South Korean President to meet PM Modi in July

The North Asian economic powerhouse seeks to tap opportunities in developing rail, road and port infrastructure in India.

Updated on: May 3, 2018, 23:07:19 IST

New Delhi, Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta

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South Korean President Moon Jae-in will hold meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Capital on July 10 this year, as the North Asian economic powerhouse seeks to tap opportunities in developing rail, road and port infrastructure in India.

File photo of South Korean President Moon Jae-in. (AP photo)

According to South Block officials, while the official process to finalise the bilateral documents to be signed is on, South Korea is expected to deliver on the 2014 agreement for technical cooperation in the railways sector (in areas such as high speed trains, modernisation of coaches, railway operations, modernisation of signalling, construction and maintenance technologies, and development of logistics parks and terminals.

South Korea is also interested in the development of New Delhi Railway Station as a major transportation hub at the cost of Rs10,000 crore.

Road transport, highways and shipping minister Nitin Gadkari was in Seoul last month for four days to discuss South Korean investment in the roads and ports sector.

Gadkari was apparently assured of Korean investments in ports and highways during his bilateral interactions. South Korean investment in India through the “Make in India” route have gone up by $3.5 billion in the past one and a half years alone.

While South Korean car giant Kia Motors is slated to roll out its first vehicles from its Anantapur plant in Andhra Pradesh by September 2019, multinational conglomerate Samsung is expected to double its production in India.

Kia Motors has invested $1.5 billion in two tranches in India for its Anantapur plant with another $700 being invested by the 20 tier-I Kia car parts suppliers.

Although South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha was expected to visit India this month as part of visit preparation, his trip now stands postponed due to Seoul’s preoccupation with its high decibel engagement with North Korea over denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

South Korea is looking towards the meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un for a long lasting solution between the divided Koreas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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