By Li Hongmei
Hours after the arrival of South Korean President Park Geun-hye in Beijing for a four-day state visit, she met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for talks on wide-ranging topics that included denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.
A joint communique, issued after the summit, said the two sides pledged to work closely together to make the Korean Peninsula free of atomic weapons.
The two sides also signed eight memorandums of understanding, including agreements that call for visa waiver for diplomats from each side, greater cooperation in maritime affairs, energy and other areas.
The communique said the two countries will seek all forms of exchange between their leaders, in face-to-face meetings, by phone and by letter, on a frequent basis. They also agreed to establish a dialogue channel between South Korea's presidential national security chief and China's state councilor in charge of foreign affairs.
An appendix to the communiqué also laid out a series of specific commitments the two sides made to move forward to all-round cooperation from political sectors, investment and trade to people-to-people and cultural exchanges, consular affairs and regional and international issues.
Much of Thursday's summit was also devoted to how to move bilateral relations forward as well.
China and South Korea established diplomatic relations in 1992. Since then, the two countries have made strides in their economic and trade relations, with China overtaking the United States as South Korea's No. 1 trade partner.
On economic issues, the two sides agreed to step up efforts to expand bilateral trade volume to US$300 billion by 2015 and make progress in ongoing negotiations to free up trade between two of Asia's biggest economies.
Last year's trade volume between the two sides amounted to US $215 billion.
The two countries also agreed to extend their currency swap deal by three years to keep it valid until 2017. South Korea and China agreed in 2011 to double their won-yuan swap line to 360 billion yuan. That accord was to expire in 2014.
On Friday, Park plans to meet one-on-one with two other top Chinese leaders, Premier Li Keqiang and Zhang Dejiang, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress(NPC), to talk about ways to strengthen relations between the two countries, officials said.
Park's Beijing visit also includes an address at a forum of business leaders from the two countries, a speech at a university in Beijing and a tour of South Korean firms operating in China. On Saturday, Park will fly to the western Chinese city of Xi'an for a two-day visit.
