South Korea focusing on small, midsize businesses in Iran: Envoy

One of South Korea’s main trade strategies is to forge links with Iran’s small and midsize businesses to minimize the adverse impacts of any severance of trade interaction between a few major companies, said South Korean ambassador to Iran, AVA Diplomatic reports.

Speaking at a trade meeting in Tehran, Kim Sung-ho said that Seoul is seeking to promote cooperation among Korean and Iranian small and midsize firms as a ‘strategy for stability’ in shaping ties with Tehran.

When thousands of Iranian and South Korean businesses work in partnership, the severance of relations by a few companies will not have a major effect on bilateral economic relations, Kim added.

Expressing dissatisfaction over the fact that crude oil constitutes 98 percent of Iran’s exports to South Korea, the ambassador said cooperation between small and medium industries would greatly boost bilateral trade.

He also reminded the Korean businesspeople present in the meeting that Iran is not a market for the sale of Korean products anymore, stressing that South Korean industries should work on plans to ‘transfer technology’ to Iranian companies.

The Iranian administration’s policy is to cut down on purchasing foreign products, Kim noted, encouraging the Korean activists to seize the opportunity and make investment in Iran.

In May 2016, then South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, paid a visit to Iran with a big delegation of ministers, top officials and business people, and signed 19 agreements with Iran.

South Korea remains one of the major crude importers from Iran. The East Asian nation’s oil imports from Iran sharply increased in 2016 immediately after anti-Iran economic sanctions were lifted under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — a nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany).