1. The 14th meeting of the Republic of Korea-Vietnam Joint Economic Committee will take place in Seoul on July 14, with Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs Lee Tae-ho of the ROK Foreign Ministry and Deputy Minister Nguyen Chi Dung of the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment leading their respective delegations.

° The ROK-Vietnam Joint Economic Committee meeting, pursuant to the bilateral Agreement on Economic and Technical Cooperation concluded in 1993, has been hosted by the two countries on a rotational basis since 1993 for comprehensive discussions on pending economic issues.

- The forthcoming meeting will take place at the Foreign Ministry on July 14.
- The ROK delegation to the meeting will include officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Financial Services Commission, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the Korea Forest Service and the Embassy in Vietnam.
- The Vietnamese side will consist of officials from the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Government Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Transport, the State Bank of Vietnam and the Ministry of Science and Technology.

2. In the meeting, the two sides will review the progress in the follow-up on the bilateral economic cooperation projects agreed upon at the three rounds of bilateral summit talks held since September 2013. In addition, they will discuss the progress in bilateral economic cooperation and ways to work together on the international stage.

° The ROK side will raise such issues as ways to expedite the ratification and the entry of the ROK-Vietnam FTA into force; ways to support bids of Korean companies for infrastructure-building projects in Vietnam and Korean financial enterprises to expand their presence in the country; and ways to resolve challenges facing Korean companies operating in the country.

* In particular, the ROK side will call on Vietnam to carry out the cooperation project on transportation and energy infrastructure agreed upon at the first meeting of the ROK-Vietnam Finance Coordination Committee held on June 19, 2015. The delegation will also ask the Vietnamese government to grant approval to Korean financial companies hoping to set up branches in Vietnam.

3. On a side note, the ROK, the largest investor in Vietnam since 2014, concluded a bilateral FTA with the country in December 2014 and formally signed it on May 5, 2015, which made Vietnam the ROK’s second FTA partner among the ASEAN member states after Singapore.

- The two-way trade volume, which stood at 493 million US dollars in 1992, reached 30.3 billion US dollars in 2014, an approximately 61-fold increase from 1992.
- The ROK is the largest investor in Vietnam, with the amount reaching 2.1 billion US dollars in 2014 alone and a combined 18.9 billion US dollars.
- The ROK-Vietnam FTA, formally signed on May 5, 2015, is currently undergoing a procedure to win the National Assembly’s approval for ratification.

* Currently, some 4,000 Korean companies are operating in Vietnam.

* unofficial translation