The annual Culture Ministers' meeting between South Korea, China and Japan took place in Korea's western port city of Incheon today.
The ministers signed a joint agreement named the 'Incheon Declaration'... to promote cultural exchanges and cooperation between the three nations.
We have our Kan Hyeong-woo at the scene to tell us more about the meeting.
Hyeong-woo, what does the declaration say?
Hi, Ji-yoon. So here at the Songdo Conventia, the Culture Ministers of South Korea, China and Japan have vowed to make more efforts to expand and develop cultural exchanges and cooperation between the three nations as you just said.
In particular, the ministers pledged to put more focus on the future generations and how culture can play a role in the 4th industrial revolution.
So in this year's 11th edition of the South Korea-China-Japan culture minister's meeting,
the three ministers - South Korea's Park Yang-woo, China's Luo Shugang and Japan's Masahiko Shibayama - all agreed that cultural exchanges and cooperation should be based on respect and trust for one another.
In the Incheon Declaration, they made it clear that building cooperative networks between the future generations is important for the next decade.
The ministers pledged to promote exchanges between the youngsters of the three countries.
They acknowledged the important relationship between cultural and science technology in today's world... and agreed to work together to achieve harmony and balance between culture and technology.
The three countries also vowed to increase cultural exchanges at a civilian level.
Following the signing ceremony of the declaration,... South Korea's Suncheon, China's Yangzhou, Japan's Kitakyushu have been named as the 2020 East Asian culture cities.
Those cities will be building networks with each other to boost cultural exchanges.
Now let me go back to what you said at the beginning Ji-yoon... about the rising tensions between Seoul and Tokyo, especially in politics and the economy.
According to a South Korean culture ministry official,... Culture Ministers of Seoul and Tokyo implicitly agreed to put aside all the other delicate matters like the ongoing trade disputes, forced labor victims, comfort women issues and the end of the military intelligence-sharing pact between the two nations.
So the worsening relationship was not brought up during the ministerial level talks yesterday.
Instead, they decided to focus on ways to promote cultural exchanges and cooperation. ( )
That's it from me for now. But there is a meeting scheduled for this afternoon... between Tourism Ministers of South Korea and Japan,... followed by the three-way meeting that will include their Chinese counterpart later in the day. We will keep you updated on that in our later newscast. Ji-yoon.
