hankyoreh

Senior Secretary to the President for Public Communication Yoon Do-han (Blue House photo pool)

The Blue House announced on Apr. 1 that it’s considering extending an invitation to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to attend a special meeting of the leaders of South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that will be held in Busan this coming November.

“We’ve been talking about inviting Kim Jong-un because the idea was already discussed by ASEAN member states. There was also talk [inside the Blue House] that inviting Kim to the special summit might help bring peace to the Korean Peninsula,” said Senior Secretary to the President for Public Communication Yoon Do-han during a meeting with reporters on Monday.

“We’re planning to discuss this idea with the ASEAN member states. If it turns out that the participating states agree on the necessity of inviting Kim, we’ll deliberate with the North Koreans,” Yoon added.

During the South Korea-ASEAN summit that was held in Singapore in November 2018, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said that the special summit would be even more meaningful if South and North Korea were to both attend and proposed that Kim be invited to the summit. “We’re planning to consider this issue after deliberating it with ASEAN while taking into consideration the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” said another official at the Blue House.

The Blue House announced on Friday that the South Korea-ASEAN special summit would be taking place in Busan from Nov. 25 to 26.

“To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of a relationship of dialogue between South Korea and ASEAN, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is planning to host the 2019 South Korea-ASEAN Special Summit in Busan from Nov. 25 to 26 and to invite the ASEAN secretary-general and the leaders of the 10 ASEAN member states to the summit,” Yoon said.

“This event will be the largest international conference to be held in South Korea under this administration. We expect that this event will provide an opportunity to assess the status of the development of relations between South Korea and ASEAN over the past 30 years and to provide a vision for development over the next 30 years. We plan to treat it as an opportunity to review the results in each area of the New Southern Policy and make even more reciprocal progress on that policy,” Yoon said.

“In connection with the South Korea-ASEAN Special Summit, the government is also planning to host the first South Korea-Mekong Summit on Nov. 27 to achieve a groundbreaking increase in cooperation with the countries along the Mekong River, which is regarded as one of the fastest-growing parts of Asia,” Yoon also said. Five countries will be participating in the South Korea-Mekong summit along with South Korea, namely Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

By Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]