Seoul (VNA) – Vietnam has emerged as the Republic of Korea’s (RoK) key export market in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as the East Asian country seeks to diversify trade and reduce its reliance on the US and China amid global volatility.
The RoK’s exports to Vietnam rose 7.6% in 2025 from a year earlier to 62.8 billion USD, while imports from Vietnam climbed 11.7% to 31.8 billion USD, according to data released by the RoK’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea International Trade Association (KITA).
That lifted two-way trade to 94.5 billion USD, up 9% from 86.8 billion USD. The total equals about 35% of the RoK’s trade with top partner China (272.7 billion USD) and 48% of that with the US (196.2 billion USD).
By export growth, Vietnam ranked second among the RoK’s markets at 7.6%, trailing only Taiwan (China), where demand surged for artificial intelligence chips.
The RoK posted a 31 billion USD trade surplus with Vietnam in 2025, up 1.1 billion USD from 29.9 billion USD a year earlier. The result made Vietnam the RoK’s second-largest source of trade surplus, after the US.
Vietnam topped the list in 2022 and has held second place for the past three years. The main driver has been a rebound in semiconductors. Fuelled by AI and global data-centre investment, chips — the RoK’s flagship export — hit a record 173.4 billion USD in revenue.
In Vietnam, semiconductors were also the largest export, with a turnover of 24.7 billion USD in 2025, a 36.7% jump from a year earlier.
Since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1992, bilateral trade has surged 190-fold from 500 million USD, expanding from labour-intensive goods such as textiles to higher value-added products, including semiconductors and wireless communications equipment.
Trade has tripled since the Vietnam–RoK Free Trade Agreement took effect in 2014, lifting Vietnam from the RoK’s eighth-largest partner to third.
The trade structure is largely complementary. The RoK invests in Vietnam and exports intermediate goods to factories here, with Vietnam shipping finished products back. Samsung Electronics produces more than 50% of its global smartphone output in Vietnam and accounts for about 20% of the country’s total exports. The company has continued to expand its footprint, opening a large R&D centre in Hanoi in 2022. Exports of K-beauty and K-food products have also posted strong growth, supported by the global reach of the Korean Wave.
On the other side, the RoK plays a key role in Vietnam’s economy. Vietnamese customs data show that in the first 11 months of 2025, the RoK was Vietnam’s second-largest import market and fourth-largest export destination./.
