Pukyong National University

His extraordinary challenge of being a 'public servant + the US lawyer + a leader of international organizations'
Jo Il-hwan, Alumnus of Marine Bio-Materials and Aquaculture, Enrolled in 1989 (Head chief, Fisheries policy division at the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries)

He is a civil servant in Korea, a lawyer in New York State, and is also vice chairman of the Fisheries Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which leads global economic cooperation.

This is the story of Jo Il-hwan (photo), an alumnus of Pukyong National University. He is a head chief of Fisheries policy division at the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (MOF), and he graduated (enrolled in 1986) department of Aquaculture Technology, now Marine Bio-Materials and Aquaculture at Pukyong National University,

How did he come up to this position? For those who want to get a hint in his life, Pukyong Today has sent e-mails to him and interviewed.

In fact, he is a very busy person, so this kind of little interview (not so much of a touch to himself) would be annoying. But he spent the goldmine of time at the request of Pukyong Today for "For the school juniors!" (If we say, 'for juniors', why do so many alumni get weak-minded? ^^)

He broke the silence and say, "Actually, I did not think of my present at all in the first grade of university."

He said, "If I look back about 30 years since my admission to college, it seems like I have been living on changing my goals according to the situation at that time, rather than running toward the goal." So he said, "I think this is the wonderful aspect of life."

"As Steve Jobs told us about his graduation from Stanford University, I look back and I think the moments of the past are all connected and meaningful." Mr.Jo said. Now is the sum of the past! Now, your moment (what you are doing!) will be your future.
   
How was his university life?

Mr.Jo said, "Literally, I lived in a university fish farm for 4 years, only working." This fish farm is still the fish farm behind the bamboo grove at the school main gate.

"The situation has changed a lot now, but at that time, the students were totally in charge of fish farms and raised fish," he said. "It was a situation that we had to do fish farm work and study, but it seemed to be a good opportunity to cherish the time we could study," he said. (This positive mind!)

Mr.Jo said, "I could not afford to do other club activities, but the strong relationship between my accumulated experience and patience, Professor Kim In-bae, Professor Jo Jae-yoon, and other senior and junior colleagues is an enormous, asset in my life."

How did he become a civil servant who worked so hard in the school fish farm?

Mr.Jo said, "I originally wanted to stay in school or go to the institute. But first of all, I wanted to be economically independent, so decided to prepare the work."

He said, "There were some people who encouraged civil servants in the neighborhood, but as many people had, there was a prejudice that public officials are stereotyped, and private businesses were not attracted to work, so I decided to work in public enterprises."

At the moment, Rural Development Administration changed its name to Rural Community Corporation and it selected 5 fisheries office workers, so he joined the company as one of them.

He worked there to establish a comprehensive development plan for fishing villages in Jeonnam area. However, when I was working, I felt that public officials were more at the decision stage.

So he wanted to play a more leading role in the process of pushing ahead what he thought he was at that time. I do not know that there is a fisheries technology examinations, and he attended Rural Community Corporation and prepared for the exam, and in his words, "I passed it luckily."

He said since his job was stable, he thought he wanted to do more studies that he had put off. The first department of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries was Marine Environment Division.

"The field of marine environment is somewhat unfamiliar, but it's a very exciting field," he said. "So I went to a school where I could study more towards the marine environment. After entering the Marine Environment Department at the Duke University Graduate School of Environment, he became interested in remote sensing using GIS and satellites and changed his major to environmental ecology.

At this point, readers will find that one of the things that changed his life was 'English'.

He obtained his master's degree from Duke University in the United States and returned to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries in 2001.

"At that time, I thought I would be placed in the marine environment," he said. "But at the time, however, the WTO Doha Development Agenda negotiations became an issue, and because of the need for English-speaking staff, I was placed in the Trade Promotion Section and was in charge of WTO negotiations.", he said. This moment is one of the inflection points of his life.

"The trade negotiations were fun," he said. He went to the WTO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, almost every month to negotiate. In the process, he finds one interesting point. Among the foreign negotiating groups, especially the representatives of a Western country negotiations, there were many who majored in law.

"At that time, I felt that the people who majored in law were more logical and persuasive. I thought that I would have to study the law in order to do the trade negotiations well."

So he goes back to study at the Law School of Indiana University in 2004. He chose this law because it operated the most systematic Chinese law program among American law schools. "I did not study Chinese law but I thought I should know China from this point on.", he said.

How was 3 years of Cho's law school, where he had to study law in English for the first time?

"It was a very tough process," he recalls, "Now I think that I got a lot of guts to study law in English without knowledge or experience of it." It is a past, so roughly summed up in a few lines like this, but how could you have done it if it was not a severe endurance and hard work?
 
Having passed through many difficulties, he received his Doctor of Law (JD) and Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD) degrees. In the United States, graduating from law school, you can also take a lawyer examination in another state. As a result, he got a lawyer in New York State.

After returning to Korea in 2007, he worked in the fisheries policy business while working on trade related to the WTO and FTA. In 2013, he joined the presidential transition committee and worked on the national agenda for fisheries.

If we work in public office, we could have opportunities to go abroad as a resident employee. He says he wanted to go to the United States. However, he studied both Master and Doctor in the United States, and he thought that if work in United States, he would be too much on one side and he thought he should know a little bit about China, which is rising as a G2. He studied Chinese and went to China for the second half of 2013.

He said, "I suffered a lot due to the fine dust on the continent that is not comparable to Korea, but my life in China has also been a good experience. Especially, it is a big income to know the way of thinking and values of Chinese people similar to ours but much different."

Such Mr.Joe became Vice Chairman of the OECD Fisheries Committee in November 2018.

Professor Park Seong-kwae (2000~2002), Professor Lee Sang-go (2008 ~ 2011) of Marine Business and Economics served as Vice Chairmen of this committee.

How did Mr.Jo connect with the OECD?

He said, "About a decade ago, I learned that Professor Lee Sang-go of Pukyong National University is working as Vice Chairman of the OECD Fisheries Committee, and I had the idea that I should try it if I get a chance to do.", and added, "Finally an opportunity came to me in 2018, I became an OECD Fisheries Committee Vice Chairman"

He said he learned about the OECD Fisheries Committee during the WTO negotiations. The OECD is a kind of policy brain that collects and analyzes data from all over the world and writes reports. In the WTO fisheries sector negotiations, the OECD report is used as a major argument.

What is the issue of the OECD Fisheries Committee that he is currently serving as vice-chairman?

"There are discussions about the impact of fisheries subsidies on fisheries resources, illegal fishing prevention and the marine economy," he said. He is the vice chairman of the fisheries committee and his role is to coordinate and lead the discussion in advance with chairperson.

"Participation in OECD meetings is a good opportunity to learn about the experiences and policies of developed countries, and the policies discussed in the OECD will have a major impact on our fisheries. I think it is a great honor for me personally to be a vice-chairman of the OECD Fisheries Committee, and it is also very important for my country.", he said.

English is essential for these activities. Let's hear his story about English.

He said, "Looking backward, English seems to have played a very important role in broadening career choices and creating good opportunities."

He said he did not speak English well until the second grade of high school. In high school, The classes were divided into A, B, and C according to student's English proficiency but he was class C all the time.

He said, "But I thought that I should do something for my English during the winter vacation. I grabbed my English book and read it." He said, after doing this for a while, he could read English.

"I still do not know the grammatical forms like 5 types or tenses. When I look at the English test, I just pick the answer that is natural with the feeling, I do not know why it is grammatically correct and wrong. However, since my English helped me to get out of my life, I would like to conclude that it was an effective way of learning.", he said.

What are his plans for the future?

"It is very likely that it will develop unlike the plan as it has been so far." he said. “Therefore, I do not want to predict. Just as it has been so far, I think that if I change my goals according to the situation and live faithfully, I will not regret it later."

I asked him to give a word of advice to his school juniors.

"It's a common thing to say, but there is no right answer in the world, and everything has its part", he said. What does it mean? Let 's not go along with everyone else's way, I have my own color, which is also connected to this meaning.

He said, "Pukyong National University has unique characteristics and strengths. I think that it is the best way to enhance competitiveness by cultivating strengths by taking advantage of those characteristics." and he did not forget to say, "I support cheerfulness of school juniors." <Pukyong Today>