Lim Jong-deok takes office as fifth secretary-general of UNESCO’s Asia-Pacific Intangible Cultural Heritage Centre

[Financial News] Lim Jong-deok, former head of the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, has taken office as the fifth secretary-general of UNESCO’s Asia-Pacific Intangible Cultural Heritage Centre. The term is three years.
According to the Centre on the 10th, the new secretary-general, born in 1968, graduated from the Department of Biological Sciences at Sungkyunkwan University. Lim earned a master’s degree in museum studies from the University of Nebraska and a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Kansas, where Lim specialized in vertebrate paleontology.
Lim served as director of the Natural Heritage Research Division at the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and director of the Animal and Plant Heritage Division in the Natural Heritage Bureau of the Korea Heritage Service, before heading the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage from 2024 through this year. Lim currently serves as a member of the first National Heritage Committee.
Established in 2011 under an agreement between the Korean government and UNESCO, the Centre is a UNESCO Category 2 institution affiliated with the Korea Heritage Service. It carries out projects to safeguard intangible heritage in 48 UNESCO member states in the Asia-Pacific region and supports implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The ichLinks intangible heritage information-sharing platform, launched by the Centre in 2021, includes 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Visitors can find photographs, videos and other materials introducing each country’s intangible heritage in one place.

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