Saudi CP seeks South Korea’s participation in Neom project
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol hoped for greater cooperation with Saudi Arabia — including on its $500 billion futuristic desert city project — as he met the kingdom’s crown prince on Thursday, Seoul officials said.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman flew to South Korea earlier Thursday for talks with Yoon and business tycoons in his first visit to South Korea since June 2019.
During talks attended by senior officials from both countries, Yoon said he hopes that South Korean companies will participate in megaprojects in Saudi Arabia such as Neom, a futuristic, carbon-free city planned along the kingdom’s Red Sea coast, Yoon’s office said in a statement.
Yoon also wanted the two countries to cooperate on defence industries and the development of hydrogen and other new energies and promote tourism and cultural exchanges, the statement said. Prince Mohammed said he wants to drastically expand bilateral cooperation on the areas of infrastructure construction, energy and defence industries, Yoon’s office said.
The prince’s trip to South Korea spawned hopes that South Korean companies’ active participations in the Neom city project would greatly invigorate the country’s economy, like a previous construction boom in the Middle East backed up South Korea’s rapid economic rise in the 1970s.
The Neom project envisions flying cars and a 170-km-long, zero-carbon emissions city that’s entirely enclosed and powered by Artificial Intelligence. In 2017, when Prince Mohammed announced plans to build the city, he said that “this will be a place for the dreamers of the world”.
Some observers say Saudi Arabia hopes the city will offer the kingdom jobs and cement a future beyond its vast crude oil reserves.
During the prince’s visit, South Korean companies signed more than 20 memorandums of understanding with their Saudi counterparts, non-binding contracts that are mostly about South Korean investments in Saudi Arabia, according to South Korean officials. —ap