President Park Geun-hye, now on her four-day state visit to India, held a series of talks with the Lok Sabha’s, the lower house of parliament’s, Opposition Leader Sushma Swaraj and Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari on January 16.

They exchanged their in-depth opinions on how to enhance bilateral cooperation and deal with a wide range of issues on the Korean Peninsula and worldwide.

The meetings came just after President Park had a summit with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and signed an array of agreements with her counterpart.


During the talks with Sushma Swaraj, President Park said, “Here, I saw, in person, how far India has come. This country has strong potential for economic growth.” Stressing that Korea’s strong point is its manufacturing industry while India’s is in IT services, the president emphasized that the two economies have complementary economic structures and that therein lies high potential for a further expansion of bilateral cooperation across many fields.

Meanwhile, the opposition leader said that she was deeply impressed by Park’s visit to her nation, pointing out that this visit takes place less than one year after the president took office.

Swaraj also said, “I have strong confidence that her diplomatic efforts with India are sure to succeed during her term, with still another four years to go.”

“Even if my Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party) comes into power in the next election, we would respect every single word from those many agreements signed by the Korean and Indian governments at this time,” she stressed.


President Park expressed her deepest gratitude to the Indian government for its swift action of releasing a statement and sending stern messages condemning North Korea’s long-range missile tests in 2012 and its nuclear test in February 2013. She called for India’s continuous support and cooperation for her government’s policies on the North.

The president went on to say that the North’s highly developed nuclear weapons are posing a huge threat to world peace, as well as to the peninsula. In response, the Indian opposition leader sympathized with Koreans for their pain and worries caused by ceaseless provocative actions by the North.

Following the meeting, President Park also had talks with Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari. She told the Indian vice president that she is so happy to see that many Indians have a keen interest in Korean culture and K-pop, adding, “It is, eventually, ‘culture’ that bridges the hearts of people from different cultures.”


“Few countries worldwide have their own movie industry that keeps on going so well. In that sense, both Korea and India have been quite good at it. India’s high-quality movies, food and even yoga have been growing in popularity in Korea,” she added.

In addition, the Korean president called for the world to shift to a new paradigm so as to tackle problems underlying the world economy, such as low growth, high unemployment and income inequality.

As she explained Korea’s strategy for developing the creative industries, the president said that there is quite a lot of room for cooperation between the two nations to develop such creative industries. Her call for the new paradigm was met with strong support from the Indian vice president.



By Wi Tack-whan, Sohn JiAe
Korea.net Staff Writers
whan23@korea.kr