Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson received an honorary doctorate from Kookmin University on Monday during his visit to South Korea this week.

“We highly praise President Grimsson’s accomplishments as a politician and in preserving the global environment and contributing to international peace, and therefore decided to give him the honorary doctorate degree on the occasion of his first visit,” said Kookmin University President Yu Ji-soo. Grimsson also delivered a special lecture for the university’s students on Iceland’s clean energy economy.

Grimsson has been serving as president since 1996 and made the first presidential visit to Seoul since the two countries forged bilateral ties in 1962. He has been vocal about global environmental challenges, particularly over renewable energy and climate change. Grimsson is behind the Global Roundtable on Climate Change joined by leading businesses and opinion leaders. He is an avid advocate of peaceful and eco-friendly development of the Arctic Circle. Iceland is a member of the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that establishes rules and addresses tasks faced in the region with robust oil and gas reserves, also joined by Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States.

Ahead of the ceremony, the university also signed an agreement for academic exchanges with Iceland’s Reykjavik University.

Grimsson also held summit talks with President Park Geun-hye on Monday and agreed to bolster cooperation on the Arctic region as South Korea seeks to explore the northern polar route.

By Yeo Jun-suk (jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)