Um Woo-chong, a veteran international administrator and former senior official at the Asian Development Bank, has been appointed the inaugural head of the World Bank Group's new accountability mechanism, making him only the second Korean to reach the vice-president level at the global institution, the Ministry of Finance and Economy said Friday. The World Bank Group’s boards of directors named Um on Wednesday as vice president and director general of the Independent Accountability Mechanism. He will take office on Jan. 18. The mechanism handles grievances from communities harmed, or at risk of being harmed, by projects the group finances, and independently reviews whether those projects meet environmental and social standards. Its chief is appointed directly by the boards and operates independently of management. The body merges three existing complaint channels — the World Bank’s Inspection Panel and Dispute Resolution Service, which is the ombudsman office serving the International Finance Corporation, along with the group’s private-sector lending arm and the Multilateral Inve