Hanoi (VNA) – President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea and hisspouse began a three-day State visit to Vietnam on March 22.

This is the first official visit to Vietnam by President Moon Jae-in.

The visit takes place at a time when the Vietnam-RoK Strategic CooperativePartnership is thriving with regular exchanges of high-level visits and contacts.This is an opportunity for both countries’ leaders to review outcomes in thepast years and discuss orientations for the future bilateral relations.

Vietnam affirms to pursue its external policy of independence, self-reliance,muliteralisation and diversification of international relations, in which thedevelopment of cooperation with the RoK is emphasised.

Vietnam and the RoK established diplomatic ties on December 22, 1992. They setup their comprehensive strategic partnership in August 2001, and agreed to liftthe ties to a strategic cooperative partnership in October 2009.

In 2006, anagreement on cooperation between the two legislatures was signed, an importantlegal document for both sides to develop their friendship and cooperation.

The nationsalso established important security-defence cooperation mechanisms, including asecurity dialogue and defence dialogue at the deputy ministerial level.

TheVietnam-RoK free trade agreement, which became effective on December 20, 2015,has opened a new chapter in bilateral economic ties.

[President Moon Jae-in wan🅷ts to lift R🦋oK-VN partnership to next level]

The RoK iscurrently one of Vietnam’s most important economic partners, ranking first interms of investment, and second in development cooperation, trade and tourism.

Two-way tradejumped from 500 million USD in 1992 to 61.5 billion USD in 2017, of which 14.8billion USD came from Vietnam’s exports, up 30 percent from the previous year,and 46.7 billion USD from the Southeast Asian country’s imports, a year-on-yearincrease of 45.3 percent.

The twocountries are working to raise the turnover to 100 billion USD by 2020.

The RoK ranksfirst among 125 nations and territories pouring capital into Vietnam, withtotal registered capital hitting 57.7 billion USD as of late December 2017.

The easternAsia country ranks second in terms of the number of tourists to Vietnam. Lastyear, Vietnam welcomed more than 2 million Korean visitors, a surge of 56.4percent year-on-year. In January this year, 316,300 Korean tourists visitedVietnam, a year-on-year jump of 84 percent.

Currently,there are more than 112,200 Vietnamese people living in the Republic of Korea,while about 150,000 Koreans are living in Vietnam. - VNA