Ryu Geun-gwan, Commissioner of Statistics Korea, Elected as Chair of UN Statistical Commission Executive Board

Ryu Geun-gwan, Commissioner of the Korea National Statistical Office

[Asia Economy Sejong=Reporter Kim Hyewon] The Statistics Korea announced on the 2nd that Ryu Geun-gwan, Commissioner of Statistics Korea, was elected as one of the five chairpersons at the 53rd United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC).

The UNSC is the highest-level annual international statistical meeting where heads of statistics from countries and international organizations gather to decide on statistical standards and international comparison methodologies necessary for promoting policies on global issues such as economy and health.

Commissioner Ryu was officially elected unanimously by about 190 member countries after being recommended by Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the United Nations Statistics Division.

Through chairpersons' meetings held every two months, Commissioner Ryu inspects the implementation of UNSC decisions and reviews and approves the agenda for the 54th session next year.

Following the OECD Committee on Statistics and Statistical Policy chairmanship, Korea has now joined the UNSC chairpersons. This is evaluated as an opportunity to play a leading role in setting major statistical agendas in the international community and to secure leadership in the international statistical community through the dissemination of the K-Statistics system.

Commissioner Ryu stated, "I will actively contribute to the activities of the international statistical community to support evidence-based policy decisions, provide comparable data between countries, and improve the quality of national statistics."

The current UNSC, held from the 1st to the 5th, is attended by delegations from over 150 countries and more than 500 participants from international organizations such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank (WB). They discuss sustainable development indicators pursued as common goals by the international community, data stewardship to raise awareness and value of data as a public good, and integrated statistical geographic information using big data and spatial information.

Commissioner Ryu recently emphasized the importance of data stewardship to enhance the value and usability of data in the new data ecosystem, introducing Korea's successful cases such as the K-Statistics system promoted by Statistics Korea, non-face-to-face surveys, and population census using administrative data. He also shared the current status of developing a national statistical analysis system based on homomorphic encryption and new data protection technologies.

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