This article was published on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove (MM) website at 3:50 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2026.
Lee Hoon, chief investment officer (CIO) of Korea Investment Corporation (KIC), Korea's sovereign wealth funds that manages more than 300 trillion won, is increasingly likely to become the first CIO in KIC's history to serve a second term. Lee's official term expired in Aug. last year, but there had been no movement to select a successor for more than five months since.
Recently, however, KIC posted a notice to recruit institutional sector heads and began the selection only for the chief risk officer (CRO). When KIC appointed Lee as CIO in Aug. 2022, it also appointed Jeong Ho-seok as CRO. The term is the same at three years, but this time KIC has issued only the CRO recruitment notice, adding weight to the outlook that Lee will be reappointed for the first time.
According to the investment banking (IB) industry on the 29th, KIC, which issued a public recruitment notice for a CRO this month, closed document submissions last week and is said to be set to conduct interviews.
Jeong, a former Bank of Korea official, saw the CRO term expire in Aug. last year. The three-year term began on Aug. 17, 2022. KIC should have issued a recruitment notice and appointed a new CRO before the term expired, but the schedule was delayed amid political turmoil, including the Dec. 3 emergency martial law situation and an early presidential election.
KIC is Korea's only sovereign wealth funds, launched in 2005 to efficiently manage and operate the government's foreign exchange reserves. Its assets under management (AUM) exceed 300 trillion won. Because of this, it is said that the institutional sector head at the director level is finally appointed after going through an operating committee composed of the Bank of Korea governor and the Minister of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
What stands out is that the CIO selection, whose term expired at the same time, is not underway. KIC has so far conducted simultaneous selections of the CIO and CRO, who are considered key executives. In fact, in Aug. 2022, when Jeong was appointed CRO, KIC also appointed Lee as CIO at the same time after a review by the operating committee.
Lee earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Sogang University and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and joined KIC in 2014 after working in areas including the corporate analysis department at Korea Investment & Securities Co. After joining KIC, Lee served as head of the asset allocation team, head of the investment strategy division, and head of the future strategy division before becoming CIO. Lee is known as the second internally promoted CIO in KIC's history.
Inside and outside KIC, there is growing belief that Lee will serve another term. As KIC plans this year to shift its investment strategy from strategic asset allocation (SAA) to a "total portfolio approach" (TPA), voices are calling for a stable transition centered on the incumbent CIO.
TPA refers to a method of treating the entire portfolio as a single fund and making flexible decisions from a risk-return perspective. Thanks to the advantage of higher returns compared with the SAA approach, which operates independently by individual asset classes, the National Pension Service completed its transition to the TPA framework last year after five years of preparation.
Lee is also being credited with having already proven investment capabilities. KIC's investment asset return (before fees), which was –14.36% in 2022, jumped to 11.59% in 2023, the year after Lee took office. In 2024, AUM exceeded 300 trillion won. As of the end of the third quarter last year, AUM had grown to about 326 trillion won.
If the reappointment is finalized, Lee would be the "first CIO to serve a second term" since KIC was founded in 2005. While KIC's articles of association set the term of an institutional sector head at three years, with the option to serve additional one-year terms, it has been considered an unwritten rule to end after a single term due to political headwinds or organizational renewal.
A source in the IB industry said, "Within KIC, there is strong trust in CIOs promoted from within who have expertise, so there are high expectations that a long-serving CIO will emerge," adding, "The fact that no notice has been posted by the end of January could mean that the decision to retain has effectively been made, with only administrative procedures remaining."