'Understanding cultural differences can boost India-South Korea economic ties'

Former Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea Un-Chan Chung on Thursday said understanding cultural differences between India and South Korea can enhance economic ties between the two nations.

"We have been trying to improve our relations with India but the countries are so much far away and we seek to understand about each other very much. So far we have investments (in Posco, LG and so on). I understand that in most of the cases so far it is satisfactory but there is some cultural differences which are not understood satisfactorily yet by the countries," Chung told the media here.

He was speaking on the sidelines of the annual conference of the Asia Pacific Economic Association at the International Management Institute Kolkata.

"I would say it is better policy to try to narrow the gap in understanding, especially cultural and if we overcome those gaps then the economic relationship will improve," said Chung, the chairman of the Korea Institute for Shared Growth.

Discussing shared growth and sustainable development of the Korean economy, Chung said Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's 1929 poem "The Lamp of The East" "moved many Koreans".

"In the poem, Tagore wrote prophetic lines about Korea which moved many Koreans," he added.

--IANS

sgh/pgh/bg