Roundup: S.Korea, India agree to strengthen economic, security ties

South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held summit talks in Seoul on Monday, agreeing to strengthen bilateral economic and trade relations, especially in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.

Park and Modi agreed to upgrade the bilateral relations into a "special strategic partnership," while sharing views that there is great potential for an expanded cooperation in defense and security between the two countries.

Modi, who took office in May 2014, arrived earlier in the day in Seoul, the last leg of his three-nation tour to Asia which has already taken him to China and Mongolia.

His travel came after Park made a state visit to India in January 2014. Modi is scheduled to head back home after attending the first India-South Korea CEO forum in Seoul on Tuesday.

Top security advisors to President Park and Prime Minister Modi signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to hold a regular dialogue between them and exchange security-related information between the security offices of the two nations.

The joint statement, released after the summit, said that the security offices will strengthen regular consultations in security, defense and cyber security, while newly launching the two-plus-two meeting between vice ministers of foreign affairs and defense.

South Korea and India also plan to hold summit meeting annually through multilateral occasions or mutual visits, while helping the bilateral parliaments facilitate exchanges. Modi invited Park to visit India again.

Park and Modi stressed the importance of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, expressing concerns over the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, the statement said.

The two leaders urged the DPRK to completely abide by international obligations, including UN Security Council's resolutions, and to comply with promises made in the joint statement unveiled after the six-party talks in 2005 for the dismantling of the DPRK's nuclear weapons program.

During the summit, the two leaders agreed to begin negotiations by June 2016 about the revision of the already-signed comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA).

The India-South Korea CEPA, equal to a free trade accord, was implemented in January 2010, but Seoul raised the needs for its revision as the India-Japan CEPA, which came into force in August 2011, granted more liberalization to Japanese goods than to South Korean products.

President Park welcomed the Modi-proposed "Make in India" initiative, under which India aims to raise the rate of manufacturing industry to its gross domestic product (GDP) from the current 15 percent to 25 percent by 2022.

To increase bilateral manufacturing partnership, especially in the shipbuilding industry, India's state-owned natural gas company GAIL called for South Korean shipbuilders to join its bidding for nine LNG carriers worth around 1.8 billion U.S. dollars.

The two leaders agreed to form a bilateral working group, composed of director-general officials and private firms, to discuss a broad range of cooperation in the shipbuilding area, including the shipyard construction and warship building.

Park asked Modi to pay more attention to the industrial complex for South Korean companies alone, which is now being built in Rajastan in northwest India, to strengthen bilateral manufacturing cooperation.

South Korea plans to provide 10 billion U.S. dollars as a financial support for domestic companies, which will take part in India's infrastructure development projects, to help them join the projects, such as the high-speed railroad project for which some 140 billion dollars would be spent in the next five years.

Park and Modi also agreed to strengthen cooperation in the shipping and logistics sectors as well as renewable energy and smart grid.

Bilateral trade between South Korea and India was 18.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, after topping 20 billion dollars in 2011. There are 658 South Korean companies which have invested 3.49 billion dollars in India as of June 2014. Endi