HCM City (VNA) - Korean entrepreneurs consider Vietnam a key for the future of theRepublic of Korea, said Choi Bong-sik, Chairman of the World Overseas KoreanTraders Associations (OKTA).

Speaking at a conference in HCM City on December 13, Choi said that more than7,000 Korean companies are operating in Vietnam.
The World OKTA has 141offices in 70 countries with more than 7,000 official members and 15,000 youngmembers representing the next generation of traders, he said. 

The RoK and Vietnam together have the second-highest trading performance among200 countries over the world, only after China.

In Vietnam, the RoK is the number one country in terms of FDI, with 30 percentof Vietnam’s total FDI, which is 3.5 times higher than that of Japan, which issecond.

Trade between the two countries is expected to continue to expand because ofthe Korea-Vietnam FTA, he said.

“The RoK has world-class technology in many areas of industries,and its small- and medium-sized enterprises want to enter the global market toovercome price competitiveness,” he said.

He said the RoK considers Vietnam as the next to China. “It is never easy tofind your strategic partners for your future from North America, the EU or evenJapan,” he said.

In thefirst 10 months of the year, two-way trade hit 54.2 billion USD. The twocountries are working hard to raise the figure to 100 billion USD by 2020.

The RoK is the second largest recipient of Vietnamese guest workers, behindTaiwan, while Vietnam is the second largest exporter of labourers to thecountry, behind China.

In recent years, the RoK has emerged as the second largest source of touristarrivals to Vietnam, behind China. Last year, more than 2.5 million Koreantourists came to Vietnam, up 56 percent year-on-year. In 2017, the number ofVietnamese visitors to the RoK neared 325,000, up 29 percent annually.

During the January-October period,2.8 million Korean visitors landed in Vietnam, up 48.3 percent annually, whilemore than 440,000 Vietnamese people visited the RoK, up 37.3 percent.–VNA