Kim Dong-yeon: "I Want to Host the UN Secretariat in the DMZ, Which Is Not Present in Asia"

Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Dong-yeon (third from the left) is participating as the chairperson in a keynote discussion at the '2023 Eco Peace Forum' held at the observatory of the Aegibong Peace Ecological Park in Gimpo on the 20th.

Gyeonggi Province is pushing to attract a United Nations secretariat to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

On the 20th, Kim Dong-yeon, Governor of Gyeonggi Province, participated as the chair of the keynote dialogue at the ‘2023 EcoPeace Forum’ held at the observatory of the Gimpo Aegibong Peace Ecological Park. He expressed hope for attracting a UN secretariat, saying, "There was a proposal to attract the UN 5th Secretariat during the recent provincial council policy question session," and added, "It seems like a very good idea to attract a UN secretariat, which does not exist in Asia, near the DMZ."

The UN headquarters currently have secretariats in New York, USA; Geneva, Switzerland; Vienna, Austria; and Nairobi, Kenya. There is no secretariat in Asia yet.

In response, Laura Pereira, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and a participant in the dialogue, said, "(Attracting a UN office) is a prime example of the possibilities that imagination holds," and added, "We need to exercise a lot of that imagination."

Before the keynote dialogue, Governor Kim Dong-yeon expressed concern, saying, "The two themes of the DMZ Open Festival, ecology and peace, are approaching us as significant threats. Ecology is facing a major crisis such as the risk to biodiversity due to natural exploitation by humans over the past few hundred years. Peace is also threatened; just five years ago, the top leaders of South Korea and North Korea met and made the (Pyongyang) Joint Declaration, but now the nuclear threat and extreme confrontation are increasingly threatening the Korean Peninsula, Northeast Asia, and world peace."

He continued, "The DMZ is a unique place where ecology and peace are both under threat, but paradoxically, because humans do not intervene, resilience is being restored," emphasizing the ecological and peaceful value of the DMZ.

Hosted by Gyeonggi Province and organized by the Gyeonggi Tourism Organization, this forum was held under the name ‘DMZ Forum’ until last year. However, this year, recognizing the resolution of the climate crisis and overcoming the international order of every-man-for-himself as core tasks, the name was changed to ‘EcoPeace Forum,’ combining ecology (eco) and peace.

The 2023 EcoPeace Forum was planned to discuss strategies to overcome the era of climate crisis and self-help international order and to derive the ecological and peace vision of the DMZ. It runs for four days from the 19th to the 22nd of this month and consists of a total of 10 sessions, with five sessions each focusing on ecology and peace as two pillars.