Hungary’s prime minister highlighted a 40% trade turnover increase between the Visegrad Group (V4) countries and South Korea over the past five years, expressing hope that their cooperation could soon expand to the areas of science and technology.
Addressing a joint press conference of V4 leaders and South Korean President Moon Jae-in after their summit in Budapest, Viktor Orbán said the central European economies had “strong years behind them” and good prospects, while South Korea was “a world champion” in economic growth and technological development. The prime minister referred to the summit as “a meeting of five success stories”.
Trade turnover between the V4 and South Korea even increased “in the black year for the global economy that was 2020”, reaching 20 billion US dollars for the first time, Orbán said. South Korea has a GDP of 1,600 billion dollars, while the V4 have a combined GDP of 1,100 billion dollars, he noted. “If we were one country, then the V4, like Korea, could be a member of the G20,” he said.
Orbán said the reason behind the timing of Thursday’s summit was that all five countries believed that a new global economic order was taking shape and there was fierce competition for production capacities given that after the pandemic, factories were not being reopened in the same countries where they had closed.
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