Foreign Affairs Minister visits the Republic of Korea

All meetings focused on building peace and security in the region

Mongolia’s Foreign Affairs Minister L.Bold paid an official visit to the Republic of Korea on February 12-14. During his visit, the Minister held official talks with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea Yun Byung-se. The parties emphasized that bilateral relations are increasingly developing at the comprehensive partnership level in all spheres and expressed confidence that the present visit will make an important contribution to fostering bilateral ties.

This is the first official visit paid at the Mongolia’s Foreign Minister’s level to the Republic of Korea in the past ten years. During the talks, Minister L.Bold focused on issues concerning the facilitation of travel conditions for Mongolian citizens to the Republic of Korea.

Highlighting the remarkable progress achieved in this regard thanks to an agreement in 2012,

Minister L.Bold forwarded a proposal on introducing visa-free conditions to improve travel conditions for citizens of the two countries even more. Before doing so however, he suggested ceasing the deposit requirement to obtain a Korean visa that breaches the 2012 agreement. 

In turn, Minister Yun Byung-se pledged to study possibilities for easing travel conditions for Mongolian citizens without making deposits and to consider establishment of a visa waiver agreement.

Considering that the Republic of Korea is one of the world leading economies with high technology, the sides agreed that the volume of investments made by the Republic of Korea to Mongolia is insufficient and that a profound change shall be made in this regard. Thereby, the sides highlighted that the creation of an intergovernmental mechanism for economic cooperation is an adequate way of stimulating investment in the largest construction projects in the mining and infrastructure spheres, and intensification of bilateral mutually

beneficial collaboration in the areas of technology, human resources and management.

In 2015, Mongolia and the Republic of Korea will mark the 25^th year of diplomatic relations. In this light, the sides agreed it is important to host high-level visits. Conveying greetings of the President of the Republic of Korea to the President of Mongolia, Minister Yun Byung-se invited the latter to visit the Republic of Korea at his convenience. Minister L.Bold held a business meeting with Kim Kwan-jin, Minister of National Defense of the Republic of Korea.

Recalling a meeting with L.Bold when he was Minister of Defense of Mongolia three years ago, Minister Kim Kwan- jin noted that since then, bilateral relations in the defense sphere has noticeably expanded, the number of Mongolian servicemen studying in the Republic of Korea has doubled, and the sides have made strides in supplying military techniques and joint participation in peacekeeping operations.

Minister L.Bold paid a courtesy call on Lee Byung-suk, Vice Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea (ROK). Emphasizing the prominent role of inter-parliamentary cooperation in the development of bilateral political ties, Minister L.Bold called for closer interaction to organize a visit of Mongolia’s Parliament Speaker Z.Enkhbold to the Republic of Korea in March 2014. Saying that the protection of interests of citizens employed in foreign countries, particularly in the Republic of Korea, is one of the foremost goals of the Government of Mongolia, Minister L.Bold requested to continue paying particular attention to the improvement of living conditions of Mongolians, and taking staged actions towards the facilitation of travel conditions for people.

The same day, Foreign Minister L.Bold held a meeting with Ryoo Kihl-jae Minister of Unification.

The latter highly valued Mongolia’s participation in building peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and spoke for the extension of bilateral cooperation in this direction. At all the meetings, the focus was on the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue on Northeast Asian Security which targets building peace and security in the region, in particular, on the Korean Peninsula by means of dialogue.

There are over 25 thousand citizens of Mongolia studying and working in the Republic of Korea. On the first day of his visit, Minister L.Bold held a meeting with representatives of the Mongolian community. At the meeting, Minister L.Bold presented the policies pursued and actions carried out by the Government for Changes and discussed problems the Mongolian community is facing and possible solutions, reported the Press Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia.