Park to hold summit with Russia's Putin

South Korean President Park Geun-hye was to hold a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday with a focus on increasing economic cooperation, such as a Russian-led project to develop a North Korean border port as a gateway for exports.

Putin arrived earlier Wednesday on a one-day visit for his second summit with Park. They first met in September on the sidelines of a Group of 20 major economies meeting in Russia's second-largest city of St. Petersburg.

Like the September summit, Wednesday's is also expected to center on economic cooperation.

Attention will be focused on a Russian-led project to develop North Korea's ice-free northeastern port of Rajin into a gateway for exports. In September, a rail link reopened between Rajin and the nearby Russian town of Khasan, connecting the port to Russia's Trans Siberian Railway (TSR).

News reports have said a group of South Korean companies, including steel giant POSCO, plans to conclude a memorandum of understanding during Putin's visit to buy a stake in RasonKonTrans, the Russian-North Korean joint venture carrying out the rail and port renovation project.

Should the ongoing project to modernize the port of Rajin be completed, Russia can use the rail-connected port as a key export point. South Korean firms can also ship exports first to Rajin and transport them to as far as Europe via the Russian railway.

The project fits into Park's "Eurasian initiative" that calls for binding Eurasian nations closely together by linking roads and railways to realize what she called the "Silk Road Express" running from South Korea to Europe via North Korea, Russia and China.

It could also help reduce tensions on the divided peninsula.

Park and Putin could also talk about a long-discussed project to link railways of the two countries via North Korea and through to Europe. But it is unlikely for them to reach any agreement, as the project has made little headway so far due mainly to security tensions.

Other topics for the meeting include regional security issues, such as the North Korean nuclear standoff. Russia is a member of the six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear program and is also one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

After the summit, officials from the two countries plan to sign a visa-exemption pact between the two countries, with Park and Putin in attendance. The agreement calls for allowing Koreans and Russians to visit each other's nation without a visa for up to 60 days.

The two sides also plan to issue a joint statement assessing relations between the two countries so far and laying out how they should be developed in the next five years, Seoul's presidential office said.

Putin's visit to Seoul is the first by a leader from the "four major powers," which also includes the United States, Japan and China, since Park came into office. The Russian president is also the sixth foreign leader to visit South Korea under the Park administration. (Yonhap News)