National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan met with representatives from Vietnam-RoK families in Busan on December 5 as part of her ongoing official visit to the Republic of Korea.

National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (sixth from right) and Mayor of Busan Oh Keo-don (sixth from left) in a photo with representatives from Vietnam-RoK families in Busan

The top legislator said she was glad to know that most multicultural families in the RoK are living happily and they always think of the homeland.

Vietnamese in the RoK in general and Vietnam-RoK multicultural families in particular are serving as an important bridge to forge connectivity, cooperation and development of the two nations, she stressed.

The Vietnamese Party, State and people always consider the overseas Vietnamese community an indispensable part of the nation, she affirmed.

She hoped the Vietnamese expats will regard the RoK as their second fatherland and make more contributions to the host country’s building and development.

The Chairwoman called on overseas Vietnamese to obey by the RoK law while promoting Vietnamese culture to help nurture and develop the bilateral friendship.

She pledged to instruct the National Assembly Office to send textbooks and books to Busan to help with the teaching of the Vietnamese language, culture and history in the overseas Vietnamese community.

At the meeting, Mayor of Busan Oh Keo-don affirmed that the city will support multicultural families and foreigners living, studying and working in Busan.

He noted that Busan is operating six agencies to support multicultural families and foreigners, including the Busan cultural centre which was set up in 2014 with the task of connecting multinational culture and hosting annual cultural day for the community of Asian people in Busan.

Vietnamese top legislator’s visit makes headlines in RoK

Chairwoman of the National Assembly of Vietnam Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan arrives in Busan on December 4. 

The media in the Republic of Korea (RoK) has highlighted the visit of Vietnamese National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan with various articles featuring the relationship between the two countries and their future prospects.

Korean daily newspaper of Busan on December 4 ran an article written by the Vietnamese top legislator noting that the relationship between Vietnam and the RoK, which began nearly 900 years ago, is developing comprehensively on the basis of historical connectivity, cultural similarities, economic growth support, and efforts of the two governments and peoples.

After 26 years since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations, the two sides have become important partners of each other.

RoK’s Yonhap news agency posted a photo of the Vietnamese NA leader with the caption saying that the leader arrived in the RoK on December 4 for a four-day visit at the invitation of Speaker of the RoK National Assembly Moon Hee-sang.

Earlier, the Korea Herald online newspaper ran an article entitled “Vietnamese top parliamentarian’s Korea visit heralds bright bilateral partnership” by Dr. Kim Hyun-jae, Director of the Vietnam Research Institute at Youngsan University.

It noted that her visit occurs as Hanoi and Seoul celebrate 10 years of Vietnam-RoK Strategic Cooperative Partnership (2009-2019). Since the establishment of diplomatic relations on December 22, 1992, bilateral relations have gone from strength to strength in every category. 

On the parliamentary level, bilateral exchanges and cooperation on the international stage are vibrant through different channels, particularly their parliamentary friendship associations, it said.

The RoK is the top foreign investor in Vietnam with total investment capital reaching 62.12 billion USD in October, while coming second in official development assistance to Vietnam after Japan, and second in tourism and commerce volumes after China. 

Vietnam is the RoK’s third-largest export market after China and the US, and is forecast to surpass the US by 2020. Bilateral trade turnover has steadily increased to 61.5 billion USD last year, 117 times the initial amount of 500 million USD in 1992. Bilateral trade turnover reached 55.45 billion USD from January through October. At the current rate, bilateral trade volume is expected to top 100 billion USD by 2020, said the article.

Some 191,000 Vietnamese are currently studying, working and living in the RoK. There are more than 150,000 Koreans living in Vietnam, and more than 70,000 Vietnamese women married to Korean men. 

Some 2.5 million RoK tourists travelled to Vietnam last year, while 300,000 Vietnamese visited the RoK, it noted. 

Vietnam’s population of 100 million people, 60 percent of whom are under the age of 35, provides a strategic base for manpower for foreign companies. This has been buttressed by the country’s steady and high growth rate of around 6 percent over the last several years, and an inflation rate below 5 percent. The foreign exchange rate has also remained stable without abnormal fluctuations.

To elicit RoK investment, the Vietnamese government provides various incentives and business-friendly conditions, with a view to nurturing its infrastructure construction, high tech, auxiliary and energy industries, among others. Improving the state of the country’s infrastructure, equitization of state-owned enterprises, liberalization and simplification of bureaucracy are high on the agenda for Hanoi. 

The RoK media underlined that the RoK visit of the Vietnamese top legislator will help further promote the growing ties between the two countries to new levels.

VNA