South Korea's foreign minister continues bilateral talks with Japanese and Russian counterparts

More diplomats are arriving in Singapore today for the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting.This morning, North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, also arrived.We'll have more on his activities later in the day,... but in the meantime, South Korea's foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha continued holding bilateral talks on Thursday with her counterparts.Our Foreign Ministry correspondent Lee Ji-won reports from Singapore. Having spent the day before with her counterparts from Southeast Asia, South Korea's foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha held bilateral talks with Northeast Asian foreign ministers on Thursday. Minister Kang started the day's meetings with Russia's Sergei Lavrov in the late afternoon.Unlike what many had expected, they did not focus on North Korea's denuclearization, but more on how the two Koreas and Russia can cooperate on economic issues. But noting how not much progress can be made due to international sanctions on North Korea, the two diplomats simply reviewed the joint research on gas and railway projects. Minister Kang then had talks with Japanese foreign minister Taro Kono. The two once again agreed that economic sanctions on North Korea must remain in place until concrete steps are taken by Pyongyang. The two also exchanged views on bilateral issues, including Japan's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II. Minister Kang explained that the South Korean government had recently allocated a budget to replace Tokyo's roughly 9 million U.S. dollar fund for the sex slavery victims, and minister Kono requested that South Korea "handle the matter well", but did not further elaborate. Kang's meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi,... was postponed to Friday due to a delay in the Chinese side's schedule. Wang, during a press conference late Thursday, said he supports a declaration of the end of the Korean War. "We don't think that any country in today's world, the United States included, wants to see war breaking out again. Thus, the declaration of the end of the [Korean] war is in keeping with the trend of our time and reflects the aspiration of people of all countries including the two countries on the Korean Peninsula." Answering a reporter's question on lifting economic sanctions on Pyongyang, Wang said that it obviously needs to be reconsidered along with the progress made in Pyongyang's denuclearization. South Korea's top diplomat will try to reschedule her meeting with the Chinese foreign minister for Friday, in between her other meetings with counterparts from South East Asia. Lee Ji-won, Arirang News, Singapore.