Fellow Koreans and distinguished journalists from home and abroad,

In about a week, the G20 Summit will be held in Seoul. Today I am very pleased to have a chance to talk with you about this upcoming event.

As you know well, the first G20 Summit was urgently convened in the face of the global financial crisis triggered by the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The Republic of Korea, too, participated in the Summit as a member country. The world leaders meeting at the first Summit in Washington reached agreement that protectionism must be rejected and that swift, bold fiscal spending should be implemented. The agreement came out of fear that the global economy would be mired in a bigger, prolonged crisis if countries around the world retrogressed to protectionism for their own survival.

The Great Depression in the 1930s was drawn out due to the lack of international cooperation. The valuable lesson from this historic fact hit home. Close international collaboration through the G20 has exerted great power. Though there still remain uncertainties, the world economy is making a faster-than-expected recovery. The G20 Summit has clearly demonstrated the possibility that global issues could be resolved peacefully and reasonably through international coordination between developed and developing countries.

Building on such achievements, the G20 Summit has now firmly established itself as a premier forum on the international economy. Serving as the “board of directors for the world economy,” as one newspaper put it, it is discussing pending global economic issues and seeking solutions to them.

Four previous summits have been held in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. The Fifth Summit is about to be held in Seoul at a time when the world economy is on the road to recovery. Now is the crucial point in time for the G20 to translate what has been agreed upon at the previous summits into a concrete action. At this critical juncture, even closer international cooperation is necessary, and through this, the world economy should discover a path toward strong, sustainable and balanced growth.

As a chair nation, we are charged with the especially hefty responsibility of having to mediate the different positions of participating countries and help them reach a consensus.

As a matter of fact, some have voiced skepticism about the future of the G20 Summit. They expressed concern about the viability of international collaboration on the ground that, as the global economy rebounds, many countries are facing different economic situations and are recovering at different paces, even though they became united in the midst of crisis.

Fortunately, the Gyeongju G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting, held in the run-up to the Seoul Summit, brightened the future of the Summit. At the Gyeongju meeting, representatives came to a dramatic agreement concerning the directions of exchange rate policies as well as on reforms of the IMF quota shares and governance. In a nutshell, the agreement laid a fundamental framework for international collaboration aimed at addressing imbalances in the global economy.

At the Seoul Summit, Korea will endeavor to reap concrete achievements on the agenda topics, including enhancing global financial safety nets and development. These two topics were newly included on the G20 Summit agenda based on our own experiences.

When the foreign exchange crisis battered Korea in 1998, the nation suffered enormously. A total of some 20,000 businesses went under, and the number of the unemployed skyrocketed to about one million. Though we overcame the crisis thanks to the IMF bailout funds, we had to pay a dear price in the course of carrying out what the IMF lending conditions mandated. Some countries that shared similar experiences even have a tendency to shun IMF financial assistance.

We are now living in an era when a crisis in one country immediately transmits to other countries. Against this backdrop, the IMF assistance system was reformed to provide necessary funds to nations before a crisis hits as a precautionary measure, rather than just as post-crisis countermeasures. As a major landmark in the prevention of financial crises, this will constitute one of the significant achievements of the upcoming G20 Seoul Summit.

When it comes to the development agenda, going beyond the assistance that has so far been centered on financial aid, the leaders have to adopt concrete action plans designed to make sure that developing nations will be able to stand on their own feet by cultivating growth potential. For its part, the Republic of Korea will play a role in coming up with the action plans on the basis of its own development experiences. When developing countries create demand through economic growth, it will give a boost to the global economy on a sustained basis, contributing to the balanced development.

For the sake of the recovery and growth of the world economy, the active participation of the private sector is critical. For this reason, we have been working to regularize the G20 Business Summit, a premier venue for dialogue among global business leaders. A number of leading global business leaders will take active part in the Business Summit and make reports to the G20 leaders on the outcome. I hope that the Business Summit will be held in tandem with the G20 Summit in France next year as well.

Fellow citizens and international journalists,

The G20 Summit started as an immediate response to the global financial crisis in 2008. But now, it has evolved into a permanent forum that sets the desirable direction and builds the big frame in support of the world economy.

The Government of the Republic of Korea has exerted strenuous efforts to make the G20 Seoul Summit a big success. We have hosted the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting on three occasions. In order to coordinate differing views, we have hosted many working-level conferences involving relevant vice ministers, sherpas and experts from various countries.

In addition, the Korean Government has been cooperating very closely with the IMF and other international organizations as well as governments of all member countries. In an effort to reflect the views of non-member nations, we have maintained continuous dialogue with them as well. Videoconferences and telephone conversations are being held between national leaders in order to facilitate consensus on specific matters. Next week, we will see the results of all these efforts.

Fellow Koreans,

I would like to ask for your wholehearted support so the G20 Seoul Summit will lay a milestone in the global march for “Shared Growth Beyond Crisis.” At this moment, a great many people are making painstaking endeavors behind the scenes to make certain that the Seoul Summit will be carried out smoothly in a secure atmosphere. Once more, I ask all my fellow citizens to fully cooperate so that visiting international leaders will feel more comfortable at the Seoul Summit than at any held elsewhere and reap a good harvest from their discussions.

Thank you very much.