Orbán praised South Korean companies in Hungary for their "fantastic investments" and for their discipline as business partners.Continue reading
Negotiations on setting up a large Korean university campus in Budapest have begun, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Wednesday.
Addressing the opening of a V4-Korea Business Forum in Budapest, Orbán said that the existing good and friendly relations between Hungary and the Republic of Korea would be raised to a strategic level and economic relations would be expanded to include science, research and education.
Orbán said Hungarians find it difficult to understand how it is possible that South Korea, which was among the poorest countries in the world some fifty years ago, can currently produce the 12th largest GDP globally.
He said his government had looked to South Korea as a “success story” to learn from when it returned to power in 2010.
Orbán said the country offered an example of how tradition must be combined with technology, family must be “placed above all”, the economy is work-based and there is life-long learning, national identity is strong, regional logistics advantages are put to use, and planning is for the long term.
Orbán noted that bilateral trade between Hungary and South Korea has grown by a factor of ten in the past decade. South Korean companies are the fourth-biggest group of investors in the country and have projects worth 4 billion dollars underway, he said. Talks are ongoing on the launch of a further 16 big South Korean investments, he added.
“The broader and deeper cooperation is between South Korea and the European Union, between South Korea and the Visegrad Group, and between South Korea and Hungary, the sooner the whole of the European continent can regain its competitiveness in the global economy,” he said.
Featured photo by Zoltán Fischer/PM’s Press Office
