Foreign Minister Park Jin held a series of talks with leaders of European countries to seek their support for South Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo in Busan, his minister said on Tuesday. ministry.
On the sidelines of the Bled Strategy Forum held in Slovenia the day before (local time), Park held bilateral talks with his counterparts from Armenia, North Macedonia, Slovakia and Switzerland, and paid a courtesy call on Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov.
Park stressed that the port city of Busan would be the “best choice” for the World Expo in its back-to-back meetings, at which European leaders said they would seriously consider its candidacy, according to the ministry.
They also reaffirmed their support for South Korea’s “bold” initiative to offer economic aid to the North in exchange for denuclearization measures. Additionally, Park referred to the escalation of military provocations by Pyongyang.
The Bled Strategy Forum is an annual international conference on diplomacy and security bringing together experts and policy makers from Central and South Eastern Europe. Park is on a four-day visit to Türkiye and Slovenia, where he attended a session of the forum as South Korea’s first foreign minister to do so.
During the session, Park presented the results of the recent trilateral summit between the leaders of South Korea, the United States and Japan at Camp David, near Washington, Maryland, the ministry said.
During the forum’s opening ceremony, Park briefly met with Greek President Katerína Sakellaropoulou, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and several other leaders to urge them to support South Korea’s bid.
Park also had a brief meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, with whom he discussed measures to implement the agreements reached by the leaders of the two countries at their summit in May, in particular concerning supply chains in key minerals and the high-level economic security dialogue.
Park paid a courtesy visit to Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob to offer his solidarity and condolences to the people of Slovenia for the losses suffered during the devastating floods that took place earlier this month. The minister underlined the close relations between the two countries, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of their diplomatic ties last year with the opening of the Slovenian embassy in Seoul.
This article is originally published on fr.yna.co.kr
