1. As part of efforts to win wider international support for the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative pursued by the government of the Republic of Korea, a workshop on the Initiative was held in Washington D.C. on February 27 with relevant experts from both countries in attendance.

° A number of Korea and East Asia experts from leading US think tanks attended the workshop and expressed interest in the Initiative. These experts included a senior researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Scott Snyder; a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Robert Einhorn; a senior advisor at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) Patrick Cronin; Deputy Executive Director of Amnesty International Frank Jannuzi; and Director at the Stimson Center Alan Romberg.

° The ROK participants included Lee Kyung-soo, the Foreign Ministry’s Deputy Minister for Political Affairs; Cho Hyun-dong, Diplomatic Minister at the ROK Embassy in the US; Lee Sang-Hyun, Director of the Security Studies Program at the Sejong Institute; Choi Kang, Vice President for Research at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies; and Han Seok-hee, a professor at Yonsei University.

2. At the workshop themed “the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative and the changing security environment in the region,” the ROK participants explained the basic content of the Initiative and answered questions from their US counterparts on main matters of concern of the latter, thereby helping the US experts better understand the Initiative.

° In particular, the ROK participants highlighted that while the year 2013 was the year when ROK and the US worked to formulate a vision and build a cooperative framework for jointly opening a future in Northeast Asia, the year 2014 will be one when the two countries will make all-out efforts to seek specific ways to this end. They proposed that the two sides start working together in non-traditional security fields, including nuclear safety, energy security, cyberspace, environment and public healthcare where cooperation can be easily pursued, and then gradually expand their scope of cooperation.

3. The ROK and the US participants reached a common understanding that they should jointly explore the possibility of expanding cooperation mainly in areas where the ROK-US and multilateral-regional cooperation is imperative. They also affirmed that the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative is mutually complementary with the ROK-US alliance and the US policy of rebalancing to Asia.

° The two sides shared the view that the workshop helped enhance the understanding of the US on the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative and that they should hold further meetings on the Initiative.

                Spokesperson and Deputy Minister for Public Relations of MOFA

* unofficial translation