1. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with the Ministry of Education and the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Center of Education for International Understanding, will host "the 3rd International Conference on Global Citizenship Education (GCED)" at a Lotte Hotel on September 5 and 6.

° In his congratulatory remarks on September 5, Vice Minister  of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun will note that the Republic of Korea, which has successfully and peacefully achieved a political change through a civil candlelight revolution, is a GCED model; and will deliver a message to the effect that in the course of establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula, GCED could contribute to the inter-Korean reconciliation and trust restoration as well as to building global support for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

2. At the Conference to come amid the ongoing peace efforts on the Korean Peninsula, Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General and Chairman of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens, and Moon Chung-in, special adviser to the ROK President on unification, foreign affairs and national security, will speak about the implications, the role and outlooks of GCED in terms of responding to global issues and establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula.

3. The upcoming event, themed “GCED in Every Corner of the World: Local Contextualization of GCED,” will bring together some 600 people, including Secretary of Education of the Republic of the Philippines Leonor Briones; head of the education office of Gyeonggi-do Lee Jae-jung; other GCED policy-related officials and activists from home and abroad; and educators. The participants will review the progress in GCED and exchange views on ways to better practice it.

4. Since the early days of GCED, the Republic of Korea has played a leading role in promoting and disseminating GCED, such as by contributing to the inclusion in 2015 of GCED in the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as part of the education agenda and by forming the “Group of Friends for GCED” at the United Nations in 2017.

° The forthcoming International Conference on GCED, the third of its kind to be hosted by the ROK government, is expected to serve as a good opportunity to reaffirm the ROK’s leadership and to set ways that the country can contribute in the area.

* The “Group of Friends for GCED,” jointly formed by the Permanent Missions of the ROK and the State of Qatar to the UN in June 2017, is currently composed of about 30 countries.

* unofficial translation