1. Second Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Tae-yul attended a vice-ministerial-level meeting of members of the Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group on the proposed reform of the UN Security Council held in Mexico on January 16 and 17.

2. The latest UFC meeting carries significance in that it took place amid active work of the G4 countries to move forward discussions on the body’s reform in order to introduce the reform by 2015, the 70th anniversary of the creation of the UN. The G4 countries refer to Japan, Germany, India and Brazil, which have expressed hope to become permanent members of the UN Security Council.

3. The Republic of Korea and other members of the UfC group reaffirmed their shared position that increasing the number of non-permanent members of the UN Security Council is the only realistic way to promote the democracy, accountability, transparency and representativeness of the body. They agreed to work closely together to this end down the road.

4. On the sidelines of the meeting, Vice Minister Cho met bilaterally with his Mexican counterpart Gomez-Robledo to discuss ways to work more closely together on key multilateral issues, including development cooperation and climate change as well as at the middle power mechanism of MIKTA (Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey and Australia). 


                          Spokesperson and Deputy Minister for Public Relations of MOFA

* unofficial translation