Hanoi (VNA) –Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his spouse will attend the ASEAN-Republicof Korea (RoK) Commemorative Summit and the first Mekong-RoK Summit, and pay anofficial visit to the RoK from November 24-28.

PM Phuc’s official visit tothe RoK is the first by a Vietnamese PM in seven years, and is of significance tostrengthening cooperation between the two countries in the new situation.

The ASEAN-RoK CommemorativeSummit was proposed by the RoK at the 20th ASEAN-RoK Summit inNovember 2018 in Singapore, aiming to celebrate the 30th foundinganniversary of bilateral relations (1989-2019). It will take place on November25 and 26.

The summit offers anopportunity for leaders of ASEAN member countries and the RoK to review the30-year collaboration and promote orientations for the ASEAN-RoK strategicpartnership in the next three decades on the basis of the present fruitful andcomprehensive ties.

The ten-member group and theRoK established ties in 1989 and advanced their relationship to the level ofcomprehensive cooperative partnership in 2004, which was elevated to astrategic partnership in 2010. Two years later, the RoK dispatched itsambassador and established a mission to the ASEAN.

The RoK attaches importanceto its relations with the ASEAN, supports the grouping to build the ASEANCommunity and realise the 2025 Community Vision and enhance securitycooperation to match the two remaining pillars, with priorities given topartnerships in non-traditional security cooperation such as the fight against cross-bordercrime, terrorism and drugs, as well as cyber security and maritime security.

The East Asian country has backedthe ASEAN’s central role in the regional architecture and actively participatedin many ASEAN-led regional forums.

In the sphere of economy,the RoK is the ASEAN’s fifth largest trading partner and investor, while thebloc is the RoK’s second largest trading partner. Last year, two-way trade hit160.5 billion USD. The East Asian nation poured 6.6 billion USD in foreigndirect investment (FDI) into the ASEAN.

The number of tourists fromthe ASEAN countries to the RoK exceeded 10 million in the year. The groupinghas become the most popular destination for Koreans.

The Mekong-RoK cooperationwas initiated at the 13th ASEAN-RoK Summit on October 29, 2010 when KoreanPresident Lee Myung-bak proposed organising the Mekong-RoK Foreign Ministers’Meeting in order to enhance political and economic ties between Mekong RiverBasin countries and the RoK, narrow development gaps and push ahead with thebuilding of the ASEAN Community.

The first Mekong-RoK Summitwill take place in Busan on November 27, under the co-chair of the Korean Presidentand the Thai Prime Minister.

Vietnam the RoK set updiplomatic ties on December 22, 1992. Over the past 27 years, the bilateralrelationship has made comprehensive strides, and been maintained at differentlevels.

Vietnam opened its embassy inSeoul in March 1993. In November the same year, the RoK also opened itsConsulate General in Ho Chi Minh City. In August 2011, the two sides issued ajoint statement on the comprehensive partnership in the 21st centuryon the occasion of the visit to the RoK by the then President Tran Duc Luong.In October 2009, the two countries lifted their relationship to a strategiccooperative partnership during the visit to Vietnam by the then President LeeMyung-bak.

The two sides havemaintained the deputy ministerial-level foreign affairs, defence and securitystrategic dialogue, the deputy ministerial-level security dialogue and thedeputy ministerial-level defence dialogue.

The two countries alsosigned a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on information security and safetyand another on military information security, along with the cooperationminutes on dealing with consequences of bombs and mines left over from the wars,and a joint vision statement on defence cooperation by 2030.

In the economic sector, theRoK is one of Vietnam’s leading important partners, ranking first ininvestment, second in official development assistance (ODA) provision afterJapan, and third in trade after China and the European Union.

The two countries havemaintained bilateral cooperation mechanisms like the Inter-GovernmentalCommittee on Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation and theministerial-level joint committee on cooperation in nuclear power, energy andindustry. 

Besides, the RoK isVietnam’s second largest labour importer and Vietnam is the second largestlabour exporter of the RoK. Currently, more than 48,000 Vietnamese guestworkers are working in the RoK.

The two countries re-signedthe MoU on dispatching and receivingVietnamese workers under the Employment Permit System (EPS) during theState visit to Vietnam by President Moon Jae-in in March 2018.

Over thepast years, the RoK has emerged as a major source of tourists to Vietnam. Inthe first nine months of 2019, the number of Korean visitors to the SoutheastAsian nation was over 3.14 million, up 22.5 percent year-on-year. Currently,there are more than 1,000 direct flights between the two countries each month.

Statisticsfrom the Korean side show that as of June 2019, there were more than 216,000Vietnamese in the RoK. The number of Koreans in Vietnam was over 150,000,almost businesspeople.

Nearly 60cities and provinces of the two countries have signed cooperation agreements./.