China, S. Korea should strengthen public diplomacy: officials

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China and South Korea should boost mutual-understanding through more public diplomacy initiatives including the economic and trade exchanges, personnel exchanges, research cooperation, the mass media and others, officials said Tuesday during the Sino-South Korea forum on public diplomacy held in Seoul.

"China and South Korea have lots of similarities in history and culture. The public diplomacy are valued and implemented by leaders of both sides. Frequent communications between citizens of the two countries have laid solid foundation for bilateral relations. So it is quite necessary for China and South Korea to boost mutual understandings through various public diplomacy activities in future," said Li Zhaoxing, chairman of the China Public Diplomacy Association, also former Chinese foreign minister.

Li added that many Chinese people have known the economic development and high technology of South Korea through its TV series, which demonstrates that cultural public diplomacy can be a good supplement to state diplomacy.

At the forum, more than 200 officials, scholars, enterprisers and journalists discussed how to promote bilateral cooperation in the field of public diplomacy including non-political diplomacy efforts toward the public of the two countries.

"We will take advantages of K-pop, TV series, Films, education and other soft powers to promote South Korea's cultural prosperity. Meanwhile, we would like to share our experiences with China and other countries to make more contributions to the world," said Hahn Choong-hee, an official of South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Hahn also suggested that China and South Korea enhance their communications among the youth and netizens, in order to remove the misunderstandings between each other.

Lee Hee-Ok, professor of Sungkyunkwan University of South Korea, called on this forum develops into a multilateral diplomatic platform, which embraces most East Asian countries like China, South Korea and Japan considering their "shared values".

The forum was jointly organized by ministries of foreign affairs of the two countries. The two sides finally signed a proposal aiming at deepening Sino-South Korea cooperation in the fields of public diplomacy.

The next Sino-South Korea forum on public diplomacy will be held in China next year.

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