South Korea’s foreign minister left for Jordan on Thursday in a seven-day visit to the Middle East to discuss ways of cooperating and security issues in the region, officials said.

The trip will also take Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se to Israel, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, foreign ministry officials said.

The move is part of Seoul’s efforts to expand its scope of diplomatic activities to the Middle East where tension between Israel and Palestine has recently intensified and the extremist Islamic State poses a threat to global peace.

Yun plans to stay in Jordan from Friday to Sunday where he will hold talks with his counterpart Nasser Judeh to discuss ways to promote cooperation between the two nations and the recent development in the Middle East.

He will also visit a refugee camp in Zaatari of Jordan that shelters about 80,000 displaced people from Syria on Friday (local time), the foreign ministry said.

Yun plans to provide about US$1 million in humanitarian assistance to them, with which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will supply 300 units of caravans to those refugees, it added.

He will visit Palestine and Israel on Sunday afternoon and Monday, respectively, the first trip by a South Korean top diplomat to the region since 2007.

Yun will meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and also visit a Seoul representative office there that kicked off its operation in August, officials said.

On Monday, Yun will hold talks with his counterpart of Israel Avigdor Lieberman and his itinerary in Saudi Arabia also includes a meeting with top diplomat Saud Al-Faisal on Tuesday, the ministry added. (Yonhap)