Hwang Lee

Hwang LEE is the Dean of the Korea University School of Law currently and has been a professor at the School since 2008. His academic interest covers competition laws, digital platforms, intellectual property rights, telecommunication laws, consumer protection, and economic regulations.

Prior to joining Korea University, Professor LEE served the Korea Fair Trade Commission for twelve years where played a leading role in prosecuting precedent-setting competition law cases including the Microsoft tying arrangement case. He concluded the service at the competition law authority with the final position of the Head of Emerging Competition Issues Team. Subsequently, he was appointed to a Research Counsel for the Justices of the Supreme Court of Korea (2006). In this role Professor LEE drafted final judgments for an extensive array of competition and administrative law cases, including the landmark POSCO Judgment (2007) that has set the liability standard in effects-based approach with regard to abuse of dominance. He has also worked as a consultant at the Division of Competition Law and Policy of OECD in Paris (1998) and clerked at the Northeast Regional Office of the Federal Trade Commission in New York (2002-2003).

In September 2010, Professor LEE established the Innovation, Competition & Regulation Law Center (“ICR Law Center”) at Korea University, a research institution that specializes in interdisciplinary research of intellectual property rights, competition laws, telecommunication laws, and economic regulations. In May 2014, he also founded the Korea-China Market & Regulation Law Center (“MRLC”) in collaboration with the Economic Law Research Center of Renmin University in China Law School to develop Asian competition law and IPR studies. In 2018, he chaired the organization & procedure subgroup of the special committee on competition law overall amendment by the request of the KFTC. The subgroup produced ten items of recommendations for the KFTC to improve procedural fairness that were reflected in the next amendment of the Korean competition law. He extended his work to innovation and economic policy beyond competition policy and currently chairs the Innovation Economy Division of the National Economic Advisory Council that advises the President of Korea.

As an international expert of competition laws and IPR regulations, Professor LEE often teaches at foreign schools, including Washington University in St. Louis Law School and Renmin University of China School of Law. He is also a frequent speaker and lecturer at diverse international conferences, including events hosted by the American Bar Association, Global Competition Review, and Asian Competition Association. He has been a member of the Dominance Divergence T/F within the Section of Antitrust Law at the ABA and chaired many ABA conferences.

Professor LEE earned his LL.B. from Korea University and J.D. & LL.M. from Columbia Law School in New York where he was an Executive Editor of the Columbia Journal of Asian Law. He is licensed to practice laws in the State of New York (U.S.) and has advised various Korean and multinational firms.

Professor LEE is the author of many articles and books and made presentations at numerous international conferences. Recent works published in English include: the term of "foreclosure" at the Global Dictionary of Competition Law (Concurrences, 2024); Differences and Alignment: Final Report of the Task Force on International Divergence of Dominance Standards (ABA Antitrust Law Section, 2019, co-authored with T/F members); China-Korea IP & Competition Law Annual Report 2014 through 2017 (co-edited with Prof. MENG Yanbei at Renmin University in China, available at Amazon.com); Competition Law and Intellectual Property in Korea, in The Cambridge Handbook of Antitrust, Intellectual Property, and High Tech (Roger D. Blair & Daniel Sokol ed., Cambridge University Press, 2014); Pay-for-delay: the Korean experience, Journal of European Competition Law & Practice Vol. 5, Issue 4, 2014; Hwang Lee & Byung Geon Lee, Korea, in The International Handbook on Private Enforcement of Competition Law (Albert A. Foer & Jonathan W. Cuneo ed., Edward Elgar, 2011).

He has been also recognized as one of 25 most influential antitrust scholars around the world at the inaugural Antitrust Academics 2022 announced by the Global Competition Review. He was awarded the National Order of Service Merit in Red Stripes in 2020 for the contribution to promoting competition policy and law enforcement.