Party leader Tô Lâm and spouse Ngô Phương Ly. — Photo from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

HÀ NỘI — General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Việt Nam Tô Lâm and his spouse Ngô Phương Ly, accompanied by a high-level Vietnamese delegation, will pay a state visit to the Republic of Korea from August 10 to 13.

The visit is made at the invitation of President of the Republic of Korea Lee Jae Myung and his spouse, according to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday.

Việt Nam and South Korea established diplomatic relations on December 22, 1992, and upgraded to the highest level of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2022.

In terms of political relations, the two sides have maintained strong ties across all channels of the Party, Government, and National Assembly. High-level exchanges continue to take place in various flexible forms, thereby continuously strengthening political trust.

Regarding defence and security cooperation, delegation exchanges and dialogue mechanisms have been conducted on a regular basis.

In economics and investments, South Korea remains Việt Nam’s leading investor, second-largest source of tourists and ODA provider, third-largest trading partner, and third-largest market for Vietnamese labour export. In 2024, bilateral trade reached US$81.5 billion, a 7.3 per cent increase year-on-year.

In the field of labour, in June 2023, the two sides signed an extension of the Memorandum of Understanding on the dispatch and reception of Vietnamese workers to South Korea under the Employment Permit System (EPS), valid for two years from the date of signing. In 2024, South Korea remained Việt Nam’s third-largest overseas labour market, receiving around 7,900 EPS workers, bringing the total number of Vietnamese workers in South Korea to approximately 88,000 (including EPS workers, highly skilled labourers, and seasonal workers).

On the front of science and technology, the two countries maintain the Ministerial-level Joint Committee on Việt Nam–South Korea Science and Technology Cooperation. At the 9th session in October 2023, both sides agreed to jointly conduct research from 2025 in six areas: information technology, biotechnology, climate technology, nanotechnology, digital transformation, and new/renewable energy. The two sides are actively cooperating to implement Phase 2 of the Việt Nam–Korea Institute of Science and Technology (VKIST) project. Major South Korean high-tech conglomerates have also invested in the National Innovation Centre (NIC): SK has provided funding and research programmes for Vietnamese enterprises; Samsung has established the Samsung Innovation Campus research lab, among other initiatives.

In tourism, in 2024, there were 4.6 million South Korean arrivals to Việt Nam and 600,000 Vietnamese visits to South Korea. This marked the first time the number of people-to-people exchanges between the two countries surpassed 5 million. In the first quarter of 2025, South Korea was the second-largest source of international visitors to Việt Nam, with 1.26 million arrivals (up 2.2 per cent compared to the same period in 2024) and accounting for 21 per cent of total foreign visitors to the country.

People-to-people exchanges continued to thrive. In 2024, the total number of Vietnamese nationals living and working in South Korea was around 320,000 – an increase of 50,000 from 2023. This included nearly 100,000 students, over 100,000 workers of various categories, and more than 40,000 Vietnamese women married to South Korean men (not including those who have obtained South Korean citizenship). The remainder were in South Korea for investment cooperation, family visits, short-term employment, etc. The descendants of the Lý Hoa Sơn and Lý Tinh Thiện lineages are estimated to number around 1,000. — VNS