President Yoon Suk Yeol continued to pitch the bid by the South Korean port city Busan to host the 2030 World Expo on the second day of his trip to New York by holding a series of summits with world leaders attending the UN General Assembly.

President Yoon, who held summits with the leaders of nine nations after arriving in New York on Monday, had eight more one-on-one meetings, including with the leaders of Ghana, Lesotho, Monaco, Belize and Suriname.

In the meetings, Yoon asked for support for Busan in the final vote to select the host city in November, promising to provide necessary cooperation to each country. 

According to the presidential office, Yoon first held a summit with Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo over lunch and the two leaders formed a consensus on strengthening substantial cooperation between the two countries, which pursue the common values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. 

In the first summit in 47 years with Lesotho, Yoon promised to seek cooperative projects based on South Korea’s Saemaul Movement in the 1970s to help improve Lesotho’s agricultural productivity, pledging active support with agricultural machinery.

President Yoon also asked African leaders to look forward to the first-ever South Korea-Africa Summit to be held next year.

In the summit with Suriname’s President Chan Santokhi, Yoon expressed his intention to increase cooperation with the South American country in various fields such as trade, investment, agriculture and development cooperation, and to contribute to the investigation and restoration of forest resources in Suriname, much of which is forest.

The president also met with Albert II, prince of Monaco, and proposed strengthening cooperation between their nations in the digital field.

In the meeting with Côte d'Ivoire Vice President Tiémoko Meyliet Koné, Yoon suggested that the two nations should work together to improve food security.