On the occasion of his visit to South Korea in the first week of December, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım and his delegation, including ISPAT President Arda Ermut, met with South Korean businesspeople at a roundtable meeting to discuss opportunities and strengthen commercial ties between the two countries.
During his speech at the meeting, Prime Minister Yıldırım said that even with over six decades of strong diplomatic ties, Türkiye and South Korea still have potential to expand their commercial relations. Drawing attention to Türkiye's economic performance and stable investment environment, Yıldırım said that the political stability since 2002 in Türkiye under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan led the country to achieve almost 6 percent annual growth rate over the last fourteen years. Yıldırım made special mention of the South Korean investors involved in the construction of infrastructure projects in Türkiye such as the Eurasia Tunnel and 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, adding that there are still great opportunities to be had with Türkiye’s ambitious goals.
Relations between South Korea and Türkiye have expanded over the past 10 years. The bilateral trade volume was more than 6.9 billion dollars in 2016. Türkiye had 6.3 billion dollars in imports from South Korea, and with this figure South Korea was the seventh country in Türkiye’s imports in 2016. The FDI stock of South Korean companies in Türkiye was at a level of 2.2 billion dollars as of the first half of 2017. ISPAT has had a permanent presence in South Korea since 2008.