1. The Republic of Korea Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with the Laotian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, hosted the fifth Republic of Korea-Mekong Business Forum in Vientiane, Laos, on October 19. Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs Yun Kang-hyeon led the ROK delegation at the event that brought together some 100 people from the ROK and the five countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion, including government officials and entrepreneurs related to investment and tourism.

※ The five countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion are Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand.

※ The ROK-Mekong Forum was set up as at the second bilateral foreign ministerial meeting in July 2012, where the ROK and the Mekong countries had drawn a common understanding that the two sides should boost public-private partnership as well as private exchanges and investment, and thereby achieve tangible progress in their cooperation.

2. The fifth Forum was themed “Promoting Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises and Tourism (and Food and Agricultural) Industry in Mekong countries and Republic of Korea” and designed to render tangible assistance to Korean companies seeking presence in the Mekong region. It served as an opportunity to share information on the business environments of the Mekong countries in order to promote public-private tourism partnership between the ROK and the Mekong countries, as well as an opportunity to share cases of Korean companies’ entry into Mekong countries and to seek ways to resolve challenges facing such companies.

° In addition, one-on-one business consultations were held between companies of the ROK and the Mekong countries to share with each other business-related information and discuss the possibility of Korean companies building presence in the Mekong region.

3. Deputy Minister Yun delivered a keynote speech, in which he took note of the growing importance of the Mekong region and ASEAN, attributing it to their great potential for growth; and highlighted the ROK government’s commitment to take its relations with ASEAN a notch higher.

° In particular, the Deputy Minister shared with the other participants the progress in the ROK-Mekong cooperation and spoke of the ROK’s plan to render assistance to the Mekong region, including under the ROK-Mekong action plan for 2014-2017, which had been adopted at the seventh bilateral foreign ministerial meeting in September, as well as through the ROK-Mekong cooperation fund and the ASEAN-Korea Centre.

4. Among the Forum participants were Deputy Foreign Minister Thongphane Savanphet on behalf of the Laotian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, some 50 representatives from 40-odd Laotian companies and some 30 Korean entrepreneurs, who built network and explored business opportunities with entreprises of the Mekong countries.

5. The fifth ROK-Mekong Business Forum is seen to have served as an opportunity to seek ways to boost exchanges among small- and medium-sized enterprises of the ROK and the Mekong countries, to render assistance to Korean companies seeking presence in the Mekong region, and thereby to take the ROK government’s ties with ASEAN to the next level; and to promote private exchanges and cooperation mainly between entrepreneurs of the two sides, and thereby to strengthen the ROK’s relationships with the Mekong countries and ASEAN at various levels.


* unofficial translation