Korea’s Green Growth Policies as an Asset for the Global Community

Keynote lecture at the International Conference on River Restoration for Green Growth

By Soogil Young, Ph.D.
Chairman, Presidential Committee on Green Growth, Republic of Korea

Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am very much honored to give a keynote lecture at this International Conference on River Restoration for Green Growth on behalf of the Presidential Committee on Green Growth.

First of all, I would like to join the previous speakers in extending a special welcome to foreign guest participants to Korea.

The River Restoration Project as Chisufor Gumsugangsan

You have come to Korea in the best month of the year. According to an old proverb in Korea, “October is the highest month of the year”, that is, the October sky is blue and high, blessing the people with a rewarding harvest of the year and abeautiful landscape of the country.

We Koreans are proud of our national landscape. Our ancestors used to describe this landscape with the expression, “kumsugansan(錦繡江山)”. I consulted a Korean-English dictionary this morning and found that it translates “kumsugangsan” into “a land of beautiful scenery”. But this translation misses the point in the original language which literallymeans “mountains and rivers picturesquely woven in silk”.

Our kumsugangsan is at its best in the autumn, and especially, in the month of October. This
conference is being held in order to commemorate the completion of the river restoration project, so I am sure that our foreign guests who are here this morning will have an opportunity to observe our kumsugangsan, or at least a part of it, on their field visit to some of the project sites, in this highest month of the year.

The river restoration project that this conference will discuss constitutes a very important
component of Korea’s green growth policies. The purpose of this lecture is not to discuss this project in particular. I would rather like to brief you, this conference, on the state of Korea’s green growth and discuss some of the challenges it faces. I will then spend remaining few minutes in order to argue that the global community can harness Korean green growth experiences and policies as an asset for global green growth, including climate change cooperation.

*Please find attached the full text of Dr.Young’s remarks