Min Dong-seok, 2nd Vice Foreign Minister who is currently attending the 4th United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries (UNCLDC) held in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 9-13, delivered a keynote speech on May 12 at the conference. In his keynote speech, Vice Minister Min delivered a message of hope to the 880 million people living in the LDCs across the globe by introducing Korea's development experience of turning itself from one of the LDCs right after the Korean War, with a per capita GDP of a mere US$67, into one of the major economies in just half a century.
Vice Minister Min addressed that Korea received a total of US$12.7 billion in aid from the international community between its independence in 1945 and 1999, and lifted itself out of poverty by making efficient use of the aid. He added that there were other factors that played a major role in Korea's economic elevation besides the aid, including Korea's strong sense of ownership toward economic development, cultivation of development capacity especially in human resources, sound government policy and efficient governance for economic growth, effective use of development resources for productivity improvement, and also favorable global environment.
Vice Minister Min then explained in detail Korea's effort to help out LDCs, and its future policy directions in this regard, such as increasing Korea's ODA toward least developed and vulnerable countries by 40% over the next five years, extending the list of items subject to preferential tariffs for LDCs, fully untying all grant aid to LCDs by 2012, and providing assistance to enhance their response capability to global crises such as climate change and food security.
In addition, the Korean delegation greatly contributed to drawing global attention to and support for the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLFAE) scheduled to be held in Busan, Korea, at the end of November in 2011. It also took advantage of various opportunities given during its participation in the conference, such as the keynote speech by Korea's chief delegate, secondary events co-hosted by the UN and OECD, and the civil society forum, to highlight its ongoing preparations for, as well as the significance and importance of the successful hosting of the 4th HLFAE.
