After intense and inclusive consultation in history with businesses, civil society, and citizens across the globe, governments of 193 member countries of the United Nations agreed on Sept. 25, 2015 on a new set of Sustainable Development Goals – 17 goals, based on 169 targets. 

Each goal has specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years. “Universal, transformative, and integrated” is how the U.N. secretary-general described the 2030 agenda.

The Sustainable Development Goals have three basic categories. The first category is to end extreme poverty. The second category is to tackle social exclusiveness. The third category is the global environment. Korea seeks to play a larger role in achieving the development goals as a companion that the international community can count on. How can Korea contribute to achieving the development goals? Considering Korea’s limited Official Development Assistance resources, Korea needs to concentrate its aid on areas where it has a comparative advantage.

First, ending rural hunger is one core element of the new global goals for 2030. According to WFP data, of the 795 million people in the world who are undernourished, perhaps three-quarters of them live in rural areas of developing countries.

Unlike in urban areas, ending hunger in rural areas is primarily about promoting transformational change in local food and agricultural systems. For example, African farmers produce extremely low yields. They need more fertilizer, they need better transport networks to get food from farms to markets, and need more irrigation and more electric power.

They need investments to make their agricultural systems much more efficient and effective. Korea was quite successful in improving its own agriculture and food systems. We need to focus on transferring lessons to developing countries. For Koreans, increasing the volume of food production was a long cherished-desire.

Starting from the early 1960s, Korea set out the first National Economic Development Plan in order to pursue self-sufficiency in food production, making it the priority in the national agenda. Policies including building infrastructure related to rice production facilities construction, flexible production and supply chains for materials such as fertilizers and chemical pesticides.

Self-sufficiency in rice production became a cornerstone to strengthening the basis of national economic development not only for procuring food security and boosting incomes of farm households, but also saving foreign currency required to import foreign rice. Korea’s success in self-efficiency in rice production will be valuable experience to share with developing countries.

Education is another key element of the Sustainable Development Goals that helps empower the individual and achieve national development. A Brookings recent report, “Financing Education: Opportunities for Global Action” shows that in the Least Developed Countries spending per child on basic education (pre-primary, primary, and lower secondary) will need to at least double from an average of just over $80 per child recorded in 2012 to about $160 per child by 2020, with further increase beyond to achieve the education SDGs by 2030. 

Investment in education has always been a top priority for Koreans. During the 1950s when the country was still in turmoil after the war’s devastation, and during the 1960s when it was struggling to overcome the vicious circle of poverty, Korea kept on investing in human capital. The result is an elementary school enrollment ratio of 100 percent, a secondary school enrollment ratio of over 90 percent, and a 61 percent enrollment ratio for tertiary schools in 1996.

Korea’s experience clearly indicates that rapid accumulation of human capital is a necessary condition for fast and sustained economic development. Korea needs to help developing countries spend more on basic education of their children needed for economic development.

Korea made a full transition from aid recipient to aid donor over the space of a single generation – a result of rapid and sustained economic growth and poverty elimination. Emerging from conditions similar to those faced by poor countries today, Korea’s development has been viewed as a successful model for other developing countries to follow.

Understanding that sharing its successful development experience with developing countries is the most effective means of assistance, Korea has concentrated its efforts on human resource development through technical cooperation and on economic development, inspired by the Korean growth model. However, considering that current Korea’s ODA/GNI (0.13 percent) is low compared to OECD DAC (Development Assistance Committee) average (0.3 percent), Korea needs to increase this share in order to play a larger role in achieving the SDGs.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “The historic adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals underscores a long-standing truth: there will be no peace without development, no development without peace, and neither without respect for human rights.” I expect great outcomes from the Sustainable Development Goals and also expect Korea’s great contribution to them.

By Park Kang-ho

Park Kang-ho is a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. He can be reached at khpark81@mofa.go.kr. –Ed.