Ambassador Dr. Jong Bum-goo and Premier Reiner Haseloff – Picture by Staatskanzlei Sachsen-Anhalt, Burkhard Rulf.
Wednesday, 16 September 2020, Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany: Premier Dr. Reiner Haseloff received the Ambassador of the Republic of South Korea in Germany, H.E. Dr. Jong Bum-goo, for his inaugural visit to the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt.
During the meeting in the State Chancellery, the state chief of government and his diplomatic guest discussed the economic ties between the two countries and possibilities for developing bilateral relations.
Premier Haseloff recalled his visit to Korea in 2014 and likewise discussed current developments in both countries, including how to deal with the pandemic situation. Ambassador Jong was also interested in the experiences of Saxony-Anhalt in the course of German reunification.
In 2019 Saxony-Anhalt imported goods worth around 252 million euros from South Korea. Exports to South Korea reached around 153 million euro last year. This makes the Asian state an important trading partner for Saxony-Anhalt.
Some South Korean investors are also active in Saxony-Anhalt: Only recently, the Hanwha Group (headquarters in Seoul) announced that it would invest 125 million euros in the next three years to expand the research capacities of Hanwha Q-CELLS GmbH in the district of Anhalt-Bitterfeld. At the Thalheim site, the company conducts research and manufactures solar modules, among other things. Part of the investment is intended to advance the development of the next generation of photovoltaic systems and to support the desired energy turnaround.
The two universities in Saxony-Anhalt and the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art in Halle maintain professional contacts with university institutions in South Korea.
The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation has been working with the Paju Typography Institute (PaTI) Seoul since 2012 to jointly reflect on and update the historical Bauhaus stage as an educational model for movement-oriented teaching formats. This work also became part of the 2014/2015 exhibition “Mensch.Raum.Maschine – Bühnenexperimente am Bauhaus” (Man.Space.Machine – Stage Experiments at the Bauhaus) curated by Torsten Blume and Christian Hiller for the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, which was shown at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Seoul and attracted 120,000 visitors. As a result of the cooperation, a German-Korean shared residency programme was developed with the MMCA. In addition to the cooperation with the PaTI, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation also advises and supports the publishing house Ahn Graphics in the conception of publications on the historical Bauhaus and its reception in South Korea.
The German Partition Marienborn Memorial has welcomed two delegations from South Korea in recent years: On 25 May 2017, a delegation from the DMZ Museum visited the memorial and the border memorial Hötensleben. The organisation was done by Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea Office Seoul. In May 2018 a delegation of the South Korean Ministry of Justice visited the memorial, organised by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Berlin.
For further information
Government of Saxony-Anhalt: https://europa.sachsen-anhalt.de/internationales/aktuelles-international-2020/antrittsbesuch-des-botschafters-von-suedkorea/
