The first Korea-Central Asia summit gave the relationship a permanent structure and tied Central Asian minerals to Korean technology. Kazakhstan will host the next summit in 2028, and the years in between will show whether the partnership builds industrial capability in the region.
The presidents of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan met South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in Seoul on Sept. 16 for the first Korea-Central Asia summit held at head-of-state level. The six leaders adopted the Seoul Declaration, which sets a 30-year cooperation agenda and commits them to summits every two years.
Kazakhstan offered to host the second summit in Astana in 2028, and the other participants agreed. The declaration also creates a C5+1 Industrial Ministers’ Consultative Mechanism, with ministerial meetings between summits tasked with reviewing implementation. The format took nearly two decades to reach this level.
Seoul launched the Korea-Central Asia Cooperation Forum in 2007 at the vice-ministerial level and gave it a permanent secretariat in 2017. The summit is the outcome of that gradual institution-building. The declaration covers supply chains, energy, trade, emerging technologies and security.
Its most consequential economic passage concerns critical minerals. The leaders expressed interest in combining Central Asia’s mineral resources with Korea’s advanced technologies and in facilitating exchanges of skilled personnel. That pairing of resources with people points to where Korea can matter most for Central Asia.
Korean capital remains modest next to Chinese lending or the portfolios of the multilateral development banks. Korean experience in turning skills into industrial capability is harder for the region to find elsewhere. Bilateral packages that match each country’s resources The bilateral meetings held around the summit produced distinct results for each country.
Kazakhstan brought the largest commercial package. During President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s state visit on Sept. 15, the two countries signed commercial agreements worth $19 billion and upgraded relations to a future-oriented comprehensive strategic partnership.
The headline figure combines signed agreements with announced projects at different stages of development. QazaqGaz and Hyundai Engineering agreed to build a gas processing plant at Karachaganak with capacity of five billion cubic meters a year, and KazMunayGas and Samsung E&A signed on expanding the Pavlodar refinery to nine million tons a year.
On minerals, Tau-Ken Samruk and the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources agreed on joint drilling at the Bakennoye lithium deposit, while POSCO Holdings signed a memorandum on rare-earth processing and refining. A civil nuclear memorandum opens the door to cooperation without committing Kazakhstan to a Korean vendor for any specific plant.
Uzbekistan signed 13 documents covering transport, aviation, agriculture, artificial intelligence, education, healthcare and intellectual property. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev also endorsed an $8 billion partnership program with the Export-Import Bank of Korea, with projects under discussion including high-speed trains, a bio-center, critical mineral processing and a design and testing center for semiconductors and advanced materials.