About Korea Industry Insights

Korea Industry Insights is written and edited by Jangpyo Lee, founder of ITOS Co., Ltd, a Korea-based export execution service for Korean manufacturers. Every guide on this blog comes out of the same work we do for real clients: checking certification paths, calculating landed costs, and preparing the documents that get Korean products through customs in their destination markets.

Career

My career spans more than two decades across three sides of Korean trade — selling, promoting, and building.

• Hands-on export sales (2002–2008). I started on the floor of Korean trading companies, selling Korean products to overseas buyers and handling the export paperwork myself.
• Trade promotion platforms (2008–2019). For about nine years I worked on tradeKorea.com, the global B2B marketplace of the Korea International Trade Association (KITA), where I led platform build-out and operations supporting Korean SMEs. I then spent two years as a project manager for global business services at KTNET, Korea’s trade network operator.
• International development (2021–2025). I led overseas ODA (Official Development Assistance) projects in the trade sector for about five years as a project leader, building trade capacity programs at the national level.

This work has been recognized publicly twice: the Minister’s Award from the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (2014, 50th Korea Trade Day, for contribution to e-commerce trade development) and a Commendation from the Korea International Trade Association (2009).

What this blog covers

Practical, product-specific guides for importing Korean goods: certification requirements, landed-cost math, customs documentation, and the mistakes that actually cost importers money. Each article is researched against primary regulatory sources, which are cited at the end of every guide.

Contact

Email [email protected] · LinkedIn