Dr. Min Kyung Kim served as a judge in the Republic of Korea from February 2010 to August 2025, presiding over high-profile commercial, civil, administrative, and criminal cases. Over her judicial career, she authored more than 3,100 judgments in both first-instance and appellate courts. She has extensive expertise in international and cross-border commercial disputes, including arbitration-related matters, having served on the International Commercial List at the Seoul Central Court. In this role, she dealt with the enforcement and annulment of arbitral awards and the enforcement of international commercial contracts involving the CISG, shipping, sales, shipbuilding, licensing, construction, maritime insurance, property transactions, and agency agreements.

Dr. Kim holds a BA, LLM, and PhD from Seoul National University, and an LLM from the University of Cambridge (Queens’ College). She is the author of Overriding Mandatory Rules in International Commercial Disputes: Korean and Comparative Law (Hart Publishing, 2025), and her earlier book in Korean language, Overriding Mandatory Rules and International Contracts (Pakyoungsa, 2022), earned her the 16th Shimdang Law Prize in 2023 which is the most prestigious award in the field of international commercial/business law in Korea. She has also published widely in leading journals and is a regular speaker at international conferences.

Dr. Kim has made material contributions to the development of arbitration law in Korea. As a committee member of the Supreme Court of Korea, she participated in amending the Korean Arbitration Act and drafting court procedure rules relating to arbitration. She co-authored the Korean judiciary’s Practice Guide on Arbitration-related Cases (Supreme Court of Korea, 2018) and Commentaries on the Korean Act on Private International Law (Thomson Reuters, 2023). She is also a contributing author to Commentaries on the Korean Arbitration Act (Thomson Reuters, forthcoming 2026).

Dr. Kim is advising the Kingdom of Cambodia on drafting its new commercial court procedure law as a civil law expert for the Asia Development Bank. She represented Korea as a member of its delegation to the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts (SIFoCC) from 2022 to 2025. Dr. Kim has served as General Editor of the Korean Journal of International Trade and Business Law, and is Research Director of the Korean Association of Artificial Intelligence and Law as well as Director of the Korean Private International Law Association.

She is currently an Adjunct Professor at the City University of Hong Kong teaching international arbitration and has taught courses on international commercial litigation and arbitration at the University of Hong Kong, the National University of Singapore, and Singapore Management University.

Dr. Kim speaks English and Korean, can read Chinese, and also speaks Japanese and German at a conversational level.