Korea, Central Asia to chart shared path at inaugural summit

Korea and five Central Asian nations are set to hold their first-ever summit in Seoul on Wednesday, elevating nearly two decades of institutional cooperation to the leadership level as both sides seek closer ties in critical minerals, supply chains and Eurasian connectivity.

Korean President Lee Jae Myung will host Kazakhstan's Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kyrgyzstan's Sadyr Japarov, Tajikistan's Emomali Rahmon, Turkmenistan's Serdar Berdimuhamedov and Uzbekistan's Shavkat Mirziyoyev for the meeting under the slogan “Walking Together Toward the Future: Partnership for Trust and Prosperity.” The six leaders are expected to adopt a joint Seoul Declaration outlining an expanded framework for cooperation.

Why Central Asia matters now

The summit comes at a time of intensifying global interest in Central Asia. With a combined population of some 80 million, the region's energy reserves, mineral wealth and position at the crossroads of major continental trade routes have drawn a wave of summit-level diplomacy from the world's largest economies in recent years. The result is a new diplomatic norm known as the Central Asia Plus, or C5+1 format, in which the five Central Asian states engage with an outside partner at the summit level, with multiple such frameworks now running in parallel.

Korea’s engagement, however, predates the recent rush of summit diplomacy. The Korea-Central Asia Cooperation Forum was launched in 2007, gained a permanent secretariat in 2017 and was upgraded to a foreign minister-level mechanism in 2020. The presidential summit is the culmination of that progression and the only multilateral leaders' meeting hosted by Korea this year.

"Korea recognized early on the need to engage Central Asia not as five separate counterparts but as a single region, and the partnership has been building toward this moment since the forum's launch in 2007," said Nam Jin, director-general for Northeast and Central Asian Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

With shared priorities — supply chains, connectivity and climate change — outgrowing the scope of ministerial talks, both sides reached a consensus that the partnership needed to move to the highest level.

From resources to industrial partnerships

Central Asia sits on vast energy and mineral reserves that are drawing global attention as supply chains shift. Kazakhstan is a major crude oil producer and the world's largest supplier of uranium. Turkmenistan holds some of the world's largest natural gas deposits, while Uzbekistan is a significant source of molybdenum. Kazakhstan approved a comprehensive development plan for rare metals and rare earth elements for 2024-28, while Kyrgyzstan last year unveiled its critical minerals development program through 2030.

What makes the region increasingly important to Korea is not simply access to raw materials. Central Asian governments are seeking to capture more value from their resources by expanding into processing, refining and advanced manufacturing rather than relying primarily on extraction.

Countries across the region are designating priority sectors to establish industrial hubs and seeking foreign investment and partnerships with international institutions and foreign companies, while pursuing state-led digitalization projects to boost productivity.

At the same time, to address aging Soviet-era infrastructure, Central Asian countries are working to expand and modernize key transport, logistics and energy networks. In particular, the governments are channeling major investments into energy grids alongside strategic transport and trade corridors connecting Asia and Europe.

For Central Asian leaders, the appeal of Korean partnership lies in its track record: rapid industrialization driven by technology transfer, workforce development and export-oriented manufacturing — a path several of them are trying to replicate.

What Korea brings

Economic ties between Korea and Central Asia have grown sharply in recent years. Total trade volume rose 90 percent compared with 2021, reaching $10 billion in 2025. Annual investment from Korea to Central Asia climbed 69 percent over the same period to $117 million. Korean companies' footprint in the region, once concentrated in the automotive and construction sectors, is broadening into urban infrastructure, information and communications technology, health care and smart agriculture.

Nam said the two sides' economies are growing increasingly complementary, as Korea's manufacturing capacity and technological expertise, combined with Central Asia's natural resources, growing markets and young workforce, create conditions for joint industrial upgrading.

"Beyond traditional sectors, expanding into emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, digital technology and climate solutions will build foundations for future growth engines," he said.

That momentum is central to the Lee administration's pragmatic diplomacy, which inherits and builds on the New Northern Policy's goal of broadening ties across Eurasia as part of a wider push to diversify Korea's foreign policy in a volatile international environment. Under that framework, Central Asia occupies a central role, offering pathways for supply chain diversification, infrastructure contracts and new export markets, while serving as a key link in strengthening the partnerships that underpin the policy's vision of reciprocal growth and regional stability.

Korea also holds a connection to the region that no other C5+1 partner can claim. Central Asia is home to some 310,000 Koryoin, also known as Koryo-saram — ethnic Koreans whose families were deported to the region in 1937 — making it one of the world's largest concentrations of overseas Koreans. Some 5,000 Korean nationals and businesspeople are active in Central Asia, while roughly 150,000 Central Asian students and workers now live in Korea.

"Next year marks 90 years since the Koryoin settled in Central Asia. Their presence is a human and historical asset that connects our two sides like no other partnership can," Nam said. "This summit is also about widening exchanges between our peoples and building connections for the next generation."

What comes next

The Seoul Declaration is expected to lay the groundwork for regular summit-level engagement and outline specific cooperation tracks.

For Central Asian governments, the summit offers a chance to add another major economy to their expanding roster of strategic partners. Korea's rapid industrialization — and the technological expertise, workforce development and Official Development Assistance investment that drove it — has long served as a reference point for the region's own modernization ambitions. Three decades of trade, investment and development cooperation have built a foundation of trust that both sides are now seeking to scale up.

For Korea, the summit represents an opportunity to deepen its presence in a region where critical minerals, energy security and continental logistics corridors will shape economic strategy for decades to come. Closer ties with Central Asia open pathways for supply chain diversification, infrastructure contracts, local production hubs and new export markets.

The groundwork has been laid over three decades. The summit is where both sides decide what to build on it.

This section was produced in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to mark the first Korea-Central Asia Summit.