MOON JAE-IN, President of the Republic of Korea, said that the most urgent task facing the international community was to deliver an inclusive recovery from the coronavirus crisis.  “Now, it is incumbent upon all members of the UN to work with greater vigour to realize the Sustainable Development Goals,” he stressed.  To that end, he noted his country’s plan to deliver its $200 million pledge to the COVAX Advance Market Commitment and strive for an equitable supply of vaccines.  To defeat the pandemic and move forward, his Government was pushing forward the Korean New Deal Policy and scaling up its official development assistance (ODA), particularly in the green, digital and health‑care areas, he added.

Turning to climate emergencies, he called on States to work together to push forward carbon neutrality, adding that, last year, his country has committed to realizing that goal by 2050 by enacting the Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality, shutting down coal-fired power plants earlier than scheduled and ending public financing for new overseas coal-fired power generation.  The Republic of Korea was also scaling up its climate ODA, setting up a Green New Deal Trust Fund and seeking to host the twenty-eighth climate change conference in 2023, he added.

Reaffirming his country’s commitment to a de-nuclearized Korean Peninsula, he highlighted several milestones in the Korean Peninsula peace process, including the Panmunjom Declaration, Pyongyang Joint Declaration of September 2018 and military agreement resulting from the inter-Korean Summit, as well as the Singapore Declaration.  In this regard, he called for a speedy resumption of dialogue between the two Koreas and between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  Urging States to mobilize for the end-of-war declaration on the Korean Peninsula, he proposed that relevant parties — the two Koreas and the United States and China — come together and declare that the war on the Korean Peninsula is over.

Recalling this year as the thirtieth anniversary of the simultaneous admission of the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea into the United Nations, he expressed hope that the two Koreas and the surrounding nations could work together, to foster peace on the Korean Peninsula and the entire North-East Asia.  He further stated that the Republic of Korea will bid for a seat as a non-permanent member of the Security Council for the coming 2024-2025 term.