I am Yoonsoo Kim, a postdoctoral researcher at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management. My research examines the gap between formal commitment and substantive follow-through, and the institutional and political conditions that widen or narrow it. This central puzzle animates two complementary streams of work.
The first and primary stream investigates subnational and transnational climate governance. It asks why cities and local governments adopt climate commitments, what distinguishes symbolic gestures from substantive action, and how citizen preferences, partisan ideology, and administrative capacity shape policy stringency and responsiveness. Drawing on comparative work in the United States and South Korea, I have studied municipal participation in transnational climate networks, the effects of carbon neutrality ordinances, and the determinants of bilateral climate finance allocation to the Global South.
The second stream turns to international human rights compliance and the politics of state acknowledgment. Here I examine how the architecture of monitoring systems shapes state behavior under treaty derogation clauses, and why states selectively apologize for some historical wrongs while remaining silent on others.
I hold a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Korea University, and received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota in 2025.
Yoonsoo Kim 