President Park Geun-hye traveled to Germany for a state visit from March 25 to March 28 after visiting the Netherlands to attend the Nuclear Security Summit from March 23 to 25.



President Park Geun-hye attended the third Nuclear Security Summit, to be held in The Hague, Netherlands, from March 24 to 25. The Nuclear Security Summit is the largest multilateral forum on security, bringing together 53 heads of state and government as well as the leaders of four major international organizations: the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Union and Interpol.

At the opening session of the summit on March 24, President Park delivered the keynote speech as she is head of state of the previous summit’s chair nation. The president highlighted the common responsibility of the international community in preventing nuclear terrorism, a grave threat to peace and safety across the globe. She also outlined the direction of future developments for the international nuclear security regime under the vision of realizing a world without nuclear weapons.

On the sidelines of the Summit, President Park held one-on-one talks with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on March 24 to discuss key regional and global issues, as well as ways to promote mutually beneficial and substantive cooperation between Korea and the Netherlands.

President Park paid a state visit to Germany from March 25 to 28 at the invitation of German President Joachim Gauck. Her first destination was Berlin, where she took part in talks and a luncheon with President Gauck, as well as a summit with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In the meetings with the German president and chancellor, President Park engaged in in-depth discussions on topics including the promotion of trade and investment and the advancement of substantive bilateral cooperation in such sectors as industry, small- and medium-sized enterprises, science, vocational education and culture. The leaders also discussed the state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula, including cooperation for unification and the North Korean nuclear issue.

President Park’s itinerary in Berlin also included meeting with various figures who played a prominent role in German unification and with Korean and German business leaders.

She then visited Dresden, the economic center of the former East German region and a thriving science and technology hub, as well as Frankfurt, the largest city in Hesse and home to a large number of Korean businesses and residents.