Former Deputy Minister Gwang-Jo Kim Appointed as Director of the UNESCO Office in Bangkok

 

Press Release on December 12, 2008

Multilateral Cooperation Division

 

 

On December 10, 2008, UNESCO Director General Koïchiro Matsuura appointed Dr. Gwang-Jo Kim, former Deputy Minister of the Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, as Director of the UNESCO Office in Bangkok and Regional Bureau for Education in Asia and the Pacific.

 

As Director, Dr. Kim will oversee the largest regional bureau of the international organization which comprises 47 Asia-Pacific member countries, as well as support and coordinate works at the region’s seven cluster offices and seven national offices.  Dr. Kim has been additionally entrusted with the function of UNESCO Representative to Thailand, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Singapore. 

 

Born in 1955, Dr. Kim holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration form Korea University, Seoul(1978), and an Ed.M.(1984) and Ed.D.(1994) in the Economics of Education from Harvard University, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

 

Having initiated service as a government official in 1980, Dr. Kim has dedicated his entire professional career to the designing and implementation of national education policies.  He played a particularly important role in the planning of the nation-wide “5.31 Education Reform Proposal” of 1995, which enabled a critical shift from the conventional “supplier-centered” perspective to a “customer-centered” approach in education.  He is also well known for his pioneering works on educational innovation including the “Teacher Policy Reform(1998)” and “Five-year National Human Resources Development Plan(2004),” which became turning points in the modern history of Korean education.

 

From 2001 to 2004, Dr. Kim was affiliated with the World Bank as Senior Education Specialist at its Headquarters in Washington D.C., during which he worked on education projects mainly involving China, Colombia, Jamaica, Barbados, Eritrea, Mauritius and Jordan.

 

As Deputy Minister between 2005 and 2008, Dr. Kim led strong policy developments in Korea’s higher education, technical & vocational education, lifelong learning and human resources development.  In this key position, he also coordinated various cross-ministerial HRD policy initiatives and launched the Global Human Resources Forum in Seoul in November 2006, which established an international platform for the sharing of knowledge and best practices on human resources issues among global leaders.  Dr. Kim currently serves as Professor of Education at Keimyung University, Korea.

 

Following the retirement of Mr. Sheldon Shaeffer as Director of the UNESCO Office in Bangkok on December 31, 2008, Dr. Gwang-Jo Kim will officially take office in mid-January, 2009.