di Istana Kepresidenan Korea Cheong Wa Dae (Blue House), Seoul, Republik Korea
Presiden Republik Indonesia (Prabowo Subianto)
Annyeonghaseyo.
First of all, it’s a great honor and pleasure for me to meet you again since our last meeting in Gyeongju on the sidelines of the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting (AELM) November last year.
I would like also to express my highest appreciation for the very warm welcome and the great ceremony given to me. This is a great honor that I experienced today as a former soldier, I’m very honored to be received with such a beautiful ceremony. You must be proud of your soldiers. They are excellent soldiers. And, for me, this first state visit is very important. I consider Korea to be a very close friend of Indonesia and I’d like to enhance this cooperation.
Of course, in every long relationship, there will always be ups and downs. There will always be sometimes misunderstandings. But as friends, we can come to collaboration, come to consensus with honesty and with openness. Even within one family, we can have misunderstandings.
But the important thing is there are interests in common between our two countries. As they say, there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. And I think, interest between Korea and Indonesia is very important between us. We are both countries in the Pacific. We are both trading countries. We need a good relationship for the economic well-being of our two countries and we have maybe a complementary role.
You have achieved tremendous strides in your development, your industry and your science and technology is very advanced. We have a lot of resources. We have a big market. We can complement each other. And I think, as middle power, we also have same concerns. We both need stability and we both need peace. But, we understand that if we want peace and stability, we must also have good security and defense. Thank you.
My state visit here comes at a situation where the world is full of uncertainty and danger. So, this makes relationship between countries like Indonesia and Korea more important. I wish that we will have the best relationship and I would like to elevate our special strategic partnership that was agreed on in 2017 to be elevated to more comprehensive partnership. And, let us task our ministers to work towards this elevated role.
Thank you.