OUR peripatetic foreign minister has been travelling so much lately with his enhanced duties as President of the European Council (latest account elsewhere on these pages), that one brief encounter nearly got lost at the end of last month.
This was Mr Spring's meeting with the then South Korean foreign minister, Mr Gong Ro-Myung, to formalise a new declaration of co-operation and interest between the European Union and the formidable Asian tiger.
Mr Spring and Mr Gong (since retired, in the dynamic world of South Korean politics) signed what was described as a landmark accord to boost trade and political ties.
The occasion gave rise to the rare sight of an Irish Government Minister gracing the pages of Korean newspapers. But Ireland itself has numerous interests in South Korea, including a long association from the good works of the St John of God and Columban orders in the Korean peninsula.
Everyone is interested in South Korea these days, because of the investment opportunities its transformed economy can bring across the globe. EU countries have benefited to the tune of billions in the past decade - a new plant at Dunfermline in Scotland (which Ireland had been hoping for), announced last month, will bring £1.6 billion to the area.
But there are important political issues, too - so important that President Clinton's Security Adviser, Anthony Lake, recently put the North-South Korean situation among the world's top five security headaches. The situation has been thrown into high relief by the recent skirmishing on the peninsula following the discovery of a North Korean submarine, which ran aground off the east coast of South Korea on September 18th.
The effect of this on South Korea's political classes can" hardly be overstated. From a recent context of progress on peaceful talks between North and South, the situation overnight turned to one of almost paranoia.
President Kim Young Sam warned at the beginning of October that all-out war could start if Pyongyang continued to "provoke" Seoul. A review of food aid to the North (where the population is suffering from the effect of disastrous floods earlier this year on the rice crop), as well as a row-back on a nuclear agreement, were announced.
Three weeks after the submarine was found, with three of its crew members still presumed at large in the northern part of South Korea, President Kim made his uncompromising fury clear to a party of European journalists, including The Irish Times. The President declared that "99 per cent" of his people felt they had no obligation to help North Korea, despite ties of blood and common national ancestry.
Mr Gong went further, saying he would welcome the "implosion" of the North Korean state.
The US, which still has 37,000 troops on the peninsula 43 years after the end of the Korean War, was quick to react. Some South Korean feathers were ruffled when Washington called on both sides to be calm rather than taking the unilateral Seoul tone of outrage. State Department firemen flew in thick and fast, and even the director of the CIA, John Deutch, came to Seoul in late October for unspecified talks.
The temperature seems to have cooled slightly now, especially with the former Secretary of State, Warren Christopher affirming that US troops would defend the South if necessary. And Seoul is still convinced that" North Korea has a definite invasion plan.
Prof Reinhard Drifte, of the University of Newcastle, an expert on Korea, says he is concerned in particular about the effect the submarine incident had on KEDO (the nuclear agreement), which it was hoped would persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weaponry ambitions.
"The tone is bellicose," he says. "Without an apology from North Korea nothing much will move for the time being, but the North Koreans will remind them in the South of their failure to send condolences when Kim Il Sung died."
The EU might join KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation) by the end of the year. KEDO is a US-led initiative that North Korea give up its nuclear arms development programme in return for assistance and funds from the West to build two peaceful-purpose light-water nuclear reactors.
Stephen Bosworth, of KEDO, said last month he believed just two or three rounds of talks could bring the EU on board the $4.5 billion project. The EU's contribution would be around $20 million a year, mainly to pay for heavy nuclear fuel.
IN Vietnam for a ground-breaking visit this week President Kim apparently bemused the locals by going for a jog, in the style of his US counterpart, also in the Asia Pacific region this week. The two presidents are due to have a meeting to discuss latest security developments on the sidelines of the APEC conference on Monday.
President Clinton was in Korea last April, when he enjoyed the climate of the southernmost holiday island of Cheju. But he and President Kim also launched an important initiative to get talks going between North, and South. There would be four parties to the talks - the US, China and the two Koreas.
However, the Pyongyang position is that, as hostilities have never officially ended between the two Koreas, and as the US general in charge of the anti- communist forces signed the demilitarisation agreement in 1953, the South has no role at the talks. The spies and submarines of the rest of this year have done little to improve that standoff.
Attention is focused on Korea's companion Asian tiger economies, with the formal start of the APEC conference north of Manila on Monday. The South Koreans keep a sharp eye on rivals such as Japan and, latterly, the Philippines.
Their own international industrial standing appeared to take a leap forward with the recent decision by the OECD council to admit South Korea as a member. Ratification has not yet taken place, and there is still internal debate on whether this is advisable or even possible, given disagreements about South Korean labour laws, perceived in some Western circles as being in need of reform.
One very senior Korean businessman who spoke to The Irish Times affected a puzzling ignorance of the OECD and seemed to doubt whether membership would affect his vast chaebol, or conglomerate.