President Nguyen Xuan Phuc to visit South Korea

Phuc, his wife and high-ranking delegations will visit South Korea from December 4 to 6, a Thursday press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs read.

The visit will be Phuc’s first to South Korea as a president, and the highest level visit to South Korea for a Vietnamese leader ever since South Korea had its new president.

Vietnam and South Korea established diplomatic relations in 1992. The two countries’ relation was upgraded to strategic cooperative partnership in 2009.

South Korea is one of Vietnam’s most important partners, ranking first when it comes to investments, second when it comes to ODA (behind Japan) and third when it comes to trade (behind China and the U.S.). South Korea is also the second largest market for labors in Vietnam (after Taiwan), with around 48,000 Vietnamese working in the country.

There are around 216,000 Vietnamese in South Korea, according to statistics from the Korea Immigration Service.