President Lee Jae Myung headed home after his four-day trip to New York for the 80th United Nations General Assembly on Thursday (local time).

The president boarded his return flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport around 3:40 p.m. Thursday and will arrive in Seoul on Friday night.

Lee, while making his multilateral diplomatic debut, declared that a “new” South Korea has returned to the international stage and presented his “exchange, normalization and denuclearization” initiative to bring peace and stability to the Korean Peninsula.

Following his keynote speech at the UN General Assembly, Lee also became the first South Korean head of state to chair a UN Security Council session, presiding over an open debate on artificial intelligence.

The president also held a series of bilateral talks with the leaders of Uzbekistan, the Czech Republic, Italy and Poland, agreeing to strengthen economic cooperation in sectors such as trade, defense and infrastructure.