Park Neung-hoo
South Korean politician
Park Neung-hoo (Korean: 박능후; born 24 June 1956) is a South Korean professor of social welfare at Kyonggi University previously served as President Moon Jae-in's first Minister of Health and Welfare from 2017 to 2020. Park was a leading figure combating the spread of coronavirus in South Korea.
Park studied the issue of poverty and social welfare for over three decades in academia. With his appointment, President Moon completed formation of his first cabinet in 2017. As of 2020, he is leading one of three ministries in which the head has not changed since Moon's presidency began, along with Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Hyun-mee and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha.
Education
Park graduated from Seoul National University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Master of Arts in political science. In 1998, he earned a PhD in social welfare from the University of California, Berkeley.
In 2020 he received The Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award.
Controversy
On December 2, 2019, Health Minister Park made controversial remarks on a child-on-child sexual abuse case in which a five-year-old girl was sexually abused by another five-year-old boy. Park said that it was "natural behavior over the stages of development", appearing to side with the perpetrator, causing a public outcry.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48315800. VIAF identifies the subject as 400144928075854340500. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 2017, 2020 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Park Neung-hoo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.