Seoul-Moscow Summit to Declare Cooperation in Railway Connection through Northeast Asia

A summit meeting between Korean President Park Geun Hye and Russian President Vladimir Putin will be held next week in Seoul. 

After the meeting, the two countries’ leaders are likely to make a joint statement focusing on their common efforts to denuclearize North Korea and promote economic cooperation in the Northeast region by involving North Korea in the development projects. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to make a two-day visit to South Korea from November 12 for his planned talks with President Park. 
According to government sources on November 3, the two leaders plan to issue a joint statement focusing on their shared stance for the denuclearization of North Korea and economic cooperation with the regime.  

It has been known that working-level discussions for such cooperation are now underway between the countries in order to put their cooperation plans in a joint statement. 

Earlier in 2010, the joint statement made by former presidents Lee Myung-bak and Dmitry Medvedev said just the importance of “diplomatically resolving the nuclear issue in the region.” In the forthcoming statement, however, the two countries are forecast to stress the denuclearization of North Korea in stronger wording. 
The forthcoming joint statement is said to include the two nations’ efforts to expand trans-Korean economic cooperation with Russia, including the railway project of linking the Russian eastern border town of Khasan to the North Korean port city of Rajin.

South Korea plans to propose closer cooperation among the three countries in the logistics sector, centered on the railway project. In particular, the Korean government hopes that the long-discussed project to link the Trans-Siberian Railway with the Trans-Korean Railway will be included in the joint statement. Seoul also expects the statement to handle the project to connect a gas pipeline from Russia across the Korean Peninsula.