1. On November 24, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se met with US Representative Mike Kelly, who is on a visit to the Republic of Korea at the invitation of the Foreign Ministry. In their meeting, the Minister and the Representative exchanged in-depth views on the bilateral matters, including the KORUS (Korea-US) FTA, the ROK-US Nuclear Cooperation Agreement and the visa quota for professionals, as well as the way forward for the bilateral alliance and situations in diverse regions of the world.

* Congressman Kelly is on a visit to the ROK from November 21 to 25 under the Foreign Ministry’s Congressional Member Exchange Program.

2. Minister Yun extended appreciation to Congressman Kelly, a co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Korea and co-President of the Korea-US Inter-Parliamentary Council, for leading the US Congress to pay keen attention to and render support on issues concerning the ROK-US alliance, including the ROK President’s visit to the US, the KORUS FTA and the ROK-US Nuclear Cooperation Agreement; and for highlighting the strength of the ROK-US alliance in his lecture at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies on November 24 and on various other occasions.

3. Congressman Kelly, expressing gratitude to the ROK government for the invitation to the ROK, stressed that the ROK-US alliance is a solid alliance that had been forged in blood and built on the sacrifice of and cooperation between many people of the two countries, including war veterans, over the period of more than a half century.

4. Congressman Kelly noted with deep appreciation that President Park Geun-hye’s trustpolitik and Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative are initiatives that can promote cooperation based on “trust,” a value all people can share.

◦ Minister Yun stressed that the ROK’s trustpolitik is aimed at transforming the trust-deficient regional order to a trust-surplus one and that the policy is based on the solid ROK-US alliance.

5. Minister Yun noted with appreciation that the follow-up measures on the recent ROK-US summit talks, including the first ROK-US Senior Economic Dialogue held in the US on November 20 as agreed at the summit talks, are moving smoothly forward, which, he said, clearly demonstrates that the two countries are institutionalizing their cooperation and broadening the scope of their cooperation based on trust.

6. Minister Yun extended appreciation to Congressman Kelly for co-tabling in February 2015 the “Partner with Korea Act,” which calls for increasing the visa quota for Korean professionals. In that regard, the Minister asked the Congressman to continue to play a role in order for outstanding Korean professionals to contribute to the vitalization of the US economy.

◦ In response, Congressman Kelly, commenting that the presence of Korean professional workforce in the US is beneficial to the US, stated that the US Congress will continue efforts in that regard.

7. Congressman Kelly, calling the new ROK-US Nuclear Cooperation Agreement an exemplary case of perfect bilateral cooperation that has won unanimous support from the US Congress, voiced expectation that the Agreement will also offer a big opportunity to the US nuclear industry.

◦ Minister Yun described the new ROK-US Nuclear Cooperation Agreement as a case where the two countries had conceived a creative solution in cooperation with each other based on trust; as well as one of the three pillars of the bilateral alliance with strategic implications, the other two of which are the ROK-US Mutual Defense Agreement and the KORUS FTA. He expressed expectation that the bilateral Nuclear Cooperation Agreement will have such economic effect as job creation in the two countries and help them respond to climate change.


* unofficial translation