RIYADH: Saudi Arabia and South Korea have identified 40 joint projects as part of their joint collaboration within the framework of Saudi Vision 2030. “The two countries have also launched a joint panel to pursue the implementation of the projects as Vision 2030 spurs exciting opportunities in several sectors,” said Dr. Kwon Pyung-oh, South Korean ambassador, here on Sunday.
Kwon said: “Riyadh and Seoul are rapidly expanding cooperation in diverse sectors, and most of these areas directly touch upon the daily lives of the Saudi people. They are also central to the Saudi government’s job-creation initiatives.” He said an exclusive Saudi-Korea Vision 2030 committee with the goal of institutionalizing the economic partnership has been formed and serves as a one-stop shop to manage and oversee progress.
He said the two sides have identified the projects across the five key sectors, namely “energy and manufacturing, smart infrastructure and digitalization, capacity building, health care and life sciences, as well as SMEs and Investment.”
He pointed out that “our two countries have made substantial headway across 16 cooperation projects over the past five months.” To this end, Kwon recalled the strong bonds of friendship between the countries that stretch back more than five decades. “In the 1970s and 80s, Korea played a key part in the development of infrastructure in Saudi Arabia,” said the envoy.
The diplomat pointed out that Saudi Arabia is Korea’s sixth largest source of imports and a primary energy provider. Korea is the Kingdom’s fifth largest export market, said Kwon, who will shortly be leaving the Kingdom on completion of his tenure. On his return to Seoul, he will join the state-owned Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) as its chief executive officer and president.
Asked about Korea’s bid to build large-size nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia, he said: “KEPCO (Korea Electricity Power Co.) has already submitted a proposal to the Saudi government to participate in the National Project for Atomic Energy which is expected to transform Saudi Arabia’s energy industry.” He said Korea had earned “a reputation for building world-class nuclear reactors – on time and within budget over the last 40 years.”
“KEPCO is the world’s first and only contractor with experience of building a nuclear reactor in a desert environment and climate very similar to that of Saudi Arabia – at the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in the UAE.”
KOTRA, which he will join immediately after his return from the Kingdom, maintains an extensive global business network comprising 127 overseas offices across 86 countries, including Saudi Arabia. KOTRA opened its office in the Kingdom in 1973, which has served as a linchpin of Saudi-Korean business ties for the past 45 years.
Saudi Arabia, Korea identify 40 joint projects within framework of Vision 2030
Saudi Arabia, Korea identify 40 joint projects within framework of Vision 2030
Swedish king awards American Saudi scientist, Omar Yaghi, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025
- Yaghi will share $1.2m prize with British Australian and Japanese scientists Richard Robson and Susumu Kitagawa
- He is the 1st Saudi national to be awarded the Nobel Prize and 2nd Arab-born to win in the chemistry category since 1999
STOCKHOLM: King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden on Wednesday awarded American Saudi scientist Omar Yaghi the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his breakthrough development of metal-organic frameworks, a sponge-like structure that could store CO2 or harvest water from the air, alongside the British Australian and Japanese scientists Richard Robson and Susumu Kitagawa.
Yaghi, Robson and Kitagawa have each contributed over the past 50 years to developing scalable, reliable MOF models that can be deployed in industry to address climate-related issues and deliver clean air and water. They will share the $1.2 million prize.
Yaghi, 60, who grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan to a Palestinian family expelled from their property by Zionist militias in 1948, is the second Arab-born laureate to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The Nobel Foundation said that MOFs, which are structures with large internal spaces, “can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyze chemical reactions.”
In 2015, Yaghi received the King Faisal International Prize for Chemistry, and in 2021, King Salman granted him Saudi citizenship for his scientific achievements. He holds the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair in Chemistry at UC Berkeley and is the founding director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute. In addition, Yaghi has branched into entrepreneurial activity since 2018, founding Atoco, which works on water harvesting and carbon capture, and co-founding H2MOF for hydrogen storage and WaHa Inc. for water harvesting with projects in the Middle East.
His focus on harvesting water from the air in arid conditions stems from his upbringing in Jordan, where water reached homes every 14 days. He began field tests in the Arizona desert in the 1990s to capture water from the air using the MOF-303 model he had developed.
Yaghi is the first Saudi national to be awarded the Nobel Prize and the second Arab-born to win in the chemistry category since the Egyptian American chemist and scientist Ahmed Zewail was honored in 1999.
Zewail’s model of the “femtochemistry apparatus” is on display at the Nobel Prize Museum. He used the apparatus to demonstrate the principle behind his method of studying chemical reactions using laser technology, capturing it in a femtosecond, which is to a second what a second is to 32 million years.
He is one of dozens of laureates who donated objects to the museum since its foundation in 2001 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, which began in 1901, five years after the death of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel. Since 2001, it has become tradition that each December the winners of that year bring an item to be displayed that reflects their work, personal life or inspiration, Karl Johan, a curator at the museum, told Arab News.
“Zewail wanted to donate an object that could visualize his work and his experiment. He constructed (the interactive apparatus) specifically for the museum. As one of the first objects to be displayed after 2001, it got lots of attention,” Johan said.
The award ceremony in the Swedish capital is the latest event to wrap up Nobel Week, which, since Friday, has featured Nobel laureates in the fields of literature, chemistry, physics, medicine and economic sciences engaging in public events. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Wednesday, where the daughter of the Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, accepted it in her mother’s name after authorities prevented her from leaving early to attend the ceremony.
