Officials from South Korea and Germany will hold a first round of bilateral talks to discuss current geopolitical issues on the Korean Peninsula and share the European country’s experience of achieving peaceful unification, the Seoul government said Friday.
Germany’s top diplomat, Frank-Walter Steinmeiser, is currently in Seoul to participate in the talks and to meet President Park Geun-hye in the afternoon. Steinmeiser met South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se in the morning and is set to visit the truce village of Panmunjeom on Saturday.
The meeting, named the Advisory Committee on Unification and Foreign Policies, was organized as a follow-up step for a bilateral agreement reached in September, officials said.
South Korea and Germany agreed to create the 14-member panel to support Seoul’s efforts to learn from the unification of East and West Germany. This year, the European country is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In the meeting, officials from both countries are to study ways to seek support from neighboring countries during the unification process. Experts and officials say that East and West Germany were able to integrate smoothly through holding a series of successful negotiations with the countries involved. The negotiations, which became known as the “2+4 Talks,” involved the two Germanys and the four powers -- the U.S., France, the U.K. and the Soviet Union -- that had engaged in the postwar occupation of the European countries.
South Korea and Germany have been accelerating joint efforts since Park’s visit to the east German town of Dresden in March.
Park unveiled her unification proposal, known as “the Dresden declaration,” to expand humanitarian aid to North Korean people and build infrastructure there.
By Cho Chung-un (
christory@heraldcorp.com)
