Top 10 Best Women CEOs in South Korea 2024
Named by The Global Woman Leader.
SEO UK · SUSTAINER
Seo Uk
Founder and CEO of ECONINE, author of ESG Code, and a doctoral student researching sustainability and AI. She has worked on environmental regulation, climate and supply chain ESG since 2004.
WHO SHE IS
A Korean ESG practitioner
who writes, researches and speaks.
She runs ECONINE, a Korea-based advisory firm specialising in ESG and sustainability management, and writes and speaks through SUSTAINER.
PRACTITIONER · FOUNDER · AUTHOR · RESEARCHER
She began with regulation,
and stayed for the organisation.
Seo Uk started in 2004 with product environmental regulation and quality assurance at LS Cable & System. She went on to work in climate-change consulting and carbon project development at Eco-Frontier, green-growth finance for small and mid-sized companies at IBK, and sustainability and climate change advisory at Samil PwC. In 2018 she founded ECONINE.
What kept her in the field was not the framework. It was the organisation underneath it. A requirement arrives from a buyer, and someone inside a company has to turn it into a decision, a document and a habit. That gap is what she writes and speaks about.
She is the author of ESG Code, published in Korean in 2024 and in a Traditional Chinese edition in 2025, with an English edition scheduled for September 2026. She is a doctoral student at the SDG Management School of aSSIST University.
Current roles
- ECONINEFounder and CEO · Chief Sustainability Officer
- ECONINE Training Center for EcoVadisLeader
- EcoVadisAccredited Consultant
- National Institute of Environmental ResearchTechnical working group member, term to July 2028
- aSSIST UniversityDoctoral Student, SDG Management School
Education
- MScClimate Change Policy, Korea University
- BEngEnvironmental Engineering, Jeonbuk National University
ONE QUESTION · SEVERAL SEATS
One field,
several seats.
LS Cable & SystemQuality assurance and product environmental regulation
Eco-FrontierClimate-change consulting and carbon project development
IBKGreen-growth finance for small and mid-sized companies
Samil PwCSustainability and climate change advisory
ECONINEFounded the company. Chief Sustainability Officer since 2023
ESG CodePublished in Korean by Econ Publishing
啟動ESG程式碼Traditional Chinese edition published in Taiwan
aSSIST UniversityBegan doctoral study at the SDG Management School
RECOGNITION
Stated carefully.
Personal recognition and company achievements are kept apart.
Company credentials belong to ECONINE
ECONINE holds its own organisational credentials, including its EcoVadis partner listing and its Women’s Empowerment Principles signatory status since June 2022. Those are company achievements and are presented on the ECONINE site.
ECONINE profile ↗Past governance experience
Outside director of E-ETS from December 2023 to December 2024, and fairness commissioner at BSI Group Korea until July 2026. Both terms have ended.