The Foreign Ministry reported that Park made the statement at an ASEAN meeting of foreign ministers in Cambodia.
The head of South Korean diplomacy emphasized that Seoul’s association with the bloc will focus on strengthening strategic relations beyond the economic sector, since ASEAN has significant weight in the Indo-Pacific, and the region will naturally become the center of the new initiative from South Korea.
After the meeting, Park attended an extended session of ASEAN plus three, which also included Foreign Ministers Wang Yi (China) and Hayashi Yoshimasa (Japan), the South Korean Foreign Ministry reported.
These are the first face-to-face trilateral talks among foreign ministers in three years, as the meetings organized by ASEAN in 2020 and 2021 were held online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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