1. Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se attended the sixth foreign ministerial meeting of the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Vientiane, Laos, on July 26. In the meeting, the top diplomats exchanged views on the EAS’ way forward; the issues concerning the Korean Peninsula and East Asia; and the global situation.

° The meeting brought together the foreign ministers of the ten ASEAN countries; Secretary of State John Kerry of the US and Foreign Ministers Wang Yi, Fumio Kishida, Sergey Lavrov, Julie Bishop and Murray McCully of China, Japan, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, respectively; and Minister of State for External Affairs Singh of India.

2. The foreign ministerial meeting of the EAS, the premier strategic forum participated by all major countries in the region, covered ways to work together in meeting traditional and non-traditional security threats facing the international community, including the North Korean nuclear issue, terrorism and violent extremism, as well as the EAS’ way forward, such as how to better institutionalize the mechanism.

° Minister Yun informed the other ministers of the plan of the Republic of Korea and Malaysia to co-host a “regional seminar on ways to build capacity against violent extremism” in a follow-up on the “statement on countering violent extremism (CVE),” which had been adopted at the EAS Summit in 2015 at the co-proposal of the ROK and other countries. The majority of the participating countries noted that with terrorism and other forms of violent extremism posing a serious security threat, the seminar will come at an appropriate time.

3. The ministers exchanged views on the North Korean nuclear issue, one of the biggest security issues in the region.

° Minister Yun, bringing renewed attention to the need for a stern response to North Korea’s grave nuclear and missile threats, stressed that the member states of the EAS should meet with a sense of utmost urgency and a firm resolve North Korea’s nuclear threat directly against the international community. To that end, he mentioned, they should completely and thoroughly implement UN Security Council resolutions and send to North Korea a clear message of non-tolerance for a nuclear North Korea.

° The majority of the participating ministers, expressing concern over the developments on the Korean Peninsula, including North Korea’s nuclear test and repeated missile launches, reaffirmed support for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and urged North Korea to fulfill its international obligations, including under UN Security Council resolutions, as well as its commitments under the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement.

4. At the meeting, where the South China Sea issue was covered in depth, the majority of the ministers called on all the countries concerned to seek a peaceful solution to the issue, now that a ruling has been issued in the Philippines-China arbitration.

5. The ministers noted with appreciation that the statements on nuclear non-proliferation, immigration, human trafficking, the promotion of development cooperation on infrastructure in East Asia, which are being worked on for their adoption at the EAS Summit in September 2016, all call for proper responses to issues facing the international community. They agreed to engage in constructive discussions in order to reach agreement on their texts before the Summit.

6. The foreign ministers hailed the smooth progress in the work to establish a meeting mechanism among the EAS member states’ resident Ambassadors to Jakarta and an EAS section in the ASEAN Secretariat pursuant to the “Kuala Lumpur Declaration on the Tenth Anniversary of the EAS.” They agreed to continue efforts for further development of the EAS as a strategic forum.


* unofficial translation