Dr. Sang-Mok Suh is the Global President of International Council on Social Welfare, a non-governmental organization that embraces the issues of social welfare, social justice and social development, as well as president of the Korea National Council on Social Welfare, the representative body of the private social welfare sector in Korea. Dr. Suh was Member of the Korean National Assembly during 1988-2000. At the National Assembly, he was active in legislation on economic policy issues, working primarily at the Finance and Economy Committee and the Budget Committee. During 1996-97, Dr. Suh served as a high-level advisory board member to the UN Secretary General on Sustainable Development.
During his tenure as Minister of Health and Welfare in the Korean Government in 1993-95, Dr. Suh initiated reforms to the National Health Insurance Plan and the National Pension Scheme and promoted the “Osung Bio Industrial Zone Project”.
During 1978-88, Dr. Suh worked for the Korea Development Institute (KDI), which is a government think-tank focused on economic policy formulation. During 1973-78, Dr. Suh worked for the World Bank as an economist.
Dr. Suh received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 1974 and B.A. in economics and mathematics from Amherst College in 1969. He received the “Sequoia Award” from Stanford University in 1995 for his distinguished activities as a Stanford alumnus.
Dr. Suh has written widely in socio-economic field. He is the author of many articles and several books on Korean economy, including a book titled Structural Adjustment in a Newly Industrialized Country: Lessons from the Korean Experience (Oxford Press, 1998) and a Korean book titled “”Welfarenomics: Road to Sustainable Capitalism and Welfare State in 2013 and The Age of Balance: New Economic, Welfare Paradigm in the Post COVID-19 Era in 2020.
