 | |
 Hungary |  South Korea |
|---|---|
| Diplomatic mission | |
| Hungarian Embassy, Seoul | Korean Embassy, Budapest |
| Envoy | |
| AmbassadorMózes Csoma | AmbassadorChoe Kyu-shik |
Hungary–South Korea relations are the bilateral relations betweenHungary andSouth Korea. Hungary has an embassy inSeoul and an honorary consulate inIncheon. South Korea has an embassy inBudapest.
Both countries are full members of theOECD,World Trade Organization andUnited Nations.
Relations date back to the exchange of permanent missions between the two countries, announced during the1988 Summer Olympics inSeoul. The announcement madeHungary the firstEastern Bloc country to exchange ambassadors withSouth Korea. At the time, a large number of officials from various Communist countries were in Seoul, having ignoredNorth Korea's call for a boycott of the Olympics; along with Hungary, they also made various formal and informal contacts with the South Korean government.[1]
Trade with Hungary was already valued atUS$18 million at the time; expansion of economic contacts was widely viewed as Hungary's motive in the establishment of relations.[1] Full diplomatic relations were formally established on 29 January of the following year.[2] At the time,Kim Pyong-il, the son ofKim Il Sung and half-brother of future North Korean leaderKim Jong Il, had just arrived inBudapest as ambassador; in response to Hungary's moves towards ties with the South, the North transferred him toBulgaria. Bulgaria soon followed Hungary's example and moved to open relations with the South.[3]
In 2006, a North Korean diplomat in Hungary and his family membersdefected to South Korea by entering the South Korean embassy there and requestingpolitical asylum.[4] By 2007, bilateral trade had grown by nearly ninety times to $1.6 billion; major South Korean investors in Hungary includedSamsung andHankook. The Hungarian ambassador to South Korea, Miklos Lengyel, who began his service in October 2007, had previously worked in his government's mission inPyongyang in the 1980s.[5]
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On 29 May 2019, a river cruiser called theHableány sank, after being rammed by a larger river cruiser called theViking Sigyn. The incident killed 25 of the 33 South Korean tourists on board theHableány, and one remains missing (as of 15 August 2019).
The incident resulted in South Korea sending rescue workers to Budapest: some of them also took part in rescue operations following theSewol disaster in 2014.[6] South Korean foreign ministerKang Kyung-wha also travelled to Budapest, to visit the survivors and relatives of passengers on theHableány.[7]
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