Leaders of the world's major developed and developing countries as well as major international institutions were gathering in the South Korean capital on Friday morning to discuss contentious issues including trade imbalances and monetary policies.
Attending the Seoul Summit were leaders from the 20 member countries, the European Union, the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, the World Trade Organization, the OECD, the African Union, the ASEAN, and the International Labor Organization, as well as from five non-G20 countries -- Ethiopia, Malawi, Singapore, Spain and Vietnam.
For each of the 24 countries, the head of State and about two financial officials were attending the summit.
Chinese President Hu Jintao attended the summit, and he was sitting between Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a huge roundtable.
TRADE IMBALANCES, MONETARY POLICIES
At the first plenary session, South Korean President Lee Myung- bak stressed the significance of the agreements reached at the October Gyeongju G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting, which helped ease global tensions related to currency issues and trade imbalances.
He also discussed the importance of following through on the Mutual Assessment Process (MAP) to avoid future crises and promote strong sustainable growth.
G20 Seoul Summit officially started on Thursday evening when Lee Myung-bak hosted a grand welcome reception and a working dinner for leaders of the world's most important economies, including U.S., China, Germany, Japan, Russia, France, Britain and Brazil.
At the two-hour working dinner, G20 leaders began their discussion on issues related to "Global Economy and Framework", touching upon the important issues related to global imbalance and recovery.
The G20 leaders were expected to hold a total of six plenary sessions in the day.
As for the rest of the five sessions, according to the official timetable given out to the press, the meetings were scheduled to cover reform on international financial institutions, global financial safety nets, development, financial regulatory reform, anti-corruption, energy, etc.
Even during their lunch breaks, the leaders have been scheduled to talk about trade, climate change and green growth.
The leaders were expected to conclude the summit and issue a joint communique at around 04:00 p.m. local time in the day.
At the first plenary session, Lee Myung-bak said there has been "big progress" in the negotiations to narrow wide differences over how to manage trade imbalances and currencies, which paved the way for the joint communique.
Lee did not elaborate on what the progress was.
But a South Korean government source was quoted by the Yonhap news agency as saying that the negotiators came close to agreement to seek "more market-determined exchange rate systems," increase flexibility of their currencies and to create a guideline on sustainable current account imbalances by the next meeting in France.
Earlier on Friday morning, South Korea's G20 preparation committee spokesman, Kim Yoon-kyung, told reporters that G20 economies were still finalizing details on the currency and current account imbalance issues following overnight negotiations.
According to Kim, vice finance ministers and personal representatives of the leaders, dubbed the "Sherpa" group, had been trying to come to agreement, but there were still some contentious issues.
"There is considerable will among leaders to reach an understanding in Seoul," Kim said, hinting that the communique to come at the end of the two-day summit will be an improved version of the consensus reached in Gyeongju last month.
At the Gyeongju meeting, G-20 finance ministers agreed to change to some extent the global exchange system that reflected underlying economic fundamentals and to refrain from competitive devaluation of currencies.
CHINA PRESENCE
President Hu, who had participated in all previous G20 summits, is expected to expound China's stand on the major issues being discussed in Seoul, according to Chinese officials.
"The G20 summit to be held in Seoul, South Korea, is the first one of its kind to be held in an emerging economy and in Asia, hence it is of great significance to the development of the G20 mechanism," President Hu said in a written interview with South Korean media last Tuesday.
Hu said the Seoul Summit should focus on the following issues:
-- To continue to strengthen coordination of macro-economic policies using an "in-the-same-boat" spirit and mutually beneficial and win-win principles, and to send to the market positive signals that G20 members were unified in tackling the great challenges of the world economy so market confidence could rally and the momentum of the world economic recovery would be secured.
-- To push forward the reforms of the international financial system, to strengthen supervision of the international financial market, and to increase the say and the representation of emerging and developing countries in international financial institutions.
-- To push forward a solution to the unbalanced development between developed and developing countries and to provide political support to the realization of UN Millennium Development Goals.
-- To oppose trade protectionism and to push forward the Doha Round of World Trade Organization talks to achieve comprehensive and balanced results and its development goals.
The previous four G20 summits formulated measures to deal with the international financial crisis. The summits have played an important role in returning the world economy to growth, stabilizing international financial markets and ensuring the confidence of the public and business.
When they met last June in Toronto, the G20 leaders agreed on the importance of safeguarding and strengthening the recovery while laying the foundation for strong, sustainable and balanced growth, and strengthening the financial systems.
TIGHT SECURITY
It was the first time for South Korea as an Asian country, and as an emerging economy, to host the G20 summit.
South Korea had experience hosting other international events such as the Olympics and the World Cup before, yet it still saw the G20 summit as an opportunity for the country to step onto the world stage.
With some 10,000 participants, especially more than 30 heads of states and heads of international organizations, security was obviously a main concern. Security was really tight around the G20 summit venue, called COEX in southern Seoul.
Nearby COEX, police presence was noticeable and police vehicles lined the streets leading to the venue.
Some 50,000 police officers have been deployed by South Korea to maintain security and peace during the G20 meetings.
Among the 50,000 officers, there were some 20,000 riot police. At the COEX center, policemen were patrolling either on foot, on bicycles or even segwasy.
Obviously, with huge resources poured into beefing up security, it didn't come cheap. Local media said money allocated to the security force, police and military was about 25 million U.S. dollars.
The G20 Seoul Summit came amid tension among individual countries over several issues and talks of so-called currency war.
It was further complicated by the U.S. Federal Reserve's move, called "quantitative easing", to inject 600 billion U.S. dollars into the U.S. economy in an effort to spur growth.
The move had caused uproar among G20 countries such as Germany, South Africa, China and Brazil. Many accused the U.S. of instigating of a currency war by deliberately encouraging a sell- off of dollars on international currency markets.
The G-20 Seoul Summit is the fifth meeting of the G-20 heads of government, to discuss the global financial system and the world economy, since they first met in November of 2008 to discuss joint responses to the U.S.-originated financial crisis that was rocking the world economy at the time.
Between the Washington Summit and the Seoul Summit were the London Summit in April of 2009, Pittsburg Summit in September of 2009, and Toronto Summit in June of 2010.
The G20 was established in 1999 to bring together strategically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy.
It includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United States, and the European Union (EU).
Together, the G20 members represent around 90 percent of global gross national product, 80 percent of world trade, including EU intra-trade, and two-thirds of the world's population.
