Amb. Hye Min Lee was G20 Sherpa and Ambassador for International Economic Affairs from March 2015 to Oct. 2017. As Sherpa of the President of Korea, he participated in 3 consecutive G20 Summits(Antalya Turkey 2015, Hangzhou China 2016, Hamburg Germany 2017) and contributed to producing G20 leaders' communiqué. From July 2015, he concurrently served as a Distinguished Fellow of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy(KIEP). Previously, he served as the Ambassador to France (2012-15) and to the Republic of the Philippines (2010-12). During his term as Deputy Trade Minister and Chief FTA Negotiator (2008-10), he negotiated and concluded the Korea-EU Free Trade Agreement as Korea’s Chief Negotiator. He also contributed to the successful conclusion of the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement negotiations as Deputy Chief Negotiator and Director General for the KOREA-US FTA (2006-08) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
After joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1980, he served in the Korean Mission to the European Community, the Korean Embassy in the United States as well as in Indonesia, and in the Korean Delegation to the OECD. Amb. LEE graduated from the Department of English Literature of Seoul National University and received his M.A. in Law from Seoul National University and Ph.D in Economics from University Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) in France.