FOREIGN MINISTERS OF MONGOLIA AND SOUTH KOREA HOLD OFFICIAL TALKS

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Paying an official visit to the Republic of Korea, Mongolia's Minister of Foreign Affairs L.Bold Wednesday held official talks with Mr Yun Byung-se, the S.Korean Foreign Minister. The dignitaries said that the bilateral relations have been widening in all spheres at the comprehensive partnership level, and expressed a hope that the current visit of the Mongolian FM will significantly contribute to deepening of the ties. This is the first official visit of the Mongolian Foreign Minister paid to South Korea, they noted. The Mongolian Minister touched upon issues of facilitating for the Mongolians terms for traveling to Republic of Korea. Our countries have gained some achievements through an agreement in this matter, he noted and proposed enhancing the visa terms and letting Mongolians visit the country without visas. He also asked the S.Korean side to stop taking pledge money from our visa applicants, "it breaches the agreement established in 2012". In response, Mr Yun promised to learn opportunities to ease the visas for Mongolians, to stop demanding the pledge money, and to establish a visa-free agreement. The sides admitted that the S.Korean investments in Mongolia are lower of the expected, "some urgent steps are needed here", and considered as necessity to set up an intergovernmental mechanism for economic cooperation with a key purpose to boost mutually beneficial collaboration in investing the biggest projects and programmes in Mongolian mining and infrastructure and in technology, human resources and management sectors. In addition, the Ministries agreed to cooperate in improving people’s knowledge and understanding about each other and to expand the economic and cultural ties. The parties also noted that it is necessary to implement high level mutual visits in frames of the 25th anniversary of the bilateral diplomatic relations to be celebrated in 2015. Mr Yun told his Mongolian colleague that the South Korean President Park Geun-hye sends her greeting to Mongolian leader Ts.Elbegdorj and invites him to the Republic of Korea.