Seoul UN PKO Ministers' Meeting Switches to Virtual Due to Omicron

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo In-ho] The government has decided to hold the Seoul UN Peacekeeping Ministers' Meeting entirely via video conference in response to the spread of the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron.

An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told reporters on the 1st, "The UN Peacekeeping Ministers' Meeting, originally scheduled to be held as a fully in-person meeting on December 7-8, will be converted to a full video conference and held on the planned dates." The official added, "As soon as news of the Omicron variant's spread was reported, we proactively and preemptively reviewed the coordination of various international meetings scheduled for this month."

The UN Peacekeeping Ministers' Meeting is the highest-level consultative body related to the UN's Peacekeeping Operations (PKO). It has previously been held in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and at the UN Headquarters in New York, and this is the first time it is hosted by an Asian country.

The government had planned to hold the meeting in a fully in-person format at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seoul on December 7-8, but as Omicron rapidly spreads worldwide and countries have successively imposed entry bans to strengthen quarantine measures, the meeting format was reconsidered.

Originally, delegations from over 100 countries were expected to attend, but with the shift to a full video conference, only three UN Under-Secretaries-General ? Jean-Pierre Lacroix of the UN Department of Peace Operations (DPO), Atul Khare of the UN Department of Operational Support (DOS), and Catherine Pollard of the UN Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance (DMSPC) ? will visit Korea to participate on-site in real time.

Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong and Defense Minister Suh Wook will attend as co-chairs, and the 12 co-chair countries are considering having their diplomatic missions in Korea participate.

Additionally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided to postpone the Korea-Africa Forum scheduled for December 9-10 and the Heads of Overseas Missions Meeting planned for December 20-22 to next year.

An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "We will continue to monitor the quarantine situation for these two meetings and plan to hold them as in-person meetings early next year as soon as conditions improve."