As the Embassy of Serbia in Seoul proudly celebrates National Day together with the small Serbian community living here, as well as our Korean friends, it is an opportunity to once again recall the close and decades-long friendly relations that so happiliy exist between our two countries and two peoples.

Statehood Day or National Day is a holiday celebrated every 15th of February in Serbia to commemorate the outbreak of the First Serbian Uprising in 1804, which evolved into the Serbian Revolution against Ottoman rule. The revolution ultimately resulted in the recognition of Serbia's autonomy (1817) and later independence (1878) from the Ottoman Empire. On the same day in 1835 the first modern Serbian constitution was adopted.

The two countries are also celebrating an important jubilee this year – 35 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations, back in 1989. Since the establishment of the diplomatic relations, Serbia and Korea maintained close and mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation in various areas. This fact was recently further reconfirmed through bilateral exchanges at the highest level – namely, meetings of the president Vucic and president Yoon at the sidelines of the WEF in Davos in January last year and on the sidelines of UN GA in New York last September. Major impetus to our overall bilateral exchange was the official visit of PM Brnabic to Korea in September last year and the substantial talks she had with her counterpart PM Han. The visit yielded significant results such as signing of the Bilateral Investment Treaty, along with the MoU with "SK Bioscience". The priority topics on the agenda of the meetings were economic cooperation, as well as cooperation in the fields of AI, agriculture, biotechnology, creative industries etc. As a follow up to the visit, we are expecting MoU on Friendship and Cooperation to be signed between City of Novi Sad and City of Busan, as well as conclusion of MoU in the field of ICT and creative industries between “Serbia Creates” national platform and Busan ICT Promotion Agency. MoU on innovation based economy is also being negotiated and should be signed at the next convenient occasion.

On the economic front I am happy to note that, cooperation between Serbia and Korea remained successful and robust. Trade exchange volume grew 49 fold within the period of last decade with overall Serbian export to Korea rising to an impressive 13 fold in comparison to year 2018. Serbia remains the 2nd largest exporter of non-GMO corn and 3rd largest exporter of frozen berries to Korea. Overall bilateral trade exchange exceeded 550 million USD last year, but undoubtedly there is vast room for further expansion of our economic ties. Serbia has a lot to offer to potential Korean investors in the fields of ICT, renewable energy, AI, agriculture etc. Official opening of negotiations on Economic partnership agreement (EPA) is tentatively scheduled for the second half of this year and, once signed, the EPA will mark the beginning of the completely new chapter of our bilateral economic cooperation.

Since Korea is a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Serbia hopes for constructive cooperation within the world organization, based on respect for the principles of international law and the UN Charter, specifically in the issues of substantial importance to each of the two countries.

Last year was also successful when it comes to strengthening people to people cooperation and exchange. In this context, I would like to emphasize that the first Korea-Serbia Friendship Association was founded a few months ago. The idea is for the Association to be open to all interested members, but its backbone will be the younger generations of Koreans, who in the future will be the bearers of political, economic and social trends in this country.

As it seems that tourism sector is now fully recovered after being heavily hit by the pandemic and large number of Koreans start to pick and choose their new travel destinations, I am confident that there is a lot Serbia has to offer. Despite being a country abundant of rich historical heritage, serene nature, delicious food and warmhearted people, Serbia still remains undiscovered for many Koreans and I hope this will change in the near future.

At the very end, I would like to express my sincerest wishes for health, prosperity and success of your readers in this Year of the Blue Dragon.