On March 17, Wang Jian, the secretary of the Yiwu Party Committee, welcomed the South Korean Consul General in Shanghai. The parties held a talk on the enhancement of cooperation in the fields of trade, culture, and tourism, and discussed how to promote the exchanges of talents and professional workers. Wang Wei, a member of the Standing Committee of the Yiwu Municipal Party Committee and vice mayor of Yiwu, attended the meeting.

After welcoming the South Korean delegation, Mr. Wang gave a brief presentation on the socio-economic situation of Yiwu. He hoped that their visit was a turning point in further deepening the bilateral talks in trade cooperation, as well as increasing the Sino-Korean exchanges in the fields of culture, tourism, and working personnel.

The South Korean Consul General confirmed that as a major business city in the international scenario, Yiwu has undertaken an extremely important role in Chinese and South Korean trade. He expects that Yiwu will continue to care for and support the Koreans who do business and live in Yiwu and work together to write a new chapter of development for a better future.

Yiwu and South Korea are closely related for trade exchanges: in 2022, Yiwu's import and export volume to South Korea registered 10.9 billion RMB, an increase of 65.28%. In recent years, the city of Yiwu has introduced Korean specialties in the Import Pavilion and Import Product Incubation Zone and sold them to the whole country and even the world through the Yiwu Market. In 2022, Yiwu's imports from South Korea increased by 183% year-on-year. Yiwu is one of the cities with a large concentration of Koreans in China, and they have established friendly exchanges with six cities in South Korea. (By Li Shuangshuang, translated by Marco Lovisetto, edited by Daniel Haws)