SEOUL, September 29 (AJP) - Tajikistan offered itself Monday as a long-term supplier of rare and non-ferrous metals for South Korea's semiconductor and electric vehicle battery industries, less than two weeks after the two countries raised their relationship to a comprehensive partnership.
The Central Asian country was the world's second-largest producer of antimony in 2024, with 18 percent of global output, according to U.S. Geological Survey figures that exclude U.S. production. Antimony goes into semiconductors, batteries, flame retardants and military hardware. The survey also found that all of Tajikistan's exported antimony ore and concentrate went to China that year.
Tajikistan's ambassador to South Korea, Salohiddin Kirom, made the pitch at a reception marking the 35th anniversary of his country's independence, held at the Ambassador Seoul, a Pullman hotel in central Seoul. About 200 guests attended, including diplomats, South Korean government officials, scholars and business leaders.
"Tajikistan possesses vast, untapped mineral wealth, including vital reserves of strategic non-ferrous and rare metals," Kirom said.
As South Korea works to diversify supply chains for its chip and battery makers, he told guests, Tajikistan "stands ready as a reliable, long-term strategic supplier."
The South Korean government's representative at the reception also named minerals as a priority. Nam Jin, director-general for Northeast Asian and Central Asian Affairs at South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the two presidents had agreed to expand cooperation "beyond development assistance" into trade and investment, rail and transport infrastructure, and critical minerals.
That agreement came during Tajik President Emomali Rahmon's official visit to Seoul from Sept. 15 to 17, the first by a Tajik leader in 11 years. He came for the inaugural Korea-Central Asia Summit, which also brought the leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan to Seoul.
President Rahmon and President Lee Jae Myung established the comprehensive partnership at their Sept. 16 talks at Cheong Wa Dae, and their governments signed 17 agreements and memorandums of understanding. Those documents "will serve as a practical foundation to translate this vision into concrete results," Nam said.
In a written briefing after the summit, Seong Ghi-hong, Lee's senior secretary for public relations and communication, said the leaders saw room to build mineral supply chains by combining South Korea's expertise in exploration and mine development with Tajikistan's resources. He named antimony specifically.
Nam also pledged that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) "will work closely with Ambassador Kirom and the government of Tajikistan to ensure that the outcomes of the summit bring real benefits to the lives of our peoples."
Kirom pointed to LS Group, GB Innovation and RexGen as South Korean companies already doing business in Tajikistan. Their presence "exemplifies the growing confidence of the Korean business community in our country's economic stability and investment climate," he said.
GB Innovation (GBI) has the most advanced mining project of the three. It is developing the Maikhoura tungsten deposit with Tajik Aluminium Company, the state-owned smelter. The company says the deposit holds an estimated 1.92 million tonnes of ore averaging 0.95 percent tungsten, and it plans to produce about 1,400 tonnes of tungsten concentrate a year.
Tungsten, one of the hardest metals in industrial use, is used in chipmaking and defense manufacturing. GBI plans to combine the Tajik output with production from its Ssangjeon mine in Uljin, North Gyeongsang Province. The company says China supplies 93 percent of South Korea's tungsten oxide imports.
LS MnM, the LS Group's non-ferrous metals affiliate, signed a memorandum of understanding this month with Tajikistan's Ministry of Industry and New Technologies. The deal covers possible mine investments and processing ore into higher-value materials inside Tajikistan.
RexGen, based in Anyang, south of Seoul, works in a different field, making traffic-enforcement camera systems that use artificial intelligence to read license plates and flag violations. It lists a public-private partnership agreement in Tajikistan among its business milestones.
Mining led Tajikistan's economic growth in 2024. Real GDP rose 8.4 percent that year on gains in mining, services and trade, and the value of mineral extraction climbed 43 percent, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Kirom told guests that over 35 years, Tajikistan had "traversed an extraordinary path of state-building, socio-economic progress, and democratic consolidation" under President Rahmon.
Tajikistan declared independence on Sept. 9, 1991, as the Soviet Union broke apart. The landlocked country of about 10 million people borders China, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and mountains cover about 93 percent of its territory.
Within a year of independence, the country fell into civil war between the government and an opposition alliance of Islamist and democratic groups. The fighting killed tens of thousands of people and drove hundreds of thousands from their homes before a peace agreement was signed in Moscow in 1997.
President Rahmon took power in November 1992, in the middle of the war, and has ruled ever since. He is the longest-serving leader among the former Soviet republics. In 2015, parliament gave him the title "Founder of Peace and National Unity, Leader of the Nation," along with lifelong immunity from prosecution.
South Korea and Tajikistan established diplomatic relations on April 27, 1992. Kirom also praised the ethnic Korean community in Tajikistan as "a living human bridge between our societies."
Both speakers traced the ties back much further, to Hyecho, a Buddhist monk from the Silla kingdom who crossed the Pamir Mountains in the 720s and wrote about the region in his travel record. Kirom also cited archaeological finds in Gyeongju, the Silla capital, as evidence of early contact.
Hyecho's manuscript, "Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Kingdoms of India," was discovered in 1908 in the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang, China, and is held by the National Library of France.
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