Mongolian Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai’s newest go to to South Korea in the beginning of April make clear Ulaanbaatar and Seoul’s rising financial and cultural cooperation. Oyun-Erdene’s go to envisaged a number of financial initiatives Seoul may take part in, starting from collaboration between massive firms to growing tourism and selling the Korean artistic business to enter Mongolia.

Mongolia and South Korea have shared deep cultural ties for many years. Since its launch within the Nineteen Nineties, Korean popular culture, cleaning soap operas, and music industries have been a serious inspiration for Mongolia’s artistic and manufacturing business. Whereas this served as a basis for cultural ties between Mongolia and South Korea, given up to date Mongolia’s financial surroundings, Ulaanbaatar is in search of deeper cultural ties that promote and diversify its financial alternatives. These endeavors embody combining tourism with progressive collaboration equivalent to filming and leisure manufacturing. 

Since establishing their strategic partnership in 2021, Ulaanbaatar and Seoul have aimed to develop areas of bilateral cooperation, significantly pertaining to business-based financial development. Korean companies are in search of numerous funding alternatives in sectors equivalent to medication and biotech, agriculture, communications, and expertise. Between 1990 and 2017, bilateral commerce grew from $2 million to $200 million. The 2 governments are actually aiming to spice up financial ties through growing investments and tourism. 

Whereas South Korea has develop into a number one vacation spot for Mongolian vacationers, the Mongolian authorities hopes to draw extra Korean vacationers and companies. As of 2023, 40,000 Mongolians live in South Korea, both finding out, working, or touring forwards and backwards, and round 1,500 companies in Mongolia are funded by South Korean capital. Round 3,500 South Koreans presently reside in Mongolia. 

Throughout Oyun-Erdene’s assembly with South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, he highlighted the 60 p.c enhance in Korean tourism to Mongolia in 2023. With the hope of accelerating this quantity, Mongolia invited Korean skills, productions, filming, and different artistic industries to discover what the nation has to supply. These endeavors, in return, ought to increase Mongolia’s non-mining financial sectors, which incorporates tourism. In line with Montsame, the Mongolian information company, in 2023, the tourism business generated “$1.2 billion in income.”  

In selling Mongolia’s attraction to the tourism business, the “GoMongolia” model took the initiative to collaborate with Korean artistic industries to enter the Mongolian market.  

GoMongolia – with the motto “All the time Transferring” – is a multifaceted branding that goals to draw international tourism and filming industries to spotlight Mongolia’s nomadic society, huge panorama, tradition, and uniqueness of its geography. However, greater than this, it’s a manner for the present administration to equip Mongolian sectors with new applied sciences and capabilities which are wanted to unlock alternatives within the fashionable age with world companions. As a strategic associate of Mongolia, South Korea can play a larger function in Mongolia’s efforts to diversify its financial system.   

It was no coincidence that Oyun-Erdene introduced Mongolia’s tourism marketing campaign, “Years to Go to Mongolia 2024-2025,” throughout his final official go to to Seoul in 2023. The tourism promotion, coupled with a number of bilateral agreements equivalent to visa-free journey for residents of South Korea to Mongolia for 90 days and VAT-free looking for Korean vacationers in Mongolia, opened the door for vacationers and companies. 

One other necessary bilateral settlement included the Air Settlement to enhance the variety of flights and introduce new direct routes between the 2 international locations. By means of initiatives like these, Mongolia hopes to draw not simply vacationers but additionally different enterprise alternatives and cultural engagements with South Korea. 

From an financial perspective, Mongolia’s efforts to diversify its mining-dependent financial system require innovation and creativity. Along with selling tourism, this effort includes inviting totally different companies from totally different cultures and creating alternatives for collaboration between the private and non-private sectors. Latest digital partnerships with Google, SpaceX’s Starlink, and What3Words show Mongolia’s progressive methods to develop but additionally diversify its financial system and workforce.  

Within the case of South Korea, Mongolia’s curiosity in growing partnerships creates enterprise alternatives for main firms. The 2023 Mongolia-Korea Enterprise Spherical Desk dialogue included “[r]epresentatives of greater than 20 Korean firms, together with Ok financial institution, KT group, Samsung C&T, Hyundai E&C, Daewoo E&C, Shinhan Monetary Group, Seol Asan Medical Middle, Seoul Nationwide College Hospital, Emart, and Highland.”

Throughout these discussions, the 2 sides explored new avenues for bilateral commerce equivalent to small manufacturing, development, agriculture, prescription drugs, and digital finance. An space of cooperation that would develop is selling and supporting small-medium enterprises in Mongolia, not simply Mongolian conglomerates. 

These burgeoning public-private partnerships point out the strengthening of Mongolia and South Korea’s financial and cultural ties. Furthermore, as Mongolia’s strategic associate, South Korea donated $200,000 in humanitarian assist to Mongolia for the latest Dzud pure catastrophe. 

As the 2 international locations’ relations proceed to develop, Mongolia hopes that South Korea’s tourism and inventive industries can illuminate the nation’s huge and distinctive panorama and tradition, and by doing that, strengthen cultural ties between the Mongolian and the Korean folks.