18 Facts About Kang Kyung-wha

Kang Kyung-wha is the first Korean woman to hold a high-level position in the United Nations.

Previously, Kang was the first non-exam-taker to become a director-general at the ministry.

Kang Kyung-wha is the first South Korean foreign minister to join the official South Korean delegation for the inter-Korean summit as well as to visit Pyongyang.

Kang Kyung-wha now serves as the president and CEO of the Asia Society.

Kang Kyung-wha's father, born in Pyongyang, North Korea, was a famous announcer at South Korea's Korean Broadcasting System as well as a member of its second board of directors.

Kang Kyung-wha's family moved to Washington, DC following her father's career at Voice of America in 1964 and came back to Seoul after two years.

Kang Kyung-wha graduated from Yonsei University with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Diplomacy.

Early in her career, Kang Kyung-wha worked for the Korean Broadcasting System as a producer of English Service Division of Radio Korea.

Kang Kyung-wha was active in women's organizations in Korea, serving as the spokeswoman of the Korean Women's NGO Committee for the Beijing Conference in 1995, member of the International Relations Committee of the Korean National Council of Women, and director of Korean Institute for Women and Politics.

In 1998 Kang Kyung-wha joined the Korean Foreign Service, without ever having passed the Foreign Service Exam, as the acting Senior Research Officer of Foreign Ministry's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.

From September 2001 to July 2005, Kang Kyung-wha was Minister-Counselor and later Minister at Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations.

Kang Kyung-wha held key roles in the United Nations under three consecutive Secretaries-General, from Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon to the current officeholder, Antonio Guterres.

Kang Kyung-wha was appointed by Ban Ki-moon as Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and Assistant Secretary-General for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in March 2013.

Kang Kyung-wha is the third head of the ministry to attend the high-level segment of the regular sessions of the Human Rights Council after her predecessors Ban Ki-moon and Yun Byung-se.

In February 2021, Kang Kyung-wha became the last member of President Moon's first cabinet formed in 2017 to be replaced after more than three and a half years.

In October 2021, Kang Kyung-wha announced her candidacy for the next Secretary General of the International Labour Organization.

Kang Kyung-wha is married to Lee Yill-byung, an emeritus professor of computer science at Yonsei University, and has three children: two daughters and a son.

In 2000, when Kang Kyung-wha moved to Seoul from the US, she illegally forged her residency to get her daughter to attend a prestigious high school in Seoul.