South Korea to donate 1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Vietnam

South Korea will offer Vietnam at least one million doses of Covid-19 vaccines within the next month, according to the Blue House.

Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (L) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a summit meeting in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session. Photo: Yonhap

South Korean President Moon Jae-in unveiled the plan during summit talks with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session, the Office of South Korean President’s spokesperson Park Kyung-mee said on Sept. 22.

Moon said the donation will be one million doses or more in October, the Yonhap reported.

It would be South Korea’s first direct donation of vaccines to a foreign nation, except for financial support through the COVAX Facility.

During the talks, Moon requested Vietnam’s support for the safety and protection of South Korean people and businesses in the Southeast Asian country.

Vietnam is home to about 160,000 South Koreans, according to Yoon Sang Ho, Chairman of the Korean Association in Vietnam.

As of June 2021, about 9,100 South Korean companies are working in Vietnam with an accumulated investment of US$72 billion, retaining the largest investor in the Southeast Asian country, according to Lee Jong Seob, president of the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) in Southeast Asia-Oceania cum general director of KOTRA Hanoi.

South Korean companies, including Samsung, Lotte, LG, Hyundai, CJ CGV, and Shinhan Bank, use more than one million employees in Vietnam.

Vietnam, one of the examples for the Covid-19 response in the world in 2020, is seeing the widespread transmission of the virus that leads to the closure of business premises in different parts of the country.

It is making efforts to get vaccines from different sources, including direct donations, support via COVAX, and purchase to pursue recovery plans in some big cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Its biggest vaccine donors are the US, China, Japan, Germany, and many other EU member states.

So far, only seven million people have been fully vaccinated, or about 7% of the total population.