UNICEF Representative to the Philippines
Kyungsun Kim
Ms. Kyungsun Kim assumed her duties as Representative in the Philippines in September 2025.
Prior to this, she served as Representative in Thailand from 2021 where she championed strategic partnerships with government, public and private sector partners to advance the Sustainable Development Goals. Major child rights advancements during her time included: support to Thailand to grant citizenship for 142,000 stateless children, and humanitarian action for the displaced children in Thai - Myanmar border area. She led the team efforts to prevent and respond to violence against children including online; improve young people’s participation and employability; and expand education in remote areas.
As Representative in Panama from 2016 to 2021, she spearheaded UNICEF’s COVID-19 crisis response and national reforms in early childhood development, quality education, adolescent participation, and child protection. She also nurtured private sector alliances and migration-related change management to support children on the move from Venezuela.
Between 2012 and 2016, she was Senior Advisor for UN and Intergovernmental Affairs in New York headquarters, managing external relations and partnerships with Latin American and Caribbean government representations to the United Nations.
Earlier, Ms. Kim served in Khartoum, Sudan, as Senior Programme Specialist, where she led the analysis of the situation of children and managed UNICEF’s “One Country Two Systems” approach until the secession of South Sudan from Sudan in 2011. She also established the Youth LEAD (Leadership, Empowerment, Advocacy, and Development) Programme, a peacebuilding initiative supported by the Government of Canada.
Before joining UNICEF, she worked with the Korea Foundation, supporting research on peacebuilding between the two Koreas.
A Korean national, Ms. Kim holds a master’s degree in Public Policy from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science from Rutgers University. She is fluent in English, Korean, and Spanish which she learned in Paraguay, where she lived for five years as a teen. She is married and has two daughters, a son, and two cats.
