Ministerial Meeting

South Korean Minister Kim Jong-deok (left) poses with Japan's Akihiro Ota (center) and their Chinese counterpart Li Jinzao (right) as they display their agreement after two days of meetings in Tokyo on Sunday.
South Korean Minister Kim Jong-deok (left) poses with Japan's Akihiro Ota (center) and their Chinese counterpart Li Jinzao (right) as they display their agreement after two days of meetings in Tokyo on Sunday.

 

South Korea, China, and Japan had trilateral talks on the 12th to boost the three countries’ tourism, increasing visitor numbers among the three neighbors to up to 30 million in 2020, from about 20 million in 2014.

The tourism ministers from South Korea, China, and Japan met to hold a tourism ministers’ meeting in Tokyo to launch a joint tourism project and announce a joint statement. According to the agreement, so-called the Visit East Asia Campaign, the three are to make tourism combinations to attract visitors beyond East Asia, increasing the total number of visitors among the nearby countries.

At the meeting, South Korean Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Kim Jong-deok; Chinese National Tourism Administration Chairman Li Jinzao; and Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister Akihiro Ota have separately called for measures to prevent problems arising from different daily habits to ensure the safety of tourists.

The three-way ministerial talks released an announcement that the three countries will jointly attract tourists from Europe, the United States, and elsewhere during such occasions as the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and Paralympics. In a bid to expand mutual exchanges among the three countries, they made an agreement to increase flights and cruise ship trips, and to make an effort to accelerate improvements in their domestic transportation and telecommunication systems.  

Before the trilateral meeting, South Korean Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Kim Jong-deok and his Chinese counterpart Li Jinzao held a bilateral meeting to cooperate with each other to increase the number of personal exchanges between the two countries to 20 million at an early stage. And the two also signed an MOU to successfully boost the upcoming “Korea-China Tourist Years” of 2015 and 2016.

And at the meeting with the Japanese minister, Kim agreed for a tourism business partnership for 10 joint projects, including the resurrection of the old road of the Korean delegation to Japan marking the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Korea-Japan diplomatic relations.

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