The leaders of five Central Asian nations — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — visited South Korea at the same time. Never before in the diplomatic history of either side have the leaders of these five countries, situated at a strategic crossroads of the Eurasian continent, gathered in one place. Amid the turbulence of global supply chain realignment and the weaponization of resources, the fact that their steps led to South Korea shows that cooperation between Korea and Central Asia has grown beyond simple friendship into an important strategic partnership that will underpin the future development of both sides.
Global industrial competition today is evolving beyond the capabilities of individual companies into a contest of solidarity among national "industrial supply chain ecosystems." For our advanced strategic industries — artificial intelligence, semiconductors, secondary batteries and electric vehicles — to take a leap forward, the stable procurement of critical minerals must be organically linked with solid manufacturing capacity. Central Asia is a vast treasure house of resources, holding large deposits of the strategic minerals essential to future industries, including lithium, uranium, molybdenum and rare earths. Adding cooperation with South Korea, which possesses world-class advanced manufacturing technology and materials-processing capabilities, will provide a firm foundation for navigating a rapidly changing global supply chain environment.
This is precisely why major economies including the United States, China and the European Union are competing to devote their full efforts to strategic ties with Central Asia. As competition to secure global resources intensifies, our government has also used this Korea-Central Asia summit as an occasion to formally launch the Korea-Central Asia Industry Ministers' Meeting, a regular ministerial-level consultative body with the five Central Asian nations. Through this, we have established a stable institutional foundation that allows us to discuss critical mineral supply chains and future industrial cooperation with Central Asia on an ongoing basis amid the global race for supremacy in advanced industries, to jointly reduce supply chain uncertainty, and at the same time to firmly support private-sector business projects at the government level.
Building on this institutional base, we must now turn critical mineral cooperation that underpins the advanced industrial ecosystem into substantive projects. Moving beyond the past approach of simply securing raw materials or importing mined output, we must create a sustainable model of mutually beneficial cooperation that links local companies through to higher value-added processing. The Rare Metals Center that the government is establishing locally through official development assistance (ODA) is a key bridge connecting local resource suppliers with advanced Korean companies that need those materials. Based on the Rare Metals Center, the government plans to actively identify and support step-by-step cooperation projects ranging from joint exploration to local smelting and processing and further to joint investment. This is expected to deliver mutual benefits — large-scale investment and job creation for Central Asia, and a stable critical mineral supply chain for Korea.
The summit also produced numerous business cooperation memorandums of understanding (MOUs) between companies and between related institutions. Because companies are the main actors that create real economic value on the foundation now in place, we hope these agreements will not remain mere documents but will develop into concrete business projects leading to actual commercial production and imports. The government, for its part, will strengthen tailored support for individual projects, including resolving on-the-ground difficulties and providing trade finance, to create an environment in which companies can invest actively, and will work to ensure that the results of private-sector cooperation become visible as soon as possible.
We must also broaden the axis of mutually beneficial cooperation to include the upgrading of industrial supply chains. Central Asian countries currently have a strong will to upgrade their own industries and foster manufacturing on the strength of their abundant resources. Moving beyond past cooperation centered on finished-vehicle exports or one-off plant construction, we must expand the horizon of cooperation to building local parts-supply ecosystems, the transition to eco-friendly mobility, and infrastructure modernization. If Korea's excellent engineering technology and the smart manufacturing know-how it has accumulated are combined with each Central Asian country's industrial diversification policies, Central Asia can emerge as Eurasia's future manufacturing hub while Korean companies secure new markets and stable supply chains.
There is a saying in Central Asia that with a good friend, one is certain to achieve one's purpose. Just as the Silk Road that once connected the civilizations of East and West was a path to prosperity, cooperation today will become a new Silk Road connecting advanced industries. In this era of great industrial transformation, the five Central Asian nations are important friends who will widen the growth potential of our industries and safeguard our economic security. The government will use the newly launched Korea-Central Asia Industry Ministers' Meeting as a permanent cooperation platform, mobilize full support for investment by Korean companies, and open a new path for an "industrial supply chain partnership" that advances together with the Eurasian continent.
