Mayor of Busan Successfully Promotes City’s Bid for the 2030 World Expo in Paris.
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Park Heong-joon, the Mayor of Busan visited Paris, France from June 18-23 to promote Busan's bid to host the 2030 World Expo.
Mayor Park attended the International Bureau of Expositions' (BIE) 170th General Assembly in Paris with government delegations and made a presentation highlighting Busan’s vision for the 2030 World Expo.
At this year's assembly, the three countries bidding for the 2030 event -- Korea (Busan), Italy (Rome) and Saudi Arabia (Riyadh) -- held their first offline presentations in front of all BIE member states.
The Republic of Korea was the last to take the floor to present their project to host the 2030 World Expo in Busan under the theme “Transforming Our World, Navigating toward a Better Future”. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and the Mayor of the Metropolitan City of Busan, Park Heong-joon, laid out the World Expo project to BIE delegates, with the delegation also including Yang Ju-ri, Senior Research Engineer, Holistic UX Group Hyundai Motors, and Dr. Lemma Teshome Tufa, Research Professor. The President of the Republic of Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, also made an appeal to BIE delegates via a video message.
In its pitch, Korea presented its vision of a Busan-hosted Expo as a platform for global transition toward a better future as humanity faces a pandemic, technological disparity and climate change.
Busan Mayor Park introduced Busan’s strengths and attractions as the optimum venue for the Expo, compared with other candidate cities. He presented that Busan is carrying out a pilot project to solve climate crisis by building the world's first sustainable floating city on the ocean in front of the North Port in collaboration with UN-Habitat and OCEANIX.
Following the presentation, Busan Mayor Park, along with government delegations, appealed to ministers from participating countries and the BIE members for support.
Starting on June 20, 2022, Mayor Park met Robert Clark, co-chair of the Minnesota USA Expo board, Catherine Colonna Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs French diplomat, and delegations from five CIS countries (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russian Federation, and Tajikistan). He met Dimitri Kerkentzes, Secretary General of BIE on his last day in Paris, June 22, 2022 and explained the city’s efforts to host the 2030 Busan World Expo and talked about enhancing continuous cooperation between ROK and BIE.
He also attended an event with Prime Minister Han, Chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) Chey Tae-won at the Korean Embassy in Paris for ethnic Koreans to show solidarity for supporting the campaign.
The final decision will be made via vote by the BIE member states at the end of 2023, after five presentation rounds, submission of a bid dossier in September of this year, and a local inspection in early 2023.
The 2030 World Expo period is slated to last for six months, through May 1 to October 31. Busan’s selected theme as host candidate for the Expo is “Transforming our world, navigating toward a better future.”
For more information, please contact the 2030 Expo Bid Promotion Division at (051)888-6442.
