South Korean President Park Geun-hye is considering to visit Iran as the Asian country seeks to tap into business opportunities there, the Yonhap news agency says.
The announcement was made by presidential spokesman Jeong Yeon-guk to reporters in Seoul on Wednesday, without specifying the date of the visit but various South Korean reports put it for either April or May.
"The President is considering a visit to Iran and we will soon disclose the dates when they are confirmed," Jeong said, according to Yonhap.
The visit would be the first ever to Iran by a South Korean president, coming on the heels of a recent lifting of sanctions on the Islamic Republic, which has unleashed a flurry of interest in business with the country.
On Saturday, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Tehran at the head of a large political and trade delegation, marking a “new chapter in strategic economic cooperation” with the signing of 17 documents.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is currently on a five-day tour of Europe, signing more than a dozen accords worth about $20 billion in Italy and looking to further deals in France on Wednesday and Thursday.
Iran is billed as the largest emerging market closed to business since the fall of the Soviet Union, with a tremendous amount of energy resources which are the world’s largest with the gas and oil reserves combined.
Yonhap described Iran as “a land of opportunity" following the lifting of sanctions and the Korea Times daily dubbed it “a promising market.”
South Korea's exports to Iran rose to $4.14 billion in 2014, up 8.3% year-on-year, according to data compiled by the state-run Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.