Seoul (South Korea), March 25: South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong said on Thursday that he was going to discuss the situation on the Korean Peninsula with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov following the recent launch of two ballistic missiles by North Korea.
Lavrov is currently on an official visit to South Korea where he will hold talks with his counterpart later on Thursday. Chung pointed out that South Korea and Russia are "together moving to reach peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula".
"Hopefully, during today's meeting we will exchange opinions on a wide range of matters related to bilateral relations and the situation in the world, the region, and on the Korean Peninsula. I highly appreciate that we are steadily developing multifaceted bilateral relations after the establishment of diplomatic contacts in 1990", Chung said while opening the talks with Lavrov.
He noted that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korea remained an important economic partner of Russia, the second-biggest one in the Far East.
"In 2019, [bilateral] trade reached $22.3 billion and the inter-human contacts became the most intensive in the history of [South] Korean-Russian relations. Although the pandemic urges us to change the usual format of cooperation, I believe that at such moments we must not reduce our contacts and continue the close cooperation to boost inter-human contacts", Chung added.
In the early hours of Thursday, North Korea test-fired two ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan, sparking concern in South Korea and Japan.
Source: Sputnik