South Korea and China held their first joint forum on public diplomacy on Tuesday as the two countries increase efforts to step up their nongovernment-level ties.

The forum with a tag line “the path toward winning heart and trust” was held in Seoul, with officials from the foreign ministries of the two nations and diplomacy scholars attending.

The forum is part of efforts by the two neighbors to promote bilateral public diplomacy encompassing nonpolitical sectors like culture, sports or education between them.

“Through their 21 years of bilateral ties, both countries made historic advancement in their relations that are now at a historically unprecedented level,” China‘s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a speech, delivered by Zhang Xin Sen, China’s ambassador to South Korea.

“China aims to improve public sentiment through omnidirectional public diplomacy cooperation with South Korea and to pave the private-level way for the strategic (Seoul-Beijing) partnership,” the minister said.

South Korea‘s Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul said, “This forum was designed to be the place to demolish the wall of misunderstanding between the two countries’ people and to collect ideas to spread good image.”

“The global community is now watching China‘s reascent as a global power and also increasing expectations on China’s pledges to pursue global peace and harmony and to increase contributions to the joint prosperity of the humankind,” Cho said.

South Korea and China, former war adversaries in the 1950-53 Korean War, established their diplomatic ties in 1992 in light of the end of the Cold War before becoming key trade partners.

In the forum, the two countries will adopt a joint proposal on closed bilateral public diplomacy ties on nine main sectors including youth exchange, media cooperation and language education.

(Yonhap News)