Agreed to Open an Asia-European Hotline to Cope with Cyberterrorism

President Roh Moo-hyun, visiting Vietnam to attend the 5th ASEM summit, participated in the summit of ASEM`s 13 Asian nations held at the international conference room located in Hanoi yesterday, and called for support and cooperation in resolving the North Korea nuclear issue peacefully.

President Roh and the other leaders of ASEM`s former 25 nations held a celebration to welcome the new member nations yesterday afternoon and approved their initiation. They are: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar of Asia; and Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Slovakia, which newly joined the European Union (EU).

ASEM, which was founded in 1996, consists of three Northeast Asian nations (Korea, China, Japan), 10 ASEAN nations, and 25 EU members, increasing the total to 38 nations.

Before this event, assistant deputy ministers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of ASEM`s member nations held a Senior Officials` Meeting (SOM) on October 6, and approved the "Project to Strengthen Security in Cyberspace," a proposal co-sponsored by five nations including Korea, Singapore, Germany, Poland, and Portugal as this ASEM meeting`s agenda, and agreed to open a hotline among agencies specializing in anti-cyberterrorism of Asia’s and Europe`s major nations.

At this meeting, with cross-boarder cyberterrorism including hacking national computer networks surging, member nations decided to block this through prompt information exchanges among each nation`s anti-cyberterrorism agencies, and come up with common regulation criteria to cope with spam mails, which can cause huge social and economic problems.

Meanwhile, concerning recent controversial issues of Korea`s abstraction and enrichment of nuclear materials, President Roh will manifest four grand principles regarding the peaceful use of nuclear energy, through 3-minute speeches, at the first and second rounds of ASEM which will officially begin today, stating, "Korea will never use nuclear energy militarily."

Jung-Hun Kim jnghn@donga.com