Bulgarian Atlantic Club Set to Contribute to Korea's Unification

(L-R) Bulgarian Ambassador to Korea Kosyo Kitipov, Korean Minister of Unification Hyun In-taek, President of the Bulgarian Atlantic Club Solomon Passy, member of the Board of the Bulgarian Atlantic Club Maxim Behar in Seoul. Photo by M3

A delegation of the Atlantic Club in Bulgaria has shared European experience with South Korea's Minister of Unification, Hyun In-taek, at a meeting in Seoul as part of an official week-long visit.

The visit of the delegation of the Bulgarian Atlantic Council to South Korea is the first of its kind in the 20-year history of the diplomatic relations between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of Korea.

The delegation consisting of the President of the Atlantic Club Bulgaria, Solomon Passy, and businessman Maxim Behar, CEO of M3 Communications Group, Inc., who is an Atlantic Club Board member is in Korea at the invitation of the Korean government and the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

During the meeting with Korea's Unification Minister Hyun In-taek, which took place on the fourth day of the visit of the Bulgarian delegation, the President of the Atlantic Club in Bulgaria Solomon Passy presented the Bulgarian and European experience in unification and integration efforts – all the way from Bulgaria's National Unification in 1885, through the Unification of Germany after the Cold War, all the way to today's EU integration (Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007.)

The Atlantic Club in Bulgaria has thus sought to contribute as a consultant to the efforts of the South Korea government and society to facilitate the eventual unification of the divided Korean Peninsula.

Korea's Unification Minister Hyun has expressed his satisfaction with the visit of the Bulgarian Atlantic Club delegation, and has declared a desire for more extensive and detailed consultations with respect to the issues pertaining to the potential unification of South and North Korea in the future.

The two Bulgarian representatives have also become part of a national drill of the South Korean civil protection service, which blockaded the capital Seoul for several hours in order to simulate a foreign attack.

This was the largest such drill in the past 35 years, and took place on the entire territory of South Korea. In the recent months, the tensions on the Korean Peninsula have been on the rise as a result of several provocations on part of the communist regime in North Korea, which have been viewed as the most significant since the armistice in the Korean War in 1953.

During their visit to Korea so far, Solomon Passy and Maxim Behar met with the US Ambassador to South Korea, Kathleen Stephens, with whom they discussed the experience of the Bulgarian Atlantic Club with respect to Bulgaria's integration into the European Union.

The two members of the leadership of the Atlantic Club in Bulgaria also delivered a lecture to students studying Bulgarian at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and were received by the deputy head of the school, Chung Il-jong.

The Bulgarian Atlantic Club delegation with students studying Bulgarian at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Photo by M3 Communications Group, Inc.

Before that, Passy and Behar also met with Choi Cho-hyun, President of the Korean-Bulgarian Economic Council, discussing a number of various projects for import of Bulgarian goods in Korea, and for boosting the Korean investments in Bulgaria.

Exchange of views about the large-scale promotion of well-known Bulgarian goods and of the Bulgarian business sector were the focus of a business meeting that the Bulgarian delegates had at the Korean office of the global PR corporation Hill&Knowlton, of which the largest Bulgarian PR company M3 Communications Group, Inc., is an associate.

During all of their meetings in South Korea, the delegation of the Bulgarian Atlantic Club has been accompanied by the Bulgarian Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, Kosyo Kitipov.

The visit of the Bulgarian Atlantic Club delegation to Korea is part of the program to celebrate the 20th anniversary since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of Korea in 1990.

The week-long stay of the Bulgarian representatives will continue with visits to the industrial zone in the second largest Korean city Busan, and to tourist center on the Jeju Island.

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