Lee Myung-bak

By Kim Se-jeong

President Lee Myung-bak left Sunday for Mexico where he’ll start a week-long regional tour in North and South America.

Lee will take part in the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico where participants will talk about minim i z i n g spillover effects of the global economic crisis from the European Union. Lee is expected to deliver a speech on the roles of government and business in times of crisis.

The Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will be the second stop of his four-leg trip. The summit is a conference on sustainable development, a follow-up to the historic 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development held in the same city.

Apart from delivering a keynote speech on “green growth,” a slogan which elevated his profile worldwide, Lee will shore up support to turn the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) into an international organization.

A non-government organization based in Seoul the GGGI was established in 2010, as part of green growth initiatives. It opened an overseas office in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, last year.

In Chile, the President will hold a summit with President Sebastian Pinera. Chile was Korea’s first partner in a free trade agreement (FTA) that took effect in 2004.

Highlight of his tour is likely to be Colombia.

The two countries are believed to be working on finalizing twoyear- long FTA negotiations, aiming to announce it when the two leaders hold a summit.

On June 25, President Lee will lay a wreath at a war memorial commemorating fallen Colombian soldiers who fought for South Korea during the Korean War (1950-53). Colombia was the only country in the region that sent troops, and Lee will meet with veterans and their families.

Lee will lead a South Korean delegation to a U.N. sustainable development conference in Brazil this week, the Environment Ministry said Sunday.