President Moon Jae-in on Monday requested the UN to continue to play a role in the Korean Peninsula Peace Process in a meeting with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in New York.

Moon is visiting New York to attend the UN General Assembly, on the sidelines of which he is holding a series of summit talks with world leaders including US President Donald Trump. 

At the meeting with Guterres, Moon highlighted the role the UN has played in engaging North Korea, and requested his presence at next year’s Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 or P4G summit that will be held in Seoul.

“Under-Secretary-General Feltman’s visit to North Korea, and the UN’s adoption of the Olympic truce resolution were the first steps that led the PyeongChang Winter Olympics becoming a history Olympics of peace,” Moon was quoted as saying by Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson Ko Min-jung.

Moon was referring to former UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman’s trip to the North in December 2017.

“Such roles of the UN have been followed by inter-Korean and North Korea-US summits, and now the third North Korea-US summit is in sight. (I) hope for the UN’s role in the peace process to continue.”

According to Ko, Guterres thanked Moon for South Korea’s role in UN activities, and for the role Seoul has played in engaging North Korea.

The UN chief also requested South Korea to play a leading role in reducing carbon emissions, pointing out that coal continues to account for a large proportion of South Korea, China and Japan’s power generation.

Moon responded by laying out his administration’s plans for reducing reliance on coal. Under the Moon administration, South Korea has stopped building new coal power plants, and six such plants are set to be shut down by 2022.

According to Ko, Guterres thanked Moon for the efforts, and said that such developments in South Korea will contribute to related discussions with China and Japan.



By Choi He-suk Korea Herald correspondent (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)