better respond to the rapidly changing trade environment in the 21st century.

However, to become the successor of current WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo, Ms. Yoo Myung-hee will have to overcome many other candidates, each of whom has its own strengths. Currently, the WTO has received nominations from four candidates: Egypt, Mexico, Nigeria and Moldova.

Ms. Yoo Myung-hee pledged to bring the WTO out of the shadow of the biggest crisis since its founding. Photo: DW

Winning the position of WTO Director-General has never been an easy task. South Korea has had two candidates in this difficult race, Kim Chul-soo in 1994 and Bark Tae-ho in 2012, but both failed to reach the finish line. Hope is now placed on 53-year-old Yoo Myung-hee on her journey to conquer the “Korean dream” at the WTO. If successful, it will be a “milestone” not only for her personally but also for the whole of South Korea as she becomes the first female Director-General of the WTO.