1. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea (ROK), together with the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), will co-host “the 19th Republic of Korea-United Nations Joint Conference on Disarmament and Non-proliferation Issues” in a hybrid (online and offline) format from 2 to 4 December.

 * The ROK-UN Joint Conference on Disarmament and Non-proliferation Issues was first held in the form of international workshop in 2001 to mark the 10^th anniversary of the ROK’s accession to the UN. Since 2002, it has developed into a representative annual meeting on disarmament and non-proliferation issues in the Asia-Pacific, which brings together disarmament and non-proliferation experts from various fields, including governments, international organizations, academia, and research institutes, at the end of every year to discuss key disarmament and non-proliferation issues for the year.

2. The Conference will cover the impact and policy implications of emerging technologies, including lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), hypersonic weapons, space weapons and biological weapons, on the disarmament and non-proliferation regime. The issues of such future weapons are becoming urgent challenges to the international disarmament and non-proliferation regime, and its significance is highlighted in the international fora such as the United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Disarmament Commission (UNDC), the Conference on Disarmament (CD), the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), and multilateral export control regimes.

3. The upcoming Conference will bring together government officials of countries such as the United States, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and China; delegates of international organizations, including the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the European Union (EU); experts at think tanks and academic circles in Korea and abroad, such as the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and the Korea National Diplomatic Academy; and representatives from the industrial sector, including Microsoft. Mr. Sang-wook Ham, Deputy Minister for Multilateral and Global Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ms. Nakamitsu Izumi, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, on behalf of the ROK government and the UN, will deliver their opening remarks.

4. As a special pre-event, on December 2, the “Youth Special Session” will be held with 25 youth representatives from ROK and the UN disarmament programs.

° This special event is part of the follow-up measures to the UN resolution titled “Youth, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation”, which was drafted by the ROK government and adopted by consensus during the 74^th session of the UN General Assembly in 2019.

° The purpose of the event is to support the action item (“Establish a platform for youth engagement”) of the UN Secretary-General’s Agenda for Disarmament put forth in May 2018. The event will be broadcast live on YouTube at https://bit.ly/3q4b7Jn.

5. As next year marks the 20^th anniversary of the launch of the ROK-UN Joint Conference, the ROK government will make efforts to further enhance the ROK’s contribution and standing in the international community and to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula through the Conference, a major forum on disarmament and non-proliferation in the Asia-Pacific region.