MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Boric promotes Chile's partnership with South Korea

Boric underscored Chile's robust institutions and shared values

Chilean President Gabriel Boric Font urged his audience during a business seminar in the South Korean city of Busan to build a partnership in the ongoing trade war with circumstantially powerful countries.

 The South American leader highlighted a new cooperation agreement between the two nations while issuing a strong critique of global trade geopolitics, referencing the commercial tensions between the United States and China.

Addressing the Chile-Korea Business Seminar, President Boric announced the recent signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Chile’s promotion agencies (ProChile and InvestChile) and the Korea International Trade Association (KITA).

The President then extended an invitation to view Chile as a vital platform for investment and innovation, describing the country as a “laboratory” for testing new technologies.

Boric described the current international panorama as “turbulent,” specifically criticizing the behavior of the world's major economic powers.

“Commerce and its rules are being questioned by the countries that are circumstantially most powerful,” Boric stated while contrasting this with Chile's values, advocating for an alliance based on cooperation rather than confrontation: “We believe in the rule of law; we believe in international law; we believe in the respect of contracts; we believe in respect between countries, that it is much better to collaborate than to humiliate, that it is much better to learn from the other than to crush the other.”

He affirmed that, for these reasons, Chile views South Korea as a key partner, citing the 2004 Free Trade Agreement, and seeking to entice South Korean investors by listing Chile’s competitive advantages in copper, lithium, energy, digital economy, and electromobility.

The President stressed that a key intangible factor for investment was Chile's institutional stability with robust institutions as well as shared cultural and democratic ties that extend beyond commerce.
“What unites us are not only contracts or foreign exchange; they are also the human acts that make up culture,” he said. “Let us continue to build an alliance for the future, an alliance for innovation, for sustainability, for democracy, and for the well-being of our peoples.”