South Korean Foreign Minister-nominee Kang Kyung-wha is a career diplomat well-versed in the United Nations especially in the field of human rights.
Kang, who is now a special policy advisor to U.N. Secretary-general Antonio Guterres, joined the U.N. as the deputy high commissioner for human rights in 2006 after she became a minister at the South Korean Representative to the international peace body in 2001.
She was appointed deputy emergency relief coordinator of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs by Kofi Annan in 2006 and assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs by Ban Ki-moon in 2013.
Born in 1955, Kang, graduated from Yonsei University in Seoul. She then received a doctorate in communications from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1984.
She began her career as an announcer at Korean Broadcasting System, and worked for the National Assembly speaker in 1988 and then-Foreign Minister Hong Soon-young in 1999.
Kang became the newly launched Moon Jae-in government's second surprise appointment, following former lieutenant-colonel Pi Woo-jin who was recently tapped as patriots and veterans affairs minister. The two are the first-ever female heads of the two agencies. (Yonhap)