ABU DHABI-- South Korea and the United Arab Emirates on Sunday signed 13 memorandums of understanding on strengthening cooperation in the energy, arms and other sectors.

The MOUs were signed in the presence of President Yoon Suk Yeol and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan during their summit at the Qasr Al Watan presidential palace in Abu Dhabi.

They included a joint declaration on strengthening the strategic energy partnership between the two countries through a "comprehensive strategic energy partnership," an MOU on strategic defense industry cooperation, and an agreement on a joint oil reserve project.

That project will see the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company store its crude at the Yeosu plant of the Korea National Oil Corp., enabling South Korea to quickly purchase oil during a supply crunch.

Other MOUs called for accelerating the transition to a net-zero economy where greenhouse gas emissions are cut to as close to zero as possible, establishing a Voluntary Carbon Market partnership, jointly developing multi-purpose transport planes, and establishing a strategic investment partnership between South Korea's KDB Bank and the UAE's Mubadala, a state-owned holding company that acts as a sovereign wealth fund.

The others included an MOU on hydrogen production and use, an updated MOU on space cooperation between the two countries, an MOU on cooperation between small and medium-sized firms, an MOU on cooperation in the use of water resources, a follow-up to a 2009 agreement on nuclear energy cooperation, and an MOU on financial cooperation between Korea Eximbank and TAQA, the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company.

Source: Yonhap News Agency