Buhm-Suk BAEK is an Assistant Professor at Kyung-Hee University, College of International Studies in Korea. He received a LL.B. from Seoul National University, and LL.M. and J.S.D. in public international law from Cornell Law School. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at Asan Institute for Policy Studies of Korea in 2012- 2013 as well as a Visiting Research Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center in the 2011 – 2012 academic years. His research focuses on international human rights law, transitional justice, law and development and third world approaches to international law. His recent publications include “NHRIs, RHRIs, and Human Rights NGOs,” Florida Journal of International Law, “The Medium Foreseeing the Future,” Socio-Legal Review, and “Mere Ritual or Gradual Change,” Northwestern Interdisciplinary Law Review. He also published Transitional Justice in post-unification Korea, Palgrave McMillan, with Ruti Teitel in Oct. 2015.
 
Tae-Ung BAIK is Professor of Law and Director of SJD (doctoral) program at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is currently serving as a member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Professor Baik teaches international human rights law, comparative law, international criminal law, and Korean law. After graduating from Seoul National University College of Law, he earned his Master’s (LL.M.) and Doctorate (JSD) degrees in International Human Rights Law from Notre Dame Law School in the U.S. He was admitted to the New York State Bar, and worked for Human Rights Watch in New York as a research intern and later as a research consultant, focusing on human rights issues in North and South Korea. He conducted research on human rights issues as a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School in 2002, and is currently staying at Seoul National University as a visiting researcher the Law Research Institute for his sabbatical leave. He is the author of “Emerging Regional Human Rights Systems in Asia” (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and “Seeking Human Rights Community in Asia” (Changbi Publishers, 2017) in Korean language.  

Hyo-Je CHO is Professor of Sociology at SungKongHoe University Seoul and Visiting Professor of Korean Studies at Free University Berlin. He has written extensively on the subjects of human rights and civil society. Among his monographs and co-edited works are  Horizons of Human Rights (in Korean: Humanitas, 2016),  Human Rights Odyssey (in Korean; Gyoyangin, 2015),  Contemporary South Korean Society (Routledge, 2013),  In Search of Human Rights  (in Korean; Hanul, 2011),  A Grammar of Human Rights  (in Korean; Humanitas, 2007), and  Human Rights and Civic Activism in Korea  (A-Media, 2005). He was closely involved in the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, served in the Policy Panel for the Ministry of Justice and the Human Rights Committee of Seoul Metropolitan City. He has held visiting professorship at Harvard Law School, Free University Berlin and University of Costa Rica. He holds a BSc in politics and international relations from London University, an MSc in comparative social studies from Oxford University, and a PhD in social policy from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).  

Surya DEVA is an Associate Professor at the School of Law of City University of Hong Kong and a Member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights.  His primary research interests lie in Business and Human Rights, India-China Constitutional Law, and Sustainable Development.  He has published extensively in these areas, and has advised the UN/EU bodies, states, multinational corporations and civil society organisations on matters related to business and human rights.  Prof Deva’s books include Building a Treaty on Business and Human Rights: Context and Contours (co-editor with David Bilchitz) (CUP, 2017); Socio-Economic Rights in Emerging Free Markets: Comparative Insights from India and China (editor) (Routledge, 2015); Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate Responsibility to Respect? (co-editor with David Bilchitz) (CUP, 2013); and Regulating Corporate Human Rights Violations: Humanizing Business (Routledge, 2012).  He is one of the founding Editors-in-Chief of the Business and Human Rights Journal (CUP), and sits on the Editorial/Advisory Board of the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, and the Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law.  In 2014, Prof Deva was elected a Member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law. 

Namsoon KANG is Professor of Theology and Religion at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, USA since 2006, and taught previously at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, UK and Methodist Theological University, Seoul, South Korea. Her most recent books include Diasporic Feminist Theology: Asia and Theopolitical Imagination (2014), Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Neighbor-Love, Hospitality, and Solidarity in an Uneven World (2013), On Forgiveness: Possibility and Impossibility of Forgiveness (2017 in Korean), For Justice: Humanities as Critical Resistance (2016 in Korean ), and Cosmopolitanism and Religion: In Search of Perpetual Peace in the 21st Century (2015 in Korean). Teaching, researching, and writing from transdisciplinary spaces, her particular theoretical interests are in discourses of cosmopolitanism, deconstruction, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and feminism. Her writing on cosmopolitan discourses engages recent theories of cosmopolitan rights, justice, and hospitality, especially those of Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Derrida.

Joo-Young LEE is an Expert Advisor to the Human Rights Center at Seoul National University and she is in charge of the Human Rights Research Division. She received her Ph.D in international human rights law at the University of Essex, MA in Human Rights at the University of Sussex in the UK. Her publications include ‘Rights to Development, Peace and Environment: Their Conceptual Development and Implications for “Solidarity Rights”’, The Journal of Migration & Society (2017: in Korean),  ‘The Development of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Its National Implications’, Korean Journal of International Law (2016: in Korean), A Human Rights Framework for Intellectual Property, Innovation and Access to Medicines (Ashgate/Routledge, 2015), ‘Study on Hate Speech from an International Human Rights Law Perspective with Focus on Incitement to Hatred’ Korean Journal of International Law (2015: in Korean) , ‘Implementation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’, (co-authored with P Hunt et al.), in N Rodley et al. (eds.) Routledge Handbook of International Human Rights Law (2013).

Seonghoon Anselmo LEE is Executive Director of the Korea Human Rights Foundation (KHRF) engaged in human rights issues related to corporate accountability, local government/city and development cooperation/Official Development Assistance (ODA) as well as human rights education. He is also Secretary General of the Asia Democracy Network (ADN) as well as co-convener of Asia Development Alliance (ADA). He has been teaching about global governance, civil society, human rights and development at the Graduate School of NGOs Studies at Kyung Hee University and others. Previously, he worked for the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) as Director General in charge of policy and education (April 2008-March 2010). He also served as Executive Director of Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), a Bangkok-based regional human rights NGO (2005-April 2008) after working in Geneva for 8 years (1997-2004) as Secretary General of International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (ICMICA)-Pax Romana, global network of Catholic professionals and intellectuals committed to social justice and peace.

Vitit MUNTARBHORN is Emeritus Professor of Law at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and the Independent Expert on the Protection against Violence and Discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI). He is a graduate of the University of Oxford and the Free University of Brussels. He has helped the United Nations in a variety of capacities, including as UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children and UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). In 2011, he was Chairperson of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Ivory Coast. In 2012 he was appointed as one of the Commissioners of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria. He also serves as a member of the Committee of Experts on Conventions and Recommendations (International Labour Organization). He has published widely on international law, human rights and humanitarian law.
 
Heisoo SHIN currently serves as a member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and was the rapporteur for the Committee’s general comment No. 22 on the right to sexual and reproductive health. She holds a B.A. in English Language and Literature, a M.A. in Sociology from Ewha Womans University, and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. She has been a lifelong advocate of the women’s human rights movement and has substantially contributed to the struggle to end violence against women. She served as an expert on the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women from 2001 to 2008, and as a commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea from 2005 to 2008. She is currently the Chair of the Board of the Korea Center for United Nations Human Rights Policy (KOCUN), as well as a visiting professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. Since Nov. 2014, she has been coordinating 14 civil society organizations in 8 countries in Asia and the Netherlands to inscribe the documents on the military sexual slavery by Japan (the so-called “comfort women” system) as UNESCO’s documentary heritage. She is a long-time member of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, as well as a Board member of Equality Now.

Jiewuh SONG is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Seoul National University. She received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University, and a B.A. in Sociology from Seoul National University. Before returning to SNU to teach, Song held postdoctoral positions at the Goethe University Frankfurt’s Justitia Amplificata Center and the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. Prior to that, she worked for two years as a Clinical Supervisor at the Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, leading a project on the human rights and environmental impacts of transnational corporate energy development in Myanmar. Song works on issues at the intersection of law, philosophy, and politics, and has particular interests in questions of international human rights law and institutions.

Zelda Soriano is Legal and Political Advisor of Greenpeace Southeast Asia. She led in 2012 a court case by Greenpeace, et al.at the Philippine Supreme Court against the field-testing of genetically modified organisms that paved the way to biosafety policy reform. In 2015, Zelda represented Greenpeace, 13 groups and 20 individuals in a human rights complaint against 46 transnational fossil fuel and cement companies found in a study to have contributed the lion’s share of carbon emissions that caused climate change. She’s been civil society adviser to the Philippine delegation to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, and consulted for the Office of the President of the Philippines on the hazards of mining operations; Aim for Human Rights (Netherlands); and the Rockefeller Foundation (US). She is a professor of constitutional law, social legislation and environmental law and founder of the Community Legal Help Centre (Philippines).