Park proposes symposium on Eurasian logistics network in 2015

South Korea on Thursday proposed a symposium next year to discuss a logistics network across Eurasian nations as part of President Park Geun-hye's ambitious initiative to bind Eurasian nations closer together.

   South Korea made the proposal as more than 50 leaders from Asia and Europe opened their biennial two-day Asia-Europe Meeting, known as ASEM, in Milan.

   The proposed symposium would bring together officials and experts from Russia, China and other countries as well as international organizations to connect Eurasian nations, according to Park's office.

   South Korea also hopes to form a group of experts to address such challenges as custom clearance and improvement of transportation infrastructure.

   The move is designed to raise international awareness of Park's Eurasia initiative, Park's office said.

   Park has been pushing for her Eurasia initiative that calls for, among other things, the establishment of a logistics and energy network across Eurasian nations.

   South Korea hopes to eventually link its rail network to Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway via North Korea, an ambitious project that will cut shipping times and logistics costs for South Korea's Europe-bound exports.

   In the summit, Park reportedly plans to stress that her initiative could help induce North Korea to embrace openness, which in turn could help resolve the impasse over Pyongyang's nuclear

program and lay the groundwork for potential unification with North Korea.

   Discussions on the project to connect the Trans-Siberian Railway with the potential Trans-Korean Railway have been underway for more than a decade, although no major progress has been made due to geopolitical obstacles, particularly North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

   Park will hold bilateral talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang as well as her counterparts from France and Denmark on the sidelines of the ASEM summit, the official said,

   Still, she appears unlikely to sit down for talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who said in Tokyo on Wednesday that it would be good if he has a chance to talk to Park on the sidelines of the ASEM summit.

   "We are set to hold bilateral talks with some countries with which we have pending issues," South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told Yonhap News Agency by phone in Milan on Wednesday night.

   He said holding bilateral talks with Japan and other countries "won't be easy" due to a tight schedule at the multilateral conference, though he said he was not sure whether there could be any chance for an encounter between Park and Abe.

   Park has shunned a summit with Abe, though they met in a trilateral summit with U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in the Netherlands in March.  It was the first summit between Seoul and Tokyo in nearly two years.

   Abe's latest comments came as South Korea and Japan are seeking to repair bilateral relations soured by historical disputes stemming from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

   Seoul and Tokyo have long been at odds over Japan's territorial claims to South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo as well as the issue of elderly South Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japan's World War II soldiers.

   South Korea has repeatedly urged Japanese leaders to face up to history and take forward-looking measures for the South Korean sex slaves. (Yonhap)