COUNTRY OF BIRTH

South Korea

INDUSTRY

Health and Medicine

TOP ACHIEVEMENTS

Jung Eun-kyeong is the first woman to serve as the Director of the KCDC, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She was appointed in 2017 by President Moon Jae-in. Eun-kyeong has been dubbed the “coronavirus hunter” due to her successful handling of the coronavirus outbreak in South Korea.

Early Life and Education

Eun-kyeong was born in Gwangju, South Korea in 1965. She holds three degrees from Seoul National University: An M.D, a Master’s in public health, and a doctorate in preventative medicine.

EARLY CAREER

Eun-kyeong began her career working as a family doctor in the small town of Yangju and she joined the national health ministry as a researcher in 1995. In 2009, she was promoted to lead the ministry’s emergency-care department during an outbreak of the flu, which affected 750,000 South Koreans. In 2015, at the start of the MERS outbreak, she was appointed as the head of the CDC’s disease-prevention center. This made her a public figure since she was responsible for press briefings and crisis management. At the time, the KCDC was criticized for its handling of MERS, with critics saying it didn’t provide enough information to the public. Despite the criticism, in 2016 Eun-kyeong was put in charge of a new unit responsible for creating a systematic response for future outbreaks. She was named director of the KCDC the following year.

Achievements as the Director of KCDC

As director of KCDC, Eun-kyeong has been praised for her handling of the coronavirus outbreak. She has drawn specific praise for identifying the epicenter of the country’s outbreak and acting swiftly. The epicenter was pinpointed to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive religious sect whose members were never before known. Eun-kyeong brokered a deal in which the names of all 212,000 members were disclosed, information which proved critical to the containment of the virus.