한중일 문화장관 "향후 10년간 미래세대 교류 증진, 문화산업 분야 성장 도모"
The annual meeting of culture and tourism ministers from South Korea, China and Japan took place in Korea's western port city of Incheon today.
There, they signed a joint agreement called the 'Incheon Declaration'... to promote cultural exchanges and cooperation between all three countries.
Our Kan Hyeong-woo has the story.
The Culture Ministers of South Korea, China and Japan have vowed to redouble their efforts to expand and develop cultural exchanges and cooperation over the next decade.
"The three nations agreed to promote exchanges by future generations and as for the fourth industrial revolution, the three countries pledged to cooperate to achieve harmony and development of culture and science technology."
Signing the 'Incheon Declaration'... 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 mutual trust and respect.
Following the signing ceremony,... South Korea's Suncheon, China's Yangzhou, Japan's Kitakyushu have been named as the 2020 East Asian culture cities - which will be working with one another to boost cultural exchanges.
Before the South Korean and Japanese tourism ministers sat down for their afternoon meeting,... a local civic group held a protest in front of the meeting venue.
Calling for a boycott of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics over concerns of radioactive contamination,... the civic group delivered its petition to a Japanese official... and called upon Tokyo to halt their (quote)"economic retaliation measures."
But according to a South Korean culture ministry official,... the culture ministers of Seoul and Tokyo implicitly agreed to put aside matters like the ongoing disputes over trade, forced labor, comfort women and the end of a military intelligence-sharing pact between the two nations.
"The worsening relationship between South Korea and Japan was not brought up during the cultural ministerial-level talks here at the Songdo Conventia.
Instead, they decided to focus on ways to promote cultural exchanges and cooperation. Kan Hyeong-woo, Arirang News."
