“The most important role the United Nations is asked to play on Thursdayis to come up with fundamental measures to stop the vicious cycle of increased provocations and heightened sanctions,” he told the General Assembly’s 72nd general debate, stressing the need for a political solution to what UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called ‘most dangerous crisis we face on Thursday.’

“In the wake of the (recent sixth) nuclear test, the Korean Government has made enhanced efforts to convince countries in the region and beyond of the necessity for stronger sanctions and pressure to make North Korea stop its provocations and choose the path of dialogue,” Moon said, vowing that his country seeks neither the DPRK’s collapse nor unification by absorption.

Calling on his northern neighbour to “cease making reckless choices that could lead to its own isolation and downfall and choose the path of dialogue” by abandoning its hostile policies against other countries and giving up its nuclear weapons programme, he held out the prospect of a new economic era for the Korean peninsula.

“The spirit of the United Nations is to realize global peace through multilateral dialogue,” he said. “The Korean Peninsula is where that spirit is most desperately needed. The realization of peace is the issue for which the United Nations was created, for which it is aiming and which it is in the process of achieving. We need the United Nations to play a more active role on the Korean Peninsula.

Highlighting the need to prevent the outbreak of war, Moon called for “stable” management of the situation “so that tensions will not become overly intensified or accidental military clashes will not destroy peace.”