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.
Sobir Kurbanov.
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.
Eldaniz Gusseinov.
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. Each project must be prepared and approved before financing is released. The two sides also confirmed a joint fund for critical mineral projects, though its size was not disclosed. For many Central Asians who grew up in the 1990s, the Uz-Daewoo plant in Asaka, which began production in 1996, was the first visible sign of Korean industry in the region. Uzbekistan’s agenda with Korea now reaches into semiconductors and biotechnology.
The other three countries brought smaller portfolios with clear priorities. Turkmenistan signed an investment protection agreement, and Daewoo Engineering and Construction signed a memorandum on modernizing a 250-kilometer section of the Karakum Canal. Those documents extend a relationship long anchored in gas chemistry, including the $3.4 billion Kiyanly polymer complex, into water management and Caspian shipbuilding.
Tajikistan upgraded ties to a comprehensive partnership and signed 17 agreements. Antimony and precious metals are now on the presidential agenda, following talks in August on joint exploration and project financing. Kyrgyzstan signed 18 agreements and agreed to set up a Korea Desk inside its government as a single contact point for Korean investors, along with work toward mutual recognition of halal certification.
Trade that still runs on cars and raw materials
The economic base beneath these packages remains narrow. Korea’s trade with the five countries passed $10 billion for the first time in 2025, with Korean exports of $8.67 billion against imports of $1.39 billion. That still amounts to less than 1% of Korea’s total trade. Speaking at the Korea-Central Asia Business Summit, Lee acknowledged that the exchange rests largely on Korean cars and auto parts flowing to the region and Central Asian energy and raw materials flowing back. He called for expansion into new industries such as biotechnology and digital services, and pledged support for digital customs systems and Korea Desks in all five countries.
Investment data require careful reading. Korean figures put cumulative investment across the whole region at $6.48 billion, while Tokayev said Korean investment in Kazakhstan alone has reached $12 billion. The gap between the two figures is wide enough to warrant caution with any headline total. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan account for most of the trade and most of the investment, and Korea remains a smaller economic actor in Central Asia than China or Russia. That position suits the role Korea is best placed to play.
Know-how that outweighs Korea’s modest capital
Central Asia’s development agenda has moved on from stabilization and resource extraction toward productivity and better jobs. Korea’s transformation from a poor economy into an industrial and technological power within a few decades offers practical lessons on how education and industrial policy reinforce each other. Central Asian economies operate under different institutions and demographics, so those lessons need adaptation. They remain directly relevant to the questions the region now faces.
Education and vocational training should become a central pillar of the partnership. The Seoul Declaration commits the sides to jointly cultivating technical specialists and expanding exchanges among students, researchers, industrial workers and public officials. Central Asia’s young population needs that commitment turned into Korean university campuses and joint degrees in the region, along with vocational colleges linked to Korean employers in engineering, mining, semiconductors and energy.
The projects signed in Seoul also offer a test of know-how transfer. Importing equipment and acquiring technological capability are different achievements. Large contracts such as the Pavlodar refinery expansion and the proposed semiconductor testing center in Uzbekistan could carry supplier-development programs and local engineering teams, bringing Central Asian firms into Korean supply chains.
Minerals are where this matters most. Lee called for cooperation across the full value chain, from exploration and refining to materials processing and finished products. That matches the condition Central Asian governments now set for foreign partners, which is processing capacity on their own territory. A Rare Metals Technology Cooperation Center in Almaty, which Lee welcomed during Tokayev’s visit, gives that ambition an institutional home. The Bakennoye drilling and the POSCO rare-earth memorandum will show whether Korean capital follows the same logic, and whether ESG standards and local training are written into the contracts.
Migration that can bring skills back home
People already connect the two regions. Around 150,000 Central Asian students and workers live in Korea. Central Asia is home to some 310,000 Koryo-saram, descendants of the roughly 172,000 ethnic Koreans deported from the Russian Far East in 1937, and 2027 marks 90 years since their settlement in the region.
Central Asian labor migration has long been oriented toward Russia. Korea offers a destination where work can be tied deliberately to skills. A worker who spends several years in a Korean factory or construction company acquires technical training, language, savings and knowledge of modern management. With certification and reintegration support, returnees can work as technicians or start businesses at home. The declaration’s language on skilled personnel gives governments a mandate to build such circular skills partnerships into their migration agreements.
Benchmarks that Astana should track by 2028
The Seoul Declaration supplies the architecture, and the ministerial meetings before Astana can supply the scorecard. Useful measures would include how many of the Seoul agreements reach financial close, what share of new mineral output is processed in the region, how many joint degree and vocational programs operate with Korean industry, and whether migration agreements carry certification and reintegration terms.
For Central Asia, strategic diversification has so far meant balancing relations among major powers. The next stage is widening the region’s sources of technology and skills. For Korea, which needs secure minerals and resilient supply chains, the same agenda serves its economic security. If the Astana summit can report progress on those measures, C5+Korea will have moved the relationship from the assembly lines of Asaka toward a regional knowledge partnership, and Seoul will be remembered as its starting point.
The authors are Sobir Kurbanov, an international development expert and fellow at Nightingale Int., and Eldaniz Gusseinov, a co-founder and head of research at Nightingale Int.
