Recognizing that Saemaul Undong (SMU), Korea's successful rural development initiative in the 1970s, can make a substantial contribution to accomplishing the 'Swacch Bharat Abhiyan', Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Monday agreed to promote cooperation to create synergy by combining development experiences.
President Park lauded Prime Minister Modi's 'Swacch Bharat Abhiyan' as an effort to transform India.
Recognising the integral link between economic growth, preservation of environment and clean energy, India and Korea agreed to enhance exchanges between their respective ministries and agencies.
India lauded the Korean Green Economy initiative and expressed willingness to work with Korea for mutually-beneficial partnerships in deploying innovative policies and technologies to improve urban water and air quality and to protect natural resources.
Prime Minister Modi and President Park expressed their appreciation on the ongoing cooperation in science and technology and noted that joint research and development projects are being implemented in focused areas of renewable energy, materials science, robotics and engineering sciences, and health sciences.
The duo emphasised that both sides should develop strong academia-industry connect programmes in areas such as clean-tech, robotics and automation and Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM), which can address economic and societal challenges of the two countries.
More From This Section
Agreeing that cooperation in space sector has many possibilities, they welcomed the agreement between Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) to pursue cooperation in the areas of lunar exploration, satellite navigation and space science and application.
The agreement includes deep space cross tracking and communication support for Korean and Indian deep space missions, sharing of data of lunar surface and radiation data collected by Chandrayan-1, collaboration in GAGAN-KASS inter-operability and sharing experience in GAGAN (GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation system) and KASS (Korea Augmentation Satellite System), technological cooperation in the field of space science and its application, satellite launch, and holding working-level talks regularly between ISRO and KARI to strengthen the substantive way of cooperation in the areas.