Lee and Mirziyoyev sign 13 papers before Korea's first Central Asia summit

President Lee Jae Myung opened a week of Central Asian diplomacy in Seoul on 14 September with a summit at Cheong Wa Dae with Uzbekistan's Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The meeting is the first of five bilateral sessions before Wednesday's inaugural South Korea-Central Asia Summit, which will bring the leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to one table. Uzbekistan is the only one of the five that already holds a special strategic partnership with Seoul.

The two presidents signed or witnessed 13 agreements and memorandums. The list covers critical minerals, food, transport, health, education, tourism, intellectual property, climate work, medical regulation and development aid. Korea Aerospace Industries signed a defence-industry contract with Uzbekistan's Uztechtrade. Separate papers launch feasibility studies for eight high-speed train sets and for a national biobank and genomics centre, the Biome Center, to be examined under Seoul's Economic Development Cooperation Fund.

Lee said the countries could combine South Korean industrial capacity with Uzbekistan's resources and market. He named transport and logistics, health care, climate response, critical mineral supply chains, artificial intelligence, digital technology and defence. Mirziyoyev said Tashkent would continue to unwaveringly support Seoul's work on peace and security on the Korean Peninsula. Spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said the leaders also agreed to keep working on infrastructure and the defence industry.

The same day Lee received Masato Kanda, president of the Asian Development Bank, who is in Seoul for the Uzbekistan visit and the wider summit. Lee asked the bank to expand work with Korea on critical minerals, AI and nuclear power across the Asia-Pacific, including Central Asia. He described the region as having strong growth potential based on resources and location, and proposed that Korean technology and ADB finance be used to stabilise mineral supply chains that run through Uzbekistan and its neighbours.

The agenda is not sentimental. South Korea's industry needs uranium, copper and other inputs that Central Asia holds. The five states want trains, clinics, defence kit and a partner that is not only China or Russia. Holding the first leaders' summit in Seoul is a claim that Korea can convene the region rather than only buy from it. The 13 papers with Tashkent are the first invoice.

Critical minerals sit at the centre because supply chains have become a security file. Export controls, the Iran war's effect on energy logistics, and competition over processing capacity have made governments treat ore and midstream plants as strategic. A Korean-Uzbek minerals paper does not create a mine. It creates a political commitment that procurement and aid can later follow. The high-speed rail study is the same kind of instrument: a funded look at a purchase that would lock in Korean rolling stock for years.

Defence is the more sensitive line. A KAI contract with Uztechtrade moves the relationship beyond cultural institutes and guest-worker programmes. Uzbekistan has been careful with its security alignments. Public support for Seoul's peninsula policy, spoken in the presidential hall, is the political price and the political gain.

Wednesday's multilateral session will test whether the other four capitals want the same package or only the photo. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan bring energy. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan bring hydropower and different Chinese debt profiles. If the week produces only bilateral souvenirs, the inaugural summit will be a label. If it produces a shared minerals or transport work plan with ADB money attached, Seoul will have a format it can repeat.

Lee's sequence is deliberate. Start with the closest partner, stack agreements, bring in the regional development bank, then open the five-leader room. The substance that will matter six months from now is whether the feasibility studies are staffed and whether any mineral offtake or train order moves from memorandum to contract. Until then the week is a structure. The 14 September session put the first beams in place.