Lee returns home after official trip to Russia

SEOUL, Oct. 1 (Yonhap) -- President Lee Myung-bak returned home on Wednesday
after winding up his three-day official visit to Russia, during which South Korea
and Russia upgraded their bilateral relations to a strategic cooperative
partnership and signed a large-scale natural gas supply deal expected to involve
North Korea.

Lee held talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday for the landmark agreements on the upgraded
partnership and closer cooperation in the development of energy resources and
construction of logistics infrastructures.
Lee and Medvedev also issued a joint summit statement and sealed a dozen MOUs
calling for practical bilateral cooperation across the board, including the
fields of politics, diplomacy, security, defense, energy, economy and aerospace
and polar development.
Notably, Lee and Medvedev agreed to work together to send Russian natural gas
through a pipeline to South Korea via North Korea starting in 2015 and link the
inter-Korean railway with the trans-Siberian railway for its eventual connection
to Europe.
Lee's Russian trip capped off his visit to all four superpowers surrounding the
Korean Peninsula, as he has already visited the U.S., Japan and China.
Explaining the meaning of his successive summit diplomacy, Lee said to reporters
in Moscow, "The U.S., Russia, China and Japan could be among the superpowers
related to Northeast Asia. Our upgraded relations with all four is actually a
very important change."
"Its economic implications are enormous ... In the event of an emergency on the
Korean Peninsula, the upgraded relations with the four would be very beneficial
to us. We have also established steady consultation channels with them."
On his way back home, Lee stopped over in Saint Petersburg, where he met with
municipal leaders and received an honorary doctorate from Saint Petersburg State
University, the alma mater of both Medvedev and Putin.
In an address given to Russian college students after his doctoral award
ceremony, Lee again stressed the importance of the envisioned Korean-Russian rail
and energy links and other summit agreements.
During his Kremlin summit with Lee, Medvedev agreed to make a reciprocal visit to
South Korea in the near future.