Mr. President,
Mr. Secretary-General,
Distinguished Delegates,
I extend my congratulations to His Excellency Philemon Yang on assuming the Presidency of the 79th session of the General Assembly.
Let me also pay tribute to Secretary-General António Guterres for his dedication to global peace and prosperity.
(State of the world in 2024)
The year 2024 has sadly earned the distinction of being the most conflict-ridden year since World War II.
Across the globe, from Ukraine to the Middle East, conflict and division have torn at the fabric of human dignity.
Two billion people, or roughly 1 in 4, reside in conflict zones; 310 million people require humanitarian assistance worldwide, and more than 120 million, or 1 in 70, are refugees.
Meanwhile, records suggest that we are brushing dangerously close to the critical threshold of 1.5 Celsius degrees.
Most worrying of all, the international community seems to be losing the sense of what these numbers really stand for: real lives disrupted, families displaced, futures lost, and a planetary crisis looming.
As the war of aggression against Ukraine drags on to its third year, as seemingly intractable challenges mount with no end in sight, cynicism and powerlessness are hardening in some quarters.
There is a growing belief that multilateralism is ineffective and that the United Nations is no longer relevant. (Republic of Korea: Proof that UN in Action Works)
But I stand before you today to affirm that this is not true.
My nation’s very existence as a free, democratic, and prosperous country is the proof that the United Nations in action works.
It was the first-ever UN-led coalition that defended the freedom and democracy in the Republic of Korea ravaged by war in early 1950s.
Our journey from devastation to democracy and prosperity was made possible by the continued support of the international community, particularly through UN agencies and programs.
The story of the Republic of Korea provides the antidote against paralyzing defeatism. It is a story of what we can achieve when good men and women choose to act together. A concrete evidence that multilateral system can make a real difference.
If global challenges are mounting, then we must double down on multilateralism. We need more of UN in action, not less.
It is increasingly difficult to justify the current structure when a permanent member continues its war of aggression on its neighbor, challenging the fundamental tenets of the UN Charter it is tasked with upholding. The misuse of its right to veto is putting deadlocks on important and urgent work.
As we seek to find practical solutions by actively building common ground amongst the diverging views of the Council members, we will also work with all UN Member states to achieve a comprehensive Security Council reform in the Intergovernmental Negotiations.
Expanding elected membership under equitable geographical distribution and through regular elections will contribute to a more democratic, effective, transparent, representative and accountable Council. The compromise proposal of longerterm re-electable seats deserves due attention in this regard.
The Republic of Korea will also actively address the surging demand for humanitarian aid in the midst of ongoing conflicts.
This year, the Republic of Korea has committed $200 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine. And we also plan to provide $100 million to tackle humanitarian crises by this year’s end, including $30 million for civilians affected by the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
North Korea is only able to develop these weapons of mass destruction with impunity by repressing the human rights of its people and diverting scarce resources from its starving populace.
What Pyongyang offers is not a vision but a cold and selfserving calculus, a calculus that only sees twin deficits persisting indefinitely: a deficit of peace on the peninsula and a deficit of freedom in North Korea.
Mr. President,
The ‘August 15 Unification Doctrine,’ unveiled by
President Yoon Suk Yeol last month, presents a vision of a “unified Korean Peninsula that is free, peaceful, and prosperous.”
Recognizing that achieving sustainable peace is an unfinished task on the peninsula, we firmly believe that the road to peace runs through the expansion of freedom and through the unification of Korean Peninsula. And this peace will contribute to global peace and security.
Under this vision, freedom which has underpinned the Republic of Korea’s independence, growth, and prosperity will at last be fully unlocked in the North, restoring the human rights of each and every Korean.