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Ambassador Choi was born in Kangleung, Korea, in 1955.
He was educated at Seoul National University, the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management.
After joining the Korean Foreign Ministry in 1979, he served various post in Korean embassies in Kenya, Germany, and in permanent missions to the United Nations in New York and Geneva. He has been involved in multilateral diplomacy in the fields of trade, the environment and economic affairs, and has acted as a representative of the Korean Government for a number of UN, WTO, APEC and other multilateral organizations organized and sponsored conferences.
He chaired various UN-related meetings, including the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, and also served as economic and social adviser to the President of the UN General Assembly in 2001.
In 2002–2003, he served as Korea's Deputy Senior Official to APEC and as the Korean Representative to the APEC Committee on Trade and Investment while holding the position of Convenor of the APEC Group on Services.
He was Deputy Executive Director of APEC Secretariat in 2004 and became the 13th APEC Secretariat Executive Director in 2005.
He is an author of numerous articles, particularly in the fields of trade and the environment, as well as the climate change negotiations.