Kim Do Jin

Kim Do-jin joined the Industrial Bank of Korea in 1985, immediately after his military service, and spent his entire ~34-year banking career at the state-run institution. He rose through a broad range of field and headquarters roles: branch manager at Incheon Wondang (2005–2008), head of the Corporate Finance Center (2008–2009), head of the External Relationship Team (2009–2010), head of the Strategic Planning Division (2010–2012), regional headquarters chief for the South Central and Southern regions (2012–2014), and Vice President of the Management Strategy Group (2014–2016). In 2008 he won the top prize in IBK's nationwide business-management evaluation of branch managers.

In December 2016 he was appointed IBK's 25th President and CEO — notably one of the few IBK chiefs promoted from within the bank's own ranks rather than parachuted in. He led the bank until his retirement in 2019. IBK is South Korea's flagship policy bank for small- and medium-sized enterprises, so his mandate centered on SME lending, corporate financing, and building out the bank's support for early-stage and technology companies.

After retiring, Kim was subject to the three-year post-employment restriction that applies to senior state-enterprise executives in Korea. During that period he served as a non-executive research fellow at the Korea Institute of Finance (2020–2022) and as chairman of the board (outside director) of Korea Credit Service (2022–2024). In May 2023 he joined the major Korean law firm Shin & Kim as a Senior Advisor, focusing on credit/policy finance, capital markets, acquisition finance, ABS and structured finance, derivatives, and financial-institution compliance. Since March 2024 he has also served as an outside director of Hana Bank.

Kim holds a B.A. in Economics from Dankook University (1983). In retirement he became a prolific reader and author, publishing two collections of book reviews drawn from more than 200 books — *"A Meditation That Awakens Inside of Me"* (2022) and *"A Compass For My Life"* (2024) — spanning history, religion, philosophy, and literature.

• Kim's "investment" orientation is institutional and SME-centric, not personal angel investing. As IBK's CEO he directed the country's largest SME policy bank toward financing and nurturing small businesses and technology startups.
• In September 2017 he created a dedicated Startup & Venture Support Unit (창업벤처지원단) reporting directly to him, signaling a top-down push into startup ecosystems.
• That unit launched IBK창공 (IBK Changgong, "Startup Factory") in December 2017 — an accelerator/incubation platform that leverages IBK's SME-financing know-how, consulting, and networks to provide startups (within ~7 years of founding) with both financial and non-financial scale-up support. The program set targets of nurturing 500 startups and channeling ~100 trillion won by 2022.
• His stated intellectual philosophy, expressed after retirement: *"By reading a diverse range of books, I reached the conclusion that I need to open my eyes wide in order to avoid becoming a big fish in a small pond."*