- Edited by CC with his translation
UN Secretary-General Ban had the last press conference before his departure from South Korea on Monday, May 30 to return to UN in New York after he dilivered his keynote speech for the UN NGO Conference held on this day in Gyeongju, where he cited media freedom.
But he criticized "coverage of what was supposed to be off-the-record meeting with the Kwanhoon Club" of political correspondents. Moreover there was providing no transcript of his session with the Club to the diplomats of Inner City Press in New York...
The Secretary-General landed at Gimpo International Airport, just west of Seoul, earlier on Wednessday, May 25.
Then, he left South Korea on Thursday for Tokyo, Japan to attend a G7 summit.
And he came back in South Korea on Friday.
He met his family members, including his mother, on Saturday and have a medical check-up at a hospital in Seoul.
Ban attended the Rotary International Convention held in Goyang, just outside of Seoul, and visited Gyeongsang Province to tour a UNESCO-listed folk village on Sunday.
On the first day of the visit-staying he didn't deny the possibilities of his running for the coming South Korea's Presidential election : Ban's visit-staying was evaluated like this by a lot of news and media.
Of course, his visit-staying has also attracted a lot of concern of world media as well as UN itself.
And he had a series of active schedule to show the possibilities accoding to them.
But, wrapping his 5~6 days' campaign trip, he said in the last press conference that his words related with the possibilty is not supposed to be streched.
What he said were :
Being invited in Kwanhoon discussion forum May 25, he said, " I have been serving for UN as the Secretary-General for 9 and half years feeling a lot of things and I am thinking what I can do for Korea. "
Visiting JPKim in May 28, he continued to say, " I heard encouraging words from JPKim when I explained what UN Secretary-General is supposed to do for 10 years. He said " I feel you very proud. Be back after the final duty with your sincerity. "
In the Press conference in Gyeongju Painter Exhibition and Convention Centre May 30, he said finally, " I've come to Korea as UN Secretary-General..I hope there is no streched interpretation or conjectures on my series of schedule done here in Korea..What I said in Kwanhoon club when invited in the discussion forum was non-official talk, and I think they excessively streched and enlarged my saying there, so I feel embarrassed by it "...
Sources from news and media-articles..
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