S. Korean president starts three-nation trip to Central Asia

South Korean President Park Geun-hye started her three-nation trip to Central Asia on Monday to boost economic cooperation with the energy-rich countries and strengthen her signature policy of the so-called Eurasia Initiative.

Park left for Uzbekistan, the first leg of her week-long trip, to hold summit talks with her Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov on Tuesday, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said in a statement.

The South Korean woman leader planned to hold summit meetings with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Thursday and with Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov on Friday respectively before coming back to Seoul on Saturday.

During the visit, Park will focus on laying ground for her Eurasia Initiative policy, which she proposed last October to boost logistics and energy cooperation with Eurasian nations by linking roads and railways from South Korea to Europe via the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), China and Russia.

Eurasia is a combined continental landmass of Europe and Asia, running from the Far Eastern Area to China, Russia, Central Asia and Europe. The region accounts for around one third of the Earth' s total land, where more than 70 percent of the world's population is living.

Park also planned to boost energy cooperation with the three Central Asian nations. Joint projects currently under way between South Korea and Uzbekistan included the development of the Surgil gas field near the Aral Sea and the construction of a gas-chemical plant.

Ongoing energy projects between South Korea and Kazakhstan included the constructions of a coal-fired power station and a petrochemical complex.