KOSTAT to represent East Asia in UN sustainable initiative

Park Young-shil / Courtesy of Statistics Korea

By Lee Kyung-min

A Korean statistics expert has been appointed to lead a group of representatives from countries in East Asia to help United Nations (U.N.) member states strengthen their statistics data analysis and management capability, Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) said Monday.

This is the first time for a Korean to exercise leadership concerning the field of statistics on the global stage.

Park Young-shil, head of the Data Center for the SDGs Research Planning Division, affiliated with KOSTAT, will lead the group comprised of Korea, Japan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. SDG stands for Sustainable Development Goals, a U.N.-led inclusive initiative seeking to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.

Representing five countries, Park will participate in the inter-agency and expert groups on SDG indicators, composed of statistics agencies from 28 countries to develop and implement a global indicator framework for SDGs.

She will make recommendations to improve statistical accuracy, indicator development methods and overall statistical quality to better achieve SDGs.

Also to be shared are a slew of studies conducted jointly by KOSTAT and many international organizations to set up a “global reporting system,” a standardized method for data management and storage including and not limited to SDGs.

According to Park, what is most crucial is to ensure that no one is left behind, a mandate to be achieved via greater and more accurate representation of minority groups.

“Statisticians have struggled with ways to bolster better representation of the physically challenged, people living in remote rural areas and immigrants in datasets collected, a task that cannot be achieved without fine-tuned, detail-oriented indicators, backed by overall data management capacity. I plan to focus on identifying ways to make progress in this area,” Park said.