On the afternoon of January 9, 2006, Chinese President Hu Jintao met with Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea (ROK) Kim Won-ki in the Great Hall of the People.

Hu said that the past year witnessed rapid development of bilateral comprehensive cooperative partnership. Bilateral cooperation in the areas of politics, economy & trade, culture & education, science & technology and tourism has been conducted in an all-round manner and enjoys sound momentum. Both sides have also maintained sound coordination and cooperation on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, regional cooperation, the reform of the UN Security Council and other major issues. The leaders of both sides jointly summarized achievements and experience in the development of bilateral relations and established the direction and goals for further development, which has injected new vitality into the progress of bilateral comprehensive cooperative partnership.

Hu indicated that in the new year China would like to make joint efforts with the ROK to seriously implement the important consensus reached between their leaders and the agreements signed by both sides and push the bilateral comprehensive cooperative partnership to another new level. He also made positive comments on the important contributions made by the two legislatures to the development of bilateral relations and congratulated on the establishment of the regular exchange mechanism between the two legislatures.

Kim indicated that since the establishment of diplomatic ties 13 years ago, bilateral friendly relations have been developing at an unprecedented rapid speed with the bilateral trade volume exceeding 100 billion US dollars and the personnel exchanges have also reached a very high level. The ROK is much delighted with these achievements and would like to work with China to further advance all-round development of bilateral relations.

Kim highly appreciated the enormous achievements in China's economic growth and the contributions China has made to prosperity and development of this region. He indicated that the ROK National Assembly would like to take the establishment of the regular exchange mechanism as an opportunity to comprehensively strengthen friendly exchanges and cooperation at all levels and provide strong impetus for the development of bilateral relations.