Indonesian President Joko Widodo's state visit to South Korea last week yielded a major commitment to almost double bilateral trade in the next four years, in addition to billions of dollars worth of investments by South Korean companies in Indonesia.
"In the midst of many uncertainties in the world, Indonesia and South Korea have been able to strengthen bilateral relationship," Widodo said at a joint news conference with President Moon Jaei-in in Seoul on Monday.
"We have set a target to boost trade to US$30 billion by 2022" compared with $17 billion last year, he added.
The Indonesian business community also secured $6.2 billion worth of investment deals with South Korean partners during a business and investment forum attended by the two presidents.
Widodo said the agreements reflected the South Korean business community's trust in the Indonesian economy and the many investment opportunities for South Korean companies to develop products that Indonesia still has to import.
"We especially want to produce goods that can substitute for imported ones and which we haven't been able to produce ourselves domestically, such as petrochemical and pharmaceutical goods," he said.
"We are importing these goods a lot. It's time we produced them ourselves, but to be able to produce them quickly, we need to forge partnerships."
During the forum, Widodo expressed Indonesia's readiness to embrace the Industry 4.0 model, and he encouraged the South Korea technology companies to bring their latest technology to Indonesia.
"I am inviting South Korean business to bring its technology 4.0 to Indonesia," he said, likening the next industrial wave to the smartphone revolution that began with the birth of the iPhone and has changed the way the world communicates over the past 12 years.
In addition to signing business and investment deals, the two countries also signed five other memorands of understanding on immigration, civil service management, legislative exchanges and cooperation, security and industry 4.0.
The agreements, Widodo said, were Indonesia's response to the Moon administration's much-touted New Southern policy, which seeks to forge broader cooperation with countries in Southeast Asia and India.
He elaborated on the relationship in response to a question from an alumna of the Indonesian Studies programme of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, where he gave a public lecture on Tuesday.
"I offered [cooperation with] Indonesia to President Moon, because Indonesia and South Korea have always been strategic partners. Moreover, about 40% of Asean's population is Indonesia's and 45% of Asean's GDP is Indonesia's," he added.
During his visit, Widodo also launched an online portal for citizen services in South Korea, which is aimed to provide better protection for the Indonesian diaspora, especially migrant workers, in the country.
The Information System for Service and Protection of Indonesian Citizens Abroad, or Portal Peduli WNI, serves as the only online platform for various civil registry and services for Indonesians abroad through embassies and consulates. The Foreign Ministry has been developing it since 2015.
The system is fully integrated with other national data registries and civil services at various government institutions such as the immigration and migrant workers' placement and protection agency.
An Indonesian student named Daya at Kyungsun University in Busan was the first Indonesian in South Korea to use the portal. He obtained a birth certificate for his son, who was born on Sept 4, just three days after he submitted the application.
"Congratulations on the birth of your son. His birth certificate application has been verified and it is now being sent to your email," Widodo told Daya and his wife in a video conference call from Seoul to Busan.
According to a press release from the presidential palace, Daya said he was very happy to receive the certificate online since he didn't have to travel to the Indonesian Embassy in Seoul to process it.
Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said that after three years of development, the system was now integrated to collect data from Indonesians abroad but to be able to access the service, they must first register themselves at their local embassies and consulates.
Seoul was chosen for the launch of the service because Korea has such a large concentration of Indonesian nationals abroad.
There are about 40,000 Indonesians in South Korea, most of them migrant workers in the formal sector. About 2,500 of them have reported their presence through the online system since it was launched in beta mode in July.
Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, the director for Indonesian protection abroad at the foreign ministry, said the next phase in the portal's development would be to provide sailors' papers from the Transport Ministry and marriage certificates from the Religious Affairs Ministry.
"This system also covers services for undocumented workers, because what is mainly required in the system is that Indonesians, wherever they are, report their presence and whereabouts, not their permit to stay," Iqbal told Asia Focus.
Wahyu Susilo, the executive director of Migrant CARE, a migrant workers' advocacy group, said it welcomed the portal's launch as it would ensure protection of Indonesian migrant workers abroad who are often prone to mistreatment from their employers.
"But to maximise the protection, this online system should also be followed up by improving the offline or direct face-to-face services in various government agencies relevant to placement and protection of our migrant workers," Susilo told Asia Focus.