Dr. Hyunik HONG has been appointed as the 22nd Secretary-General of the Korean National Commission for UNESCO. He graduated from Seoul National University with a BA and MA in International Relations, and earned his Ph.D. in International Politics at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Dr. Hong has held numerous prominent positions in the Republic of Korea during his career, including Chancellor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy (2021–2023), Head of the Foreign Affairs and Security Division of the Presidential Committee on Policy Planning (Jun.–Aug. 2025), and Chair of the Ministry of Defense’s Civil-Government-Military Committee for Defense Reform (Oct.–Dec. 2025). Prior to these roles, he served as Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Diplomacy Strategy Studies Division at the Sejong Institute.
He is a policy adviser in the Secretariat of the Republic of Korea’s National Security Council (Presidential Office) and a policy adviser to the Chairman of the National Assembly. He previously served as Policy Adviser to the National Intelligence Service, and as Executive Secretary of the Standing Committee on International Affairs of the Presidential National Unification Advisory Council. He was also a Vice-President of the Korean Political Science Association. He is currently a vice minister level member of the National Commission of Inter-Korean Development presided over by the Minister of Unification, and an advisor to KB Financial Group.
His major publications include The National Strategy of the USA, China and India after the War in Ukraine (2024), The New Security Environment surrounding the Korean Peninsula after the Ukraine War and South Korea’s National Strategy (2023), and Great Korea’s Grand Design for the 21st Century: A Rational and Pragmatic Strategy for Solving the North Korea Problem, Building Peace and Achieving Reunification (2012), alongside dozens of further scholarly works on Korean Peninsula security, inter-Korean relations, and Northeast Asian multilateral cooperation.