1. During his visit to Spain on March 1 and 2, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se met with Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis on March 1. In their meeting, the two top diplomats discussed a broad range of matters, including ways to step up substantive cooperation and work together on the North Korean nuclear issue as well as in the EU and Latin America; and such global issues as peace-keeping and piracy eradication.

° Minister Yun’s visit to Spain, one of the five major countries in the EU and a member of NATO as well as the ROK’s long-standing ally since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1950, marked the first of its kind by an ROK Foreign Minister in eleven years.

2. The two Ministers, welcoming the decision to hold strategic dialogue between the Foreign Ministries of the two countries from 2017, agreed to promote scientific and technological cooperation, including through such regularly-convened bilateral consultative mechanisms as the Joint Committee on Economy, Science and Technology and the ROK-Spain Forum. They also agreed to expand their presence in markets of third countries.

° The two top diplomats, welcoming the conclusion of “a bilateral agreement for cooperation on information and communications technology (ICT)” during the Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest mobile industry event currently under way in Barcelona, agreed to work closely together to expand their presence in the construction and infrastructure markets of third countries.

° The two sides agreed to seek an agreement on working holiday program as well as a revision to the bilateral Air Transport Agreement as soon as possible in a bid to lay an institutional foundation for more robust exchanges between the peoples of the two countries.

3. Minister Yun extended appreciation to Spain for its active role as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council and the chair country of the DPRK Sanctions Committee in 2015 and 2016 in the international efforts to address the North Korean nuclear issue, including in the lead-up to the adoption of a relevant Security Council resolution. The Minister, calling the recent assassination of Kim Jong-nam with a weapon of mass destruction banned by the relevant international law a direct challenge to the norms-based international order, asked for continued cooperation of the Spanish government in the efforts to improve the human rights situation in North Korea and put pressure on the North.

° Minister Dastis, expressing grave concern over North Korea’s nuclear and missile development as well as its human rights issue, stated that Spain will cooperate actively in the international efforts to thoroughly implement the relevant Security Council resolutions and in expediting the EU’s adoption of unilateral sanctions on the North.

4. The two Ministers hailed the ROK’s growing cooperation with Latin America, as can be seen from its joining the Organization of Ibero-American States as an observer in October 2016, holding ROK-CELAC Quarteto foreign ministerial meetings on a regular basis and serving as the chair of the Forum for East Asia-Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC). On that note, they agreed to hold meetings between their Foreign Ministries’ directors-general for Latin American affairs to seek ways to increase cooperation with the region.

5. The two top diplomats, welcoming the ongoing cooperation between the ROK and Spanish Navies in the EU’s Atalanta, a counter-piracy operation in Somalia, agreed to work together on global matters, including peace-building efforts through the UN’s peacekeeping operations, responding to violent extremism and UN reforms.

6. The ROK-Spain foreign ministerial meeting is seen to have contributed to the ROK’s efforts to increase with Spain, a major member of the EU and NATO, substantive cooperation and step up coordination on nuclear and other issues of North Korea as well as on other regional and global issues.


* unofficial translation