Korea’s Busan will host the tenth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 2013.

The decision was made by the WCC at a central committee meeting at its Geneva headquarters Monday.

South Korea’s Busan finished with 70 votes and Syria’s Damascus, 59.

The WCC assembly, held every seven years, discusses the tasks and theological direction of Protestant Christianity.

Nine assemblies have been held from the first assembly in 1948 in Amsterdam, where the council was founded, to the 2006 assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

The 2013 assembly will become the second to be held in Asia after the 1961 assembly in New Delhi, India.

An average of five-thousand world church representatives, youths, volunteers and organizers take part in the event.