UN's Guterres uses CVID term in meeting with Yoon Suk-yeol

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, left, shakes hands with President Yoon Suk-yeol at the presidential office in Seoul on Friday. [NEWS1]

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea in Seoul Friday.

In a meeting with President Yoon Suk-yeol, Guterres thanked him for Korea’s support for protection of human rights and fighting climate change, before broaching the subject of Seoul’s northern neighbor.

The United Nations is fully behind the goal of “a complete, verifiable and irreversible” dismantling of the North Korean nuclear weapons program, Guterres told Yoon.

The complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) of North Korea, an expression that was largely avoided during the previous administration in Seoul, was brought up again during the secretary general’s meeting with Foreign Minister Park Jin on Friday.

“I was also very impressed during our lunch with his excellency, the president, and with a very strong commitment of the Republic of Korea, to non-proliferation, to do everything for the globalization, [and to] full, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” he told Park in the meeting.

Guterres came to Seoul in the lead up to the UN General Assembly meeting in New York next month. Accompanying him were UN officials including Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu and Selwin Charles Hart, special adviser to Guterres on climate action.

The delegation has been on a tour of Asia, visiting Mongolia and Japan before Seoul.

“In a time such as this when the world is seeking directions in solving many difficult problems, the work that the United Nations is doing in many parts of the world serves as an encouragement and an example for the global society,” Yoon told Guterres.

Guterres last visited Korea in 2018 to attend the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

Guterres, prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, has served as secretary-general of the UN since January 2017. He succeeded South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon as the ninth person to hold the title and the first European since Kurt Waldheim of Austria in 1981.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]