SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol on Thursday called for strengthening the resilience of global supply chains, describing it as one of the most urgent tasks facing the international community.
Yoon made the remarks at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, saying the war in Ukraine had further disturbed the stability of supply chains following the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are witnessing segmentation of supply chains due to the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, competition for technology and the decline of the multilateral trade system, and the war in Ukraine has added to their disruptions,” Yoon said.
Free trade remained important despite growing protectionism, the South Korean president said, and vowed to work with “trustworthy” countries to stabilise global supply chains.
“Building walls and strengthening protectionism can never be the right answer,” he added.
Also referring to the climate crisis, Yoon said South Korea would gradually seek carbon neutrality by expanding the use of nuclear energy and that Seoul was willing to cooperate with other countries that needed nuclear power technologies.
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(Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi and Hyeyeon Kim; Editing by Toby Chopra and Alex Richardson)