Defense Undersecretary Honorio S. Azcueta headed the Philippine delegation, which was also joined by Philippine Ambassador to South Korea Raul S. Hernandez in conferring with their peers at the Westin Chosun Hotel under the “70 Years of the Post-WWII Era and the Division of Korea: Challenges and Prospects” with a Slogan “Cooperation for Security and Peace”.

At the sidelines of the forum, Undersecretary Azcueta was also able to hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts from two countries: South Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo and Chile’s Vice Defense Minister Marcos Robledo on possible areas of cooperation.

SDD 2015, which was opened by President Park Geun-hye,included a variety of topics, including Korean unification and global security, maritime crisis, and cyber protection, in separate plenary sessions, while defense cooperation on global health security, response to violent extremism and nuclear nonproliferation were discussed in three special sessions.

A discussant at one of the sessions, Professor Renato Cruz De Castro, a senior professor at the De La Salle University in Manila, expounded on the Philippine perspective on the West Philippine Sea. In the third special session, Assistant Secretary Raymund G. Quilop of the Office of Strategic Assessment of the Department of National Defense (DND) spoke on the topic “Non-Proliferation Regime for the Asia-Pacific”.

First organized by South Korea’s Defense Ministry in 2012, the SDD is a regional dialogue platform bringing together vice defense ministers and security experts to help foster multilateral trust and cooperation in Northeast Asia. This year’s dialogue attracted the attendance of some 300 senior defense policymakers, military executives and academics from 33 countries and four international agencies.

The dialogue has expanded its scope from issues exclusive to the Korean Peninsula to questions of wider global relevance, as evident in the inclusion of topics pertinent to such countries as the Philippines: maritime disputes in the East China and South China Seas, exclusive economic zones, continental shelf delineation, and air defense zones. END