On Friday, 1 December 2017, Mrs. Suphattra Srimaitreephithak, Director-General, Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA) presided over “Korea-Thailand Friendship Night”, the annual gathering among alumni of Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) at Shangri-La Hotel. Attending the event are the Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Thailand, representative of KOICA Thailand Office and, president and member of KOICA Alumni Association of Thailand. During the event, TICA Director-General delivered a congratulatory speech in which she had expressed an appreciation to a long standing ties as well as continuous development cooperation between the two countries.
Thailand and the Republic of Korea signed an “Agreement on Scientific and Technological Cooperation” in 1985. Since then, a number of Thai government agencies have learned from Korea’s experiences and knowledge through a number of training courses and fellowship programmes. After Thailand gradually shifted its role from the net ODA recipient to persue its aspiration to be a contributor of international development cooperation, in 2014, TICA and KOICA signed an “MOU to Strengthen Partnership for International Development Cooperation”. This document provided guidelines for our two countries to work more closely on the principle of “parnership for development”. Another important document was the “Action Plan on the Joint KOICA-TICA Training Programme” signed also in 2014. The Action Plan sets direction for joint training programmes, which became our new modality of trilateral cooperation framework and have evolved to be part of global partnership for development under Goal 17 of SDGs.
TICA Director-General also expressed readiness to collaborate closely with KOICA in materializing a series of our development cooperation programmes in order to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between Thailand and the Republic of Korea next year.