The ASEAN-Korea Center held its annual council meeting last week to take stock of last year’s progress and discuss this year’s budget and plans. 

The meeting, the seventh in running, was attended by 11 directors from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Korea that make up the highest decision-making body of the center.

The council directors reviewed last year’s programs leading up to the ASEAN-Korea Commemorative Summit held in Busan last December. The summit celebrated 25 years of bilateral relations and the center’s activities since it was founded in 2009. 

Discussion focused on this year’s programs: promoting intra-agency collaboration; supporting small and medium enterprises; building capacity for trade; training tourism professionals; boosting cultural exchanges and youth networking; and implementing projects outlined in the joint statement of the summit.

A reception hosted by Korea’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Tae-yong was held at Lotte Hotel in Seoul on Thursday.

“Our friendship was founded upon humble beginnings and is now flourishing day after day,” Cho said in a keynote speech, noting that the sectoral dialogue partnership established in 1989 became a strategic partnership in 2010.

Secretary-General of ASEAN-Korea Center Chung Hae-moon said, “While the European Union has been underpinned by the two pillars of the Christian civilization and democracy, the ASEAN has been guided by the value of ‘harmony in diversity.’”

“It is no small feat that ASEAN has been able to achieve ‘unity in diversity’ across the diverse spectrum of cultures, ethnicities, religions, languages, ideologies and histories.”

Chung said that the bilateral free trade agreement that entered into force in 2009 has made ASEAN Korea’s core partner on all fronts. “Our multifaceted, multilayered and multidimensional relations give us optimism about our future.”

The ASEAN Economic Community is scheduled to launch by the end of this year and is expected to create an economic bloc of 640 million people and a combined annual gross domestic product of $3 trillion.

The AEC will promote East Asia’s integration and cooperation, in addition to being a growth engine of the global economy, according to the secretary-general.

From 1989 to 2013, bilateral trade volume increased seventeenfold from $8.2 billion to $138 billion. ASEAN is Korea’s top travel destination, second-largest trade partner surpassing the U.S., European Union and Japan, and the third-largest investment haven.

By Joel Lee (joel@heraldcorp.com)