“I have been in Nanjing for 10 years and it is my second hometown.” said Seo Dae-Won, Chief Representative of the Nanjing Representative Office of Daejeon Municipal Government, South Korea. In his opinion, Nanjing is a city with strong historical and cultural atmosphere, and the citizens are enjoying simple life. 

The Nanjing Representative Office of the Daejeon Government is not big, filled with introductions of Daejeon's enterprises and products. They are preparing for relevant online meetings. In addition, the 7th Conference of the World  Organization of United Cities and Local Governments will be held in Daejeon in the second half of this year. Seo Dae-Won hopes that the enterprises in Nanjing could be invited to Daejeon for in-depth exchanges and cooperation.

There was no ambitious goals for the friendship between Nanjing and Daejeon at the very beginning, instead, the relations between two cities started from the most touching field-cultural exchanges. Seo Dae-Won introduced that in the 1990s, members of Korea-China Cultural Exchange Association from the Daejeon visited Nanjing to conduct exchanges with local calligraphers and painters. Many calligraphers and painters from Daejeon have visited Nanjing and exchanged with their counterparts in Nanjing, and painting exhibitions by artists from Nanjing were held in Daejeon every year. Nanjing Library and Daejeon Library donate books to each other every year.

Nanjing is the city where the most Korean companies cluster in Jiangsu Province. In 2014, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the two cities’ friendship, Daejeon Creative Economic Innovation Center and Nanjing Xingang High-tech Industrial Park signed a memorandum on strengthening friendly cooperation. Seo Dae-Won said: "Nanjing and Daejeon have a long-lasting friendship."

Seo Dae-Won has been to Nanjing International Friendship Park many times, where the memories of friendship between the two cities are displayed. In Daejeon Government and the Hanbat Library, there are also many documents and materials that record the exchanges between the two cities for the public to read.

Over the past 28 years, the two cities have actively interacted with each other like two old friends and maintained sound cooperative relations in the fields of scientific and technological innovation, cultural exchanges, etc. With the increasingly closer economic and technological exchanges between the two cities, the Daejeon Representative Office in Nanjing has played an active role as the bridge and tie, and has facilitated delegations to participate in large events such as the World Intelligent Manufacturing Conference, Nanjing International Software Product & Information Service Trade Fair, and the Golden Autumn Economic and Trade Fair, etc. Besides, in 2019, Seo Dae-Won, followed by 6 business representatives from Nanjing, visited Daejeon and participated in the 16th World Technoplis Association Conference, and negotiated with  high-tech enterprises in Daejeon. In 2021, Huh Tae-Jeong, the mayor of Daejeon, gave a video speech at the Golden Autumn Economic and Trade Fair as a representative of Nanjing’s sister city.

As the “Envoy of friendship of the people in Jiangsu Province”, Seo Dae-Won always cares and supports important cooperation related to the two cities. He believes that now the large enterprises have set up communications, while he hopes that the small and medium-sized ones in China and South Korea can speed up the pace of cooperation and exchanges. “Good friends should communicate with each other, and both cities will be better in the future!” Seo Dae-Won adds that he hopes the two cities would work together to overcome the impact of the pandemic and achieve common development.

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Daejeon City is the transportation hub in central region of Korea, the sixth largest city in South Korea, the second largest administrative and technological city where there are some central administrative agencies. Daedeok Innopolis, the “silicon valley of Republic of Korea”, which gathers nearly 800 high-tech companies located in Daejeon.

Nanjing and Daejeon became sister cities in November 1994. Since the establishment of the sister city relations, the two cities have been promoting extensive and in-depth exchanges and cooperation in science and technology, education, culture and sports. In 2020, both cities donated medical supplies to each other at the critical moment of Covid-19 prevention and control which was regarded as the model of close ties between the cities of China and South Korea.