By UN Journal Lee Jon-young President Lee Jae-myung met with Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden on the afternoon of October 15. Crown Princess Victoria is on an official visit to South Korea from October 15 to 17. President Lee welcomed Crown Princess Victoria's visit to Korea and expressed hope that the visit would serve as an opportunity to further strengthen the long-standing friendly cooperative relationship between the two countries across various fields. Crown Princess Victoria expressed her pleasure at meeting President Lee. She noted that during this visit, meetings between the business
By UN Journal Lee Kap-soo Indian Naval Ship Sahyadri, as part of ongoing operational deployment to the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific, made a port call at Busan Naval Harbour, South Korea, on Oct 13, 2025 to participate in the maiden Indian Navy (IN) – Republic of Korea Navy (RoKN) Bilateral Exercise. The RoKN extended a warm welcome underscoring the burgeoning Navy-to-Navy interactions and Strategic Partnership between the Governments of India and the Republic of Korea. Indigenously designed, constructed, and commissioned in 2012, INS Sahyadri is the third ship of the Shivalik Class Guided
By UN Journal Kayla Lee Cambodia was once a country that welcomed foreigners with the ‘angelic smile’. But now, that smile has frozen cold. Behind the beautiful Angkor Wat and emerald coastline lurks the grip of criminal organizations targeting foreigners. The murder of a Korean university student was not merely the tragedy of one individual, but the result of systematic neglect hidden behind the label of a ‘tourist nation’. A crime market disguised as tourism. Locally, alongside the tourism boom, ‘voice phishing camps’, ‘online gambling centers’, and ‘human trafficking brokerages’ have flouri
By UN Journal Lee Jon-young Two months have passed since Korean university student Park (22) was kidnapped and murdered in Cambodia. Only after his death became known to the world did the government declare a “full-scale response.” But by then, Park had already returned as a cold corpse. And the people asked coldly. “Where the hell was the government?” Delayed cooperation, shifting blame, a life obscured by ‘procedures’. When the victim's family reported in late July that “my brother seems to be held captive,” police immediately confirmed his cell phone location was overseas. Yet, no immediate
By UN Journal Lee Kap-soo The following article was contributed by Shakhnoza Kodirova, Head of the Department of the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, to the UN Journal for publication through the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Seoul. -- Ed. At the headquarters of the United Nations in New York, the General Debates of the 80th session of the General Assembly took place. Despite being held at a challenging time for international relations, the General Assembly remains the UN’s principal deliberative body and, in essence, the heart of globa
By UN Journal Lee Jon-young Once known as the ‘Smile of Angkor Wat,’ Cambodia is no longer a peaceful tourist destination. The recent case of Korean university student Park (22) being kidnapped, imprisoned, and murdered locally is a symbolic cross-section of this reality. His tragic death is not merely the misfortune of one individual, but reveals the true nature of a ‘country where crime has become an industry’. Cambodia has rapidly grown as a Southeast Asian tourism hub, but its underbelly is dark. An ‘invisible criminal market’—a tangled web of online scams, illegal gambling, human traffick
By UN Journal Kayla Lee The Government of the Republic of Korea, together with the Governments of Australia and Tanzania, welcomes the groundbreaking ceremony held on October 9 to officially launch the Mahenge graphite project in Tanzania. Located in the Morogoro region of Tanzania, the Mahenge project is led by the Australian company Black Rock Mining (BRM) and involves the Government of Tanzania and Korean companies, including POSCO International. Tanzanian Government officials, including the Minister of Minerals, the Korean Ambassador to Tanzania, Australia’s Deputy High Commissioner to Tan
By UN Journal Lee Kap-soo Higgsfield AI has officially become Kazakhstan’s first unicorn startup, surpassing a $1 billion valuation, announced co-founder and former Head of Generative AI at Snap Inc. Alex Mashrabov on Sept. 28. According to Mashrabov, the company recently crossed a $50 million run-rate revenue threshold, marking a historic milestone for Kazakhstan’s tech ecosystem. “For the last 15 years, no company in our country has managed to achieve this,” he said. Higgsfield AI’s journey to unicorn status was fueled by investments from leading global funds, including Menlo Ventures, which
By UN Journal Lee Kap-soo The Embassy of the Dominican Republic in the Republic of Korea, together with ProDominicana, successfully hosted the “Dominican Republic–Korea Business Forum: Strategic Horizons – Exploring a Land of Opportunities for Korean Companies in the Dominican Republic.” The event brought together over 50 representatives of leading Korean companies, senior government officials, ambassadors and members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited in Seoul, media outlets, and distinguished figures from civil society. Among the distinguished participants were Mr. Lee Jooil, Director-Genera
By UN Journal Lee Jon-young President Lee Jae-myung held a South Korea-Japan summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in Busan on September 30. The two leaders exchanged broad and in-depth views on ways to strengthen practical cooperation between South Korea and Japan and the necessity of cooperation at the regional and global levels. The two leaders welcomed the completion of shuttle diplomacy between the two countries, marked by Prime Minister Ishiba's visit to Busan just one month after President Lee's visit to Japan last month. They also expressed full agreement on the im
By UN Journal Kayla Lee Foreign Minister Cho Hyun held a meeting with Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand at the United Nations Headquarters on September 25. The two sides exchanged views on overall bilateral relations, including high-level exchanges, future substantive cooperation plans, and regional and international situations. Minister Cho expressed his delight at the ongoing high-level exchanges between the two countries following the inauguration of the new governments of Korea and Canada this year, following the bilateral summit held on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Jun
By UN Journal Lee Jon-young President Lee Jae-myung held his first bilateral meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in New York on September 24 (local time), who was attending the high-level segment of the UN General Assembly. Prime Minister Meloni stated that the two countries have been developing balanced cooperative relations across various fields, including trade and investment. She assessed that the potential for expanding economic cooperation between the two nations is very high, as demonstrated by events such as the successful Korea-Italy Business Forum held in Seoul in earl
By UN Journal Lee Jon-young President Lee Jae-myung held his first bilateral meeting with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, who was attending the 80th UN General Assembly High-Level Session in New York on September 24 (local time). The two leaders commended the steady development of bilateral relations in various areas, including political affairs, economics, and people-to-people exchanges, since the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1989. In particular, they shared the view that bilateral trade has recently grown steadily, and that substantive cooperation is expanding, with Korean companies
By UN Journal Lee Jon-young President Lee Jae-myung met with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sept. 23 and asked for the U.N.'s support for South Korea's initiative to achieve North Korea's denuclearization through dialogue, the Presidential office said. Their meeting took place after President Lee declared at the UN that "South Korea will fulfill its responsibility and role to end the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula and contribute to global peace and prosperity through the 'E (Exchange), N (Normalization), and D (Denuclearization) Initiative." President Lee stated, “Peace and secur
By UN Journal Lee Jon-young President Lee Jae-myung declared in his keynote address at the UN that "South Korea will fulfill its responsibility and role to end the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula and contribute to global peace and prosperity through the 'E (Exchange), N (Normalization), and D (Denuclearization) Initiative." President Lee made these remarks in his keynote address at UN Headquarters in New York on September 23 (local time), stating, "We must end the era of hostility and confrontation on the Korean Peninsula through comprehensive dialogue centered on the 'END' initiative and ush