South Korea and Russia plan to issue a joint statement focused on their efforts to denuclearize North Korea and beef up economic cooperation with it after their leaders’ summit next week in Seoul, government sources said Sunday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to make a two-day visit to South Korea from Nov. 12 for his planned summit talks with President Park Geun-hye.
After the meeting, the leaders plan to issue a joint statement that will be focused on their shared stance on working toward denuclearizing North Korea, as well as their plan to jointly facilitate economic cooperation with the communist nation, the sources said.
“Working-level discussion is now under way between the countries in order to put their cooperation plans in the joint statement,” one government official said.
In the forthcoming statement, the countries are said to lay out their goal of denuclearizing North Korea in stronger wording, given the North’s recent nuclear activities in defiance of the international community.
Also to be included in the joint statement is the two nations’ plan to expand trans-Korean economic cooperation with Russia, such as the North Korea-Russia project of linking railways from the Russian eastern border town of Khasan to the North Korean port city of Rason. (Yonhap News)
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