South Korea on Saturday won a bid to host the secretariat of a United Nations fund aimed at helping fight global warming, President Lee Myung-Bak announced.

The 24-member board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) selected Songdo International Business District in the western port city of Incheon to house its secretariat.

"We're very pleased to host the GCF secretariat," Lee told journalists, adding the GCF has the potential to grow into "one of the world's largest international agencies".

The vote came at the end of a three-day GCF board meeting in Incheon.

The fund was launched at a UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, last year to help channel up to $100 billion a year in aid to poor, vulnerable countries by 2020 via investments from both public and private sources.

South Korea had been competing with five other countries -- Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Namibia and Poland. Five rounds of voting were held to decide who would host the secretariat.