Agreements for five projects were signed online between transnational corporations from South Korea and Weihai during the South Korea Special of the "Connecting Shandong with Fortune Global 500" event on Oct 22.

The projects will receive more than $200 million in investment and involve new energy materials, warehousing logistics, manufacturing, and more.

Weihai serves as a venue for the South Korea Special of the "Connecting Shandong with Fortune Global 500" event on Oct 22. [Photo/whnews.cn]

The coastal city of Weihai is at the forefront of opening up to the outside world and has always maintained a close cooperative relationship with South Korean institutions and enterprises, said Zhang Haibo, Party secretary of Weihai.

Zhang said that Weihai has been ramping up efforts to promote high-quality development, accelerate the transformation of old growth drivers into new ones, and adhere to a dual-circulation development pattern, in which the domestic market plays a dominant role while the domestic and global markets provide a boost to each other.

Weihai is home to the China-ROK FTA local economic cooperation demonstration zone and is the national pilot zone for comprehensively strengthening the development of service trade, as well as for cross-border e-commerce.

Zhang expressed hope that companies on both sides will work to strengthen cooperation in trade, investment, cross-border e-commerce, service trade, new materials, biotechnology, and other fields.

Official data show that South Korea has become the second largest source of investment and the largest trade market for Weihai. There are more than 800 Korean-invested enterprises in the city, accounting for 57.1 percent of the city’s foreign-invested enterprises.

In 2019, trade between Weihai and South Korea reached 43.55 billion yuan ($6.51 billion), accounting for 31.1 percent of the city's total.