Secretary-General Announces Intention to Appoint Kyung-wha Kang of Republic of Korea Senior Adviser on Policy

The following senior staff appointment was announced on 15 December 2016 by then-Secretary-General-designate António Guterres:

I intend to create the position of Senior Adviser on Policy, and to appoint Kyung-wha Kang of the Republic of Korea to this new role.

Ms. Kang is currently Chief of the Secretary-General-designate’s Transition Team.  She has served as Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs since April 2013, and was Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights from January 2007 to March 2013.

Before joining the United Nations, Ms. Kang was Director-General of International Organizations at the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  She served in her country’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations from September 2001 to July 2005, during which time she chaired the Commission on the Status of Women.

Prior to joining the Foreign Ministry in 1998, Ms. Kang assisted the Speaker of the National Assembly in parliamentary diplomacy.  Earlier in her career, she worked for the Korean Broadcasting System’s news bureau and its international radio bureau, in addition to lecturing at universities both in her own country and in the United States.

Ms. Kang graduated from Yonsei University with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Diplomacy.  She also holds a Master of Arts in Mass Communications and a PhD in Intercultural Communications from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the United States.

Born in 1955, Ms. Kang is married and has three children.

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*     This supersedes Press Release SG/A/1395-BIO/4455-IHA/1308 of 18 March 2013.