1. The Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Korea, together with the Foreign Ministry of Indonesia, will host a “seminar on ways to build regional capacity for preventing and responding to violent extremism in East Asia” in Surabaya, Indonesia, on December 5 and 6.

2. The seminar will come as part of the efforts to implement “the East Asia Summit (EAS) statement on countering violent extremism” adopted at the tenth EAS in November 2015. It has been co-organized by the ROK’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and Airlanggua University of Indonesia, and will bring together some one hundred people, including government delegates and experts in academias and civic groups of such EAS members as the ROK, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and India.

3. In his opening remarks, the ROK’s Ambassador to ASEAN Suh Jeong-in will underscore the need to build a cooperative network in Asia for multi-level cooperation between Asia and the rest of the world and for information-sharing on model practices and others.

4. The forthcoming seminar will cover ways to help those vulnerable to violent extremism build capacity; the role of education; and possible policies for closer cooperation on the provincial, national, regional and multilateral levels. It is expected to contribute to Asian efforts to prevent and respond to violent extremism, which has lately been spreading to Asia.

5. In addition to hosting the seminar, the ROK government will take part in international efforts to eradicate terrorism and prevent and deal with the spread of violent extremism. Furthermore, it will remain cooperative with other Asian countries in that regard.

° The ROK government, having held a “workshop on ways to counter violent extremism” in July 2015, will hold, together with the UN Counterterrorism Executive Directorate (UNCTED) in 2017, an “Asian dialogue to prevent terrorists from putting information and communications technology (ICT) to bad use.”


* unofficial translation