TASHKENT, April 20, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – South Korean President Moon Jae-in on
Friday signed deals worth $12 billion with Uzbekistan during a week-long tour
of Central Asia, as he seeks to ease reliance on China and the US.
President of commodity-rich Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev praised his
country’s “strategic partnership” with Seoul as the leaders signed documents
following talks.
Moon credited Mirziyoyev for “leading Uzbekistan into a new era” with a
series of bold reforms.
The nature of the deals were not specified during the press briefing.
Trade between Uzbekistan and South Korea in 2018 was just over $2 billion.
Uzbek leader Mirziyoyev is looking to break out from the economic
straitjacket imposed by his late hardline predecessor Islam Karimov and
encourage more foreign investment and trade.
Karimov ruled Uzbekistan from before independence from the Soviet Union in
1991 until his death in 2016.
Moon’s office confirmed at the beginning of the week that economic affairs
would dominate talks during his eight-day regional tour that began in gas-
rich Turkmenistan and will finish in oil power Kazakhstan.
But Moon also gave a nod to the cultural ties shared by the two countries
when he referenced Uzbekistan’s 180,000-strong ethnic Korean population in an
interview with Uzbek state media on Thursday.
In 1937, suspecting divided loyalties, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had
the entire ethnic Korean population of the Russian Far East — around 172,000
people — transported to Central Asia on cattle trains.
Stalin saw the Koreans as a threat, as the peninsula’s colonial ruler
Japan was hostile to the Soviet Union — although some of the deportees were
exiles fighting for independence from Tokyo.
Moon thanked Uzbekistan, saying the country “warmly received citizens of
Korean descent who lost their home more than 80 years ago,” in the interview.
Moon is looking to reduce the reliance of the world’s 11th-largest economy
— stuttering on 2.7 percent annual growth — on traditional partners Beijing
and Washington.