Now to the latest on President Park's four-nation tour to the Middle East.
On Tuesday, she held talks with the king of Saudi Arabia and signed a number of deals... to expand the two countries' economic cooperation, for example, in the nuclear energy and health care sectors.
Arirang's presidential office correspondent Choi You-sun has more.
"Even though it's the biggest supplier of oil to Korea,... Saudi Arabia is seeking new non-oil energy sources for its rising domestic power demand. Riyadh plans to build a dozen or more nuclear reactors that can generate 18 gigawatts of electricity by 2040."
At Tuesday's summit between President Park Geun-hye and King Salman, Seoul and Riyadh signed a deal to jointly invest into studying the prospect of building at least two of Korea's small 100-thousand-kilowatt nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia.
When the reactor construction is finalized after 2018, Korea expects a two-billion-dollar order and the world's first export of a small to mid-sized nuclear reactor.
Nicknamed SMART, for its name System-Integrated Modular Advanced Reactor, the multi-functional reactor is about one-tenth the size of the more common type of reactor, and can be used to generate electricity and desalinate seawater.
President Park anticipated entering the global market with Saudi Arabia, after constructing the reactors in the Arab country, then exporting them together to a third country.
Korea also signed an agreement to share policies related to President Park's creative economy model in the form of innovation-based startups and centers to support them.
Korea's SK Telecom, which runs one of the government's innovation centers, separately sealed a deal with a Saudi telecommunications company, to export the conglomerate-government-startup-institute cooperative model to the Arab nation.
"Many state leaders have identified with our creative economy model and they've expressed an interest in forging a creative economy partnership."
Korean health care firm
