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South Korea interested in expanding ties with Moscow, Russian senator says

Valentina Matviyenko has had a 'very substantive meeting' with South Korean President Moon Jae-in

SEOUL, October 5. /TASS/. The South Korean leadership is interested in expanding relations with Russia, the implementation of the joint projects will be accelerated, Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Valentina Matviyenko told reporters on Friday summing up the results of her official visit.

According to the speaker, she had a very substantive meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. "We discussed entire range of bilateral Russian-South Korean relations. I could see once again that both the country’s president and political leadership support and are interested in expanding the entire range of bilateral relations between our countries and are determined to be more active," the speaker said.

"We discussed why some projects have stalled. The reasons for that are bureaucracy and the lack of the legal framework. We decided that both parties will give a fresh impetus to those agreements, which were reached during the South Korean president’s visit to Russia in June," Matviyenko noted. She also stressed that it was necessary to give specific substance to Moon Jae-in’s plan to create "nine bridges" of cooperation with Russia.

The South Korean president earlier came up with the initiative to develop economic cooperation with Russia in nine areas, including shipbuilding, the development of ports, the use of development of the Northern Sea Route, the oil and gas sector, the development of railways, the electric power energy, the setting up of working groups on various economic issues, agriculture and the fishing industry.