Czech - Korean Relations
The Czech Republic and the Republic of Korea share common values and principles of democracy, a market economy and respect for human rights. The Republic of Korea is one of the Czech Republic's most important trade, political, tourist and cultural partners outside Europe. In terms of turnover, it ranks 3rd among non-European countries (after the PRC and the USA) and is in the top ten of our largest trading partners worldwide. The importance of the Czech Republic for the Republic of Korea as a partner in Europe is also growing due to increasing investments of Korean companies in our country, growing interest of the Korean public in Czech culture and also due to increasing number of Korean tourists traveling to the Czech Republic.
We see room for the development of mutual relations in the area of production and business cooperation as well as in the investment sphere. The Czech Republic values the interest of Korean investors, whose investments in our country have reached the value of almost USD 3 billion. In order to support cooperation in this area, in 2015 we opened a representative office of the CzechInvest agency in Seoul. In the economic sphere, we see opportunities for deeper cooperation, for example in energy, industrial production and transport. Great opportunities for synergy between Czech companies and Korean partners exist in cooperation on third markets. The significant potential of mutual business cooperation in the field of design and applied art objects cannot be overlooked. Czech companies have been reaping many successes in this area in recent years.
The Czech Republic is interested not only in deepening mutual relations also in the field of science, research and innovation. We perceive the Republic of Korea as a world leader in both basic and applied science and research. Our universities and research organizations have advanced capacities in some selected segments of research and development, and in recent years the Czech government has invested considerable resources in their state-of-the-art equipment. The Government of the Czech Republic is creating good conditions for the development of mutual cooperation in all areas and is ready to support specific bilateral international cooperation projects at the institutional level. It depends mainly on the competitiveness of products and the creativity of business projects.