President Park Geun-hye will fly to New York later this month to attend the United Nations General Assembly and Sustainable Development Summit, the presidential office said Wednesday.
Park is scheduled to deliver a keynote speech on Sept. 26 at the U.N. summit designed to discuss the post-2015 development agenda. The event is bringing leaders around the world together to launch the U.N.’s new agenda for the next 15 years, a follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals implemented from 2001 to 2015 to eradicate extreme poverty.
President Park Geun-hye (Yonhap)
The president plans to discuss ways to forge legally binding deals to cut greenhouse gas emissions before the U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP21, to be held in Paris later this year.
Park is also set to address the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 28 to represent South Korea’s stance on a wide range of global agenda items. She is likely to seek global support for peace on the Korean Peninsula to pressure North Korea to curb its nuclear ambition.
Despite the breakthrough inter-Korean talks, tensions have been growing since Monday after Pyongyang hinted that it would launch a long-range rocket next month. The North’s space development agency indicated that it would launch a “satellite” on Oct. 10 on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the foundation of its ruling Workers’ Party.
On the sidelines of the summit, Park is expected to meet leaders to bring attention back to the North Korea nuclear issue, and deliver a separate speech at a forum hosted by a major think tank in New York to send Pyongyang a message, not to set off provocations any more.
Last year at the U.N., Park urged North Korea to stop developing nuclear weapons, stressing that it is the only state in the world that has conducted a series of nuclear tests in the 21st century.
By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)
