CHARLES KONG SOO

Ko­re­an Am­bas­sador Dongil Oh says Ko­rea and T&T en­joy a favourable bi­lat­er­al trade re­la­tion­ship that is worth over US$200 mil­lion.

He and his wife Mi­wha Park host­ed a re­cep­tion cel­e­brat­ing the an­niver­sary of the Na­tion­al Foun­da­tion Day of the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea, at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on Sep­tem­ber 29.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne joined Oh and Park in toast­ing the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea’s Na­tion­al Foun­da­tion Day with Ko­re­an so­ju (rice wine) along with oth­er MPs, Heads of Mis­sion, oth­er mem­bers of the Diplo­mat­ic Corps, dig­ni­taries, mem­bers of staff of the Em­bassy of the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea and guests.

Oh said, “Ko­rea was the sev­enth largest ex­port des­ti­na­tion for Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2021.

“Ko­rea’s share in T&T’s ex­port was even greater than the com­bined vol­ume to­ward Chi­na and Japan, our big neigh­bours in Asia.

He added, “This bi­lat­er­al trade brought sur­plus to Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­ceed­ing over 200 mil­lion USD, and note­wor­thy ex­ports from T&T are methanol and am­mo­nia, while Ko­re­an ve­hi­cles like Hyundai and Kia to­geth­er with Sam­sung cell phones are en­joy­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty in T&T.”

He said Ko­rea was lead­ing the world in the Fourth In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion with its cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy such as AI, IoT, 6Gs and oth­ers, and we are ready and will­ing to take a lead in glob­al co-op­er­a­tion for the bet­ter­ment of the world by shar­ing our de­vel­op­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ences.

Browne said the gath­er­ing came on the heels of a pe­ri­od of very ac­tive high-lev­el en­gage­ment be­tween T&T and Ko­rea.

He said in Ju­ly, Prime Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea Han Duck-soo vis­it­ed T&T as a guest of Cari­com on the oc­ca­sion of the 45th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and the 50th an­niver­sary of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and met for bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Browne said T&T was ap­pre­cia­tive of the com­mit­ments giv­en by Han Duck-soo of Ko­rea’s deep­er co-op­er­a­tion with the re­gion in ar­eas such as cli­mate change, man­age­ment of the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment, food se­cu­ri­ty, and re­new­able en­er­gy, as well as its in­creased sup­port for the re­gion through the Cari­com-Ko­rea Co­op­er­a­tion Fund.