President Moon Jae-in (right) shakes hands with his Slovak counterpart, President Andrej Kiska, prior to a summit at Cheong Wa Dae on April 10. (Cheong Wa Dae)
By Sohn JiAe
President Moon Jae-in held a summit on April 10 with his Slovak counterpart, President Andrej Kiska, currently on an official visit to Korea. The two leaders discussed ways to further develop bilateral cooperation across a range of industries.
President Moon spoke highly of the amount of Korea-Slovakia trade, which has increased more than 160 times over the past 25 years, saying that, “The trade structure between the two countries will hopefully be improved in a mutually beneficial manner by means of diversifying the range of our traded items.”
“There’s great potential for growing mutual cooperation across more areas, along with economic development, between our two countries, based on the dynamic national traits of each country,” said the president. He said that he hopes to see more Korean firms be part of Slovakia’s infrastructure projects, including the construction of a new airport in Bratislava.
“The Slovak leader’s political philosophy, which embraces the people’s rights and welfare, as well as minorities, is in-line with my ‘people first’ and ‘a government owned by the people’ policies. Both countries have grown our cooperative ties in such a short period of time based on these common values,” said President Moon.
President Kiska said that Korea was the first investor in Slovakia among non-EU countries, and accounts for approximately 50 percent of the country’s entire foreign direct investment. He also noted that Korea takes fifth place as an investor in the country when other EU countries are included. Finally, he said that Korean companies in Slovakia have contributed greatly to its economic growth over the past many years.