On April 16-19, 2025, a delegation from Turkmenistan headed by Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers Baymyrat Annamammedow paid a state visit to the Republic of Korea.
South Korea has been developing all kinds of contacts with Turkmenistan (and Central Asia in general) since 1992 and has achieved impressive success. According to then-President of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, in 2014-2024 Korean companies implemented $5 bn-worth of projects in Turkmenistan for the construction of various facilities and factories. Moreover, as Chairman of the Halk Maslahaty of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow said, as of 2024 there are 14 investment projects in Turkmenistan with the participation of Korean companies, to which more than $11 bn has been contributed.
Notable progress in bilateral relations
A powerful legal framework of more than 100 different documents and agreements has been created between the two sides, which indicates the parties’ mutual interest in each other. In addition, in 2019 and 2024, the presidents of South Korea (Moon Jae-in and Yoon Suk Yeol, respectively) personally visited Turkmenistan. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow held talks in 2021 online (as president of the country) and in 2022 in South Korea (as Chairman of the Halk Maslahaty) with South Korean partners on a number of issues. Such a number of high-level meetings testifies to the rapid progress of bilateral relations, the core of which is the economic partnership.
Traditionally, the main areas of bilateral economic cooperation are the spheres of fuel, energy, transport and logistics. In the fuel and energy sector, as part of the above-mentioned visit, the ‘Turkmenhimiya State Concern’ and the South Korean ‘Daewoo Engineering & Construction’ signed a $700 mn-worth agreement on the construction of a new plant for the production of mineral fertilisers in the city of Turkmenabat by 2029. Moreover, since 2022, ‘Hyundai Engineering’ has been developing a project for an ammonia and urea production plant, which will be located in the Balkan Region of Turkmenistan.
The transport and logistics industries are also seeing rapid development. ‘Turkmenistan Airlines’ (the national airline) will launch direct flights from (Ashgabat-Seoul-Ashgabat) on July 14, 2025. It should also be noted that the entire bus fleet in Ashgabat has been replaced completely with Korean ‘Hyundai Super Aero City’ buses (more than 1,200 buses have been delivered to Turkmenistan since 2008). Moreover, Turkmenistan plans to purchase around 1,630 more buses and 300 more passenger taxi vehicles from Hyundai.
Innovative ’smart cities’
However, currently, in addition to the ‘traditional’ economic relations, cooperation in the construction, medical and smart cities sectors has come to the fore. This shows that South Korea does not solely view Turkmenistan solely through the prism of its rich hydrocarbon resources (primarily gas) and the possibility of their export. The expansion of areas of cooperation seriously strengthens South Korea’s position in the region, which, in our opinion, is designed to balance Turkmen economic relations with China (especially against the background of the construction of Line D of the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline, with the total volume of deals in the gas sector alone reaching $83 bn) and, to a slightly lesser extent, with Russia, the Collective West and Türkiye.
For example, in the construction industry, a joint project is being implemented by ‘Koryo Shipbuilding Industry Technology’ and the Balkan Shipyard to build two vessels with a capacity of 6,100 tonnes each for the ‘Türkmendeňizderýaýollary’ agency. In addition, the aforementioned ‘Daewoo Engineering & Construction Corporation’ is actively considering participation in the new ‘Ashgabat City’ mega-project. The last two areas of cooperation (medical and ‘smart cities’) are currently closely tied, which should be discussed separately.
In 2023, the new centre of the Ahal Region, the city of Arkadag, was presented, the construction of which is personally supervised by Garbanguly Berdimuhamedow. According to him, “this complex of facilities is unique in terms of technical and technological parameters and is an example of a completely innovative concept of a smart city”. It is planned to place a large medical cluster in Arkadag itself, and Korean corporations are to play an important role in construction, as evidenced by the numerous visits of Turkmen delegations to medical enterprises in South Korea. In addition, over the years, Turkmenistan has repeatedly discussed with its South Korean colleagues plans for the construction of Arkadag, and also concluded a number of agreements on cooperation in the field of medicine. In 2023, an agreement was signed between the Ministry of Health of Turkmenistan and the School of Korean Medicine of Busan National University and the National Institute for Korean Medicine Development.
This year, one may observe the acceleration and final completion of this process. On April 18, in Seoul, the State Committee for the Construction of the City of Arkadag under the President of Turkmenistan and the South Korean company ‘Korea Meditech Co., Ltd.’ signed a memorandum of understanding. Interestingly, the ceremony itself was attended by the Director General of the Bureau of Welfare Planning of the Ministry of Health and Welfare of the Republic of Korea, as well as representatives of the Korean Health Industry Development Institute, which attaches additional importance to the document signed.
Thus, South Korea and Turkmenistan are actively raising the level of bilateral economic contacts, which have gone beyond just the fuel, energy, transport and logistics fields, and have begun to develop in high-tech areas (medicine, smart cities). The diversification of relations is beneficial to both sides: it provides Turkmenistan with another vector to balance economic relations with China, the West, Russia and Türkiye, and South Korea has the opportunity to gain a firm foothold in Central Asia and export its technologies to the world market.
Nazar KURBANOV, trainee, Centre for Spatial Analysis of International Relations, Institute for International Studies, MGIMO
