1. Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, together with the chair of the Mekong delegation, Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn of Cambodia, presided over the sixth foreign ministerial meeting between the Republic of Korea and the countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion.

2. At the meeting, the two sides shared the view that a momentum of development cooperation is being built in 2016 -- the year the ASEAN Economic Community has been launched and the first year of the implementation of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (SDGs). They agreed to actively conduct cooperation projects under the ROK-Mekong Plan of Action for 2014-2017.

° Minister Yun, taking note of the steady implementation over the past two years of the ROK-Mekong Plan of Action for 2014-2017, adopted in 2014, spoke of the plan to faithfully conduct the “research on inland waterway transport in the Mekong region,” designed to enhance connectivity; and, based on the outcome of the research, to propose in the first half of the year 2017 ways to improve the inland waterway transport system and possible projects for putting the system into high gear.

° In the area of green growth, one of the six priority fields for cooperation, the Minister asked the Mekong countries to expedite their domestic procedures for an early establishment of the ASEAN-ROK Forest Cooperation (AFoCo) mechanism.

3. The Foreign Ministers from the two sides took note of the remarkable achievements, such as seven new cooperation projects for the year 2016, made with the ROK-Mekong Cooperation Fund, whose coffers had expanded to one million US dollars in 2015.

° In this regard, the two sides hailed the progress in the efforts to institutionalize the ROK-Mekong cooperation, with the role of the Mekong Institute, the overseer of the ROK-Mekong Cooperation Fund, expanded.

4. The Foreign Ministers from the two sides took note of the fourth ROK-Mekong Business Forum, held in Myanmar, on June 30, as a good opportunity to expand bilateral investment, including through the network built between small- and medium-sized enterprises of the two sides.

5. Minister Yun stated that the ROK will continue to support with interest the Mekong countries’ efforts to build capacity in the areas of management of disasters and of water resources, major, non-traditional security issues of interest of the Mekong countries.

6. The seventh ROK-Mekong foreign ministerial meeting will take place in the ROK, during which the ROK-Mekong Plan of Action for 2017-2020 will be adopted.


* unofficial translation