Kihwan Kim '57

Kim earned an M.A. in history from Yale University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He chairs the Seoul Financial Forum and is a distinguished visiting scholar at Korea Development Institute. After returning to the Republic of Korea in 1976, Kim was vice minister of trade and industry, chief economic policy coordinator and trade negotiator, and chief delegate to the North-South Inter-Korea Economic Talks. He has consulted at the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and served as visiting faculty at the University of Tokyo and UC-Berkeley. Kim was a senior adviser at the law and management-consulting firm Kim and Chang. During Korea’s 1997–98 financial crisis, he was Korea’s ambassador-at-large for economic affairs. He has been chair and CEO of Media Valley Inc., a Korean information-technology initiative; an adviser to Goldman Sachs, Asia; and international chair of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council. In 2000, Kim received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Grinnell College.