At Ulsan City Hall, Consul General Doan Phuong Lan paid a courtesy visit to Mr. Kim Du Gyeom, Mayor of Ulsan City – one of the consular areas of the Vietnamese Consulate General in Busan.

Ulsan City is the largest industrial city in South Korea, particularly in the fields of automobile manufacturing and assembly, shipbuilding, precision engineering, wind energy, hydrogen energy, and petrochemicals. Ulsan City has the highest GDP per capita in South Korea (US$82,000/person). Ulsan is home to the manufacturing ecosystem of South Korea’s leading corporations such as Hyundai, SK, and Samsung.

Consul General Doan Phuong Lan expressed her admiration for the achievements made during the Mayor’s three-year term, especially the policies aimed at promptly shifting Ulsan’s direction to become the AI ​​capital of South Korea, a center for hydrogen energy, distributed energy technology, deep-sea mining technology, and healthcare and biotechnology. Consul General Doan Phuong Lan and Mayor Kim Du Gyeom discussed areas for future cooperation between Ulsan and other localities, focusing on three key sectors: (i) Strategic manufacturing industries: automobiles, shipbuilding, and precision engineering; (ii) Green energy, petrochemicals, hydrogen, and offshore wind power; and (iii) High technology, AI, digital transformation, and smart logistics. Mayor Kim Du Gyeom stated that Ulsan is an optimal location and will play a national role in the transformation of AI-based manufacturing industries, through the construction of data infrastructure leveraging Ulsan’s decades-long manufacturing industry foundation. Mayor Kim Du Gyeom also shared information about a program to recruit 50,000 workers under Ulsan-issued visas (only for working in Ulsan), intended for countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, expressing his willingness to accept skilled Vietnamese workers in the near future.

On this occasion, Consul General Doan Phuong Lan expressed gratitude for the swift, timely, and compassionate support from Ulsan City to Khanh Hoa Province in the face of the severe damage caused by the recent floods. Ulsan City has been a sister city of Khanh Hoa Province since 2002. The Consul General also congratulated Ulsan City on the UNESCO recognition of its rock murals as a World Heritage Site, becoming the 17th World Heritage Site in South Korea. Both sides agreed to continue exchanges and strengthen local-level working visits to explore opportunities for substantive cooperation../.