EU-South Korea Relations

The relations between the European Union (EU) and the Republic of South Korea are founded on:

increasingly shared political values,

strong economic links reflecting larger and larger bilateral trade and investment flows, and

the EU's reiterated support for South Korea's policy of engagement with the North.

In 1995, the EU decided to negotiate a "Framework Agreement on Trade and Cooperation", in recognition of South Korea's increasing role in the Asian and global economy, and of its success in consolidating democracy. This Agreement entered into force in April 2001 and is implemented through an annual meeting of a Joint Committee.

The EU - South Korea dialogue has broadened these last years, namely through "EU-Korea Summits" and regular ministerial meetings. Both parties cooperate closely in a number of multilateral fora, and have close relationship within the Asian Europe meeting (ASEM).

For further information, please visit the section devoted to the EU's relations with South Korea (DG Relex), of the website of the European Commission's Directorate General External relations.

Bilateral Trade Relations

In 2007, the volume of bilateral trade between the EU and South Korea reached 64 billion euro. South Korea remains the EU's fourth largest non-European trade partner while the EU has become South Korea's second largest exports destination. In 2007, the EU was the largest foreign investor with around 3 billion euro of foreign direct investment into South Korea, representing over 50% of the total. At the same time the EU remains the largest foreign investor to South Korea in terms of cumulative total since 1962.

Both parties are determined to facilitate two-way trade and investment flows by both multilateral and bilateral actions. Existing bilateral agreements should be notably enhanced thanks to a FTA (Free Trade Agreement) the negotiation of which has been authorised by the European Council in April 2007.

For further information, please visit the section devoted to the EU's trade relations with South Korea (DG Trade), of the website of the European Commission's Directorate General External trade.

EU-South Korea S&T Cooperation in the ICT Field

Several South Korean ICT companies (namely large corporations) have established research teams in Europe since quite a long time for most of them. These teams have been, year after year, increasingly involved in collaborative projects funded through European Union's research programmes, including the FP6 IST Programme, which ended in 2006.

However, the participation of Korean organisations based in South Korea (large corporations but also smaller companies, universities, research institutes, etc.) in EU-funded projects in the ICT area has remained quite low over the past years, particularly when compared to the level of participation of organisations from other leading industrialized or emerging countries (see illustration below).

Please refer to the EU-funded Projects section of this website to get more information on past and ongoing EU-funded research projects with the participation of organisations based in South Korea.

This situation should improve in the next years: the ICT theme of the FP7 EU research programme (launched in 2007) opens new perspectives for the development of EU-South Korea S&T cooperation in the ICT area. Moreover, the S&T Agreement signed in November 2006 between the EU and South Korea will improve the overall cooperation framework and boost the emergence of cooperation projects. Last, but not least, the "Korea-EU Cooperation Forum on ICT", organised on June 16-17, 2008 at the COEX in Seoul, provided the European and Korean ICT communities with an ideal opportunity to pave the way for a quick development of strategic cooperation projects of mutual interest.