Vietnam holds culture festival, meeting with workers in Korean region

Nguyen Viet Phong, Chairman of the Vietnamese People Association in Jeonnam - Gwangju, said there are about 20,000 Vietnamese people in the region, and that the community has been growing strongly and contributing much to local socio-economic development.

He added this year’s event became even more meaningful as the two countries are celebrating the 30th anniversary of their diplomatic ties in December.

In his remarks, Vietnamese Ambassador to the RoK Nguyen Vu Tung said bilateral relations are flourishing in all aspects, from politics, economy, security - defence to culture and people-to-people exchange. Leaders of the two countries have agreed to upgrade the Vietnam - RoK strategic cooperative partnership to a new level in 2022 to foster cooperation in the coming decades.

Noting that labour cooperation has been an important field in the countries’ strategic cooperative partnership for many years, he highly valued the combination of the culture festival with the meeting with Vietnamese workers as it created an occasion for disseminating laws and giving advice to the labourers.

Tung expressed his hope that Vietnamese workers in the RoK, including in Jeonnam - Gwangju, will uphold good virtues of the Vietnamese people, comply with labour contracts and local laws, and return to the homeland on schedule so that they can continue working in the RoK in the future.

This will help increase the number of Vietnamese workers in the RoK and strengthen multi-faceted ties between the two countries, the ambassador added.

Vietnamese labourers have been sent to the RoK under the latter’s Employment Permit System (EPS) since 2004. About 50,000 Vietnamese people are working under this system at present, according to the Overseas Labour Department under Vietnam’s Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.