People

Taejong Kim is Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management and leads the Impact Evaluation Lab. Before joining KDI School, he taught at York University in Canada and at GRIPS in Japan. His research and teaching interests include public finance, labor economics, microeconomics, and applied microeconomics. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in economics from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. in economics from MIT.

Wonhyuk Lim is Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management and Associate Dean of the Office of Research and International Cooperation, under which the Impact Evaluation Lab operates. Since joining KDI in 1996, his research has focused on state-owned enterprises and family-based business groups (chaebol), and he has written extensively on development issues through Korea's Knowledge Sharing Program. In 2010 he helped formulate the G20 Seoul Development Consensus for Shared Growth. He holds a B.A.S. in Physics and History and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

David Sungho Park is Associate Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management. He is an applied microeconomist working on poverty, using randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental methods to ask how low-income households and small firms make decisions and how policy can improve their outcomes. Much of this work is based on large-scale trials in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and beyond, spanning Tanzania, Liberia, Malawi, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. His published work covers unconditional cash transfers, intimate partner violence, agricultural input adoption, food security, and the measurement of survey outcomes. His current agenda extends this to energy and climate, and to retail productivity of small businesses. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a B.A. in Economics from Yonsei University.

Dongil Lee is Associate Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management. He studies the political economy of development, focusing on how formal institutions and informal incentives shape political behavior, representation, and state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa. His work has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, and World Development. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University in 2022; before graduate school, he spent two years in Dagana, Senegal, as a KOICA-affiliated IT teacher. Since joining KDI School, he has co-organized the KDI School–World Bank Development Impact Conference (2022–2025) and co-founded the Global Strategy & Political Economy Lab in 2024.

Chungeun Yoon is Associate Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management. He studies labor and development economics, with a particular focus on the causal relationship between labor supply and innovation, including knowledge spillovers, immigration, migration, and ethnic diversity. His work often draws empirical evidence from economic history and historical events such as World War I, the Immigration Quota Acts, the Civil War, and the Killing Fields. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame, an M.A. from Georgia State University, and a B.A. from Seoul National University. Before graduate school, he worked for four years at the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), including two years in Cambodia.

Trinh Pham is Assistant Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management. She is an applied economist working at the intersection of development, labor, and environmental economics, with particular interest in the determinants of household livelihoods and resource allocation in low- and middle-income countries, and in the factors shaping educational decisions and labor market outcomes. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Economics from Cornell University in 2024 and an M.P.P. from KDI School. Her doctoral research was recognized by the Weiss Fund for Research in Development Economics and the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association.

Jinseong Park is Assistant Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management. He is an empirical microeconomist conducting policy-relevant research in labor and public economics. His research has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and the Journal of Urban Economics. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Tennessee and taught at Jinan University and Dong-A University before joining KDI School. He is affiliated with the Global Labor Organization (GLO) and is a member of the Inequality and Economic Policy Lab at KDI School.

Minji Kwak is Assistant Professor at KDI School of Public Policy and Management. She is a development economist specializing in political economy, and her research explores governance, education, and migration in low-income countries with a behavioral and gender perspective. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California in 2026.