South Korea Elected as UN Security Council Non-Permanent Member... Reenters After 11 Years

South Korea has been elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

On the 6th (local time), the United Nations General Assembly held elections at the UN Headquarters in New York for non-permanent members of the Security Council for the 2024?2025 term. South Korea, the sole candidate from the Asia-Pacific region, re-entered the Security Council by securing 180 votes out of 192 countries participating in the vote.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

This marks South Korea's return to the Security Council after 11 years since 2013?2014. Since joining the UN in 1991, South Korea has previously been elected as a non-permanent member in 1996?1997 and 2013?2014.

The Security Council, a key body for maintaining international peace and security, is composed of five permanent members known as the P5 (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia) and ten non-permanent members. The term for non-permanent members is two years.

In this election to select five non-permanent members for the next Security Council, Algeria and Sierra Leone were elected from Africa, and Guyana from Latin America and the Caribbean. In Eastern Europe, Slovenia, supported by the West, and Belarus, an ally of Russia, competed, with Slovenia securing a seat on the Security Council.

Meanwhile, on the 5th, a day before the election, Ambassador Hwang Joon-kook, South Korea’s Permanent Representative to the UN, held a campaign reception for South Korea’s Security Council bid, introducing four key focus areas for the Council’s activities: peacekeeping and peacebuilding, Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), cyber security, and climate and security.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.