Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son commented that the outstanding results of General Secretary To Lam's State visit to Korea (from August 10-13, 2025) clearly demonstrated in 5 aspects.
Firstly, the visit deepens political trust, strengthens good personal relations between the two countries' senior leaders, and creates an important common understanding of comprehensively promoting and further deepening the Vietnam - Korea Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
Secondly, the working trip has achieved many outstanding results, especially in the fields of economic, trade, investment, science and technology, innovation and human resource training.
In the context of many difficulties and uncertainties in the world economy, General Secretary To Lam proposed to the Korean side to shape a new strategic vision, shifting from economic cooperation to Vietnam - Korea economic linkage, including promoting cooperation in developing production chains, opening up commodity markets to each other and supporting Vietnamese enterprises to participate more deeply in the global supply chain of Korean enterprises, thereby striving to complete the bilateral trade turnover target of 150 billion USD by 2030 in a balanced and sustainable direction.
General Secretary To Lam also called on Korean enterprises to continue to identify Vietnam as a global production base, a strategic destination for building Research and Development Centers, while expanding investment in key sectors, building specialized industrial production complexes along the value chain in Vietnam.
Third, the visit opened up new opportunities for cooperation between the two countries in a number of key areas such as science - technology, strategic infrastructure development, high-tech agriculture and sustainable development cooperation, climate change response.
The two countries' senior leaders agreed to make science and technology, innovation, digital transformation and human resource training new pillars of bilateral relations; agreed to coordinate in developing strategic technology industries, promoting cooperation in the fields of digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and building digital innovation policies.
Fourth, the two leaders emphasized that the social foundation and people-to-people exchanges are the glue that strengthens the friendship and understanding between the two countries. The two sides agreed to extend the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on sending and receiving workers to work in Korea under the Employment Permit Program (EPS); coordinate to promote exchange, cooperation, promotion and communication activities on culture, sports and tourism; further expand tourism cooperation as well as simplify travel procedures for citizens of the two countries.
On this occasion, the General Secretary highly appreciated the contributions of the community of more than 350,000 Vietnamese people living in Korea, suggesting that Korea create the most favorable conditions for Vietnamese people to live and work stably and make more practical contributions to the relationship between the two countries in the new period.
Fifth, on the multilateral level, the two sides agreed to cooperate closely and increase mutual support at international and regional forums and organizations, and support each other in successfully organizing the APEC Summit in Korea in 2025 and in Vietnam in 2027.
Through this visit, the two sides also signed 50 cooperation documents between ministries, branches, organizations, enterprises and localities of the two countries. The important results achieved during the visit have become a major milestone opening a bright new chapter of the Vietnam - Korea Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in the new era.
