Ambassador Yoo Yeon-chul has served the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for more than 34 years. Prior to his appointment as Ambassador for Climate Change in 2018, he served as Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the State of Kuwait and as Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative at the Korean Permanent Mission in Geneva, Switzerland.

Ambassador Yoo has been consistently involved in environmental issues since he participated in his first climate change negotiation in 1991. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he served as Director of Environment Cooperation (2003) and Deputy Director-General of the Energy and Climate Change (2009), and he was the Director-General for International Cooperation in the Ministry of Environment (2011). 

When seconded to the Presidential Committee for Green Growth from 2009 to 2011, he had made significant contributions in the process of establishing the Global Green Growth Institute (2010), which later became an international organization in 2012. 

He was also involved to establish the Green Climate Fund in Korea in 2012. He became Ambassador for Climate Change in 2018, and had also been serving as the Vice Chair of UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Executive Director of 2021 P4G Summit Preparatory Office since 2019, before retiring in June, 2021. 

He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science & Diplomacy at Yonsei University in Korea, has completed the Foreign Service Program at the University of Oxford, and received his Master’s Degree in International Relations at the University of Reading, in the UK.