Minister for Trade, Industry and Energy Dukgeun Ahn of the Republic of Korea met Vietnam’s Trade and Industry Minister Nguyen Hong Dien today in Seoul for bilateral talks on measures to widen energy and trade cooperation.

Korea’s biggest trading and investment partner among ASEAN members and third largest trading partner in the world following China and the U.S., Vietnam is home to approximately 9,000 Korean companies.

Today’s bilateral talks took place on the margins of Minister Nguyen Hong Dien’s visit to Korea for discussions on nuclear power cooperation, as Vietnam is recently gearing up to resume its nuclear energy development.

During the meeting, the Vietnamese delegation introduced its nuclear policy trends and proposed that the two countries expand their bilateral nuclear energy cooperation, to which the Korean delegation suggested that the two countries resume the bilateral director general-level nuclear industry dialogue channel, which has been on hiatus since 2017, for consultations on more concrete collaboration measures.

In view of recent uncertainties in the trade landscape, both sides agreed to closely communicate and work together to mitigate business challenges Korean companies experience in the local Vietnamese market and to swiftly finalize negotiations on upgrading the Korea-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (FTA) for customs convenience. They also decided to bolster cooperation in supply chains through the critical minerals supply chain technology cooperation center project to be launched this year.