On May 12, JUNG Sungtaek, President of Chonnam National University, South Korea (SNU), and the delegation from CNU visited Wenzhou Medical University (WMU). Lyu Yijun, Chancellor of WMU, heads from the Graduate School, the School of International Studies, the International Affairs Office, the School of Basic Medical Sciences, the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Plastic Surgery Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of WMU attended the meeting.

Lyu Yijun firstly welcomed the visit of Jung Sungtaek and CNU delegation, and introduced WMU’s achievements in recent years in student training, faculty recruitment, scientific and technological innovation, international cooperation, etc. Lyu Yijun said that the two universities have a long history of collaboration, and have carried out multi-level cooperation in the fields of joint Master and doctoral programs in pharmaceutical sciences,  joint research projects and academic and scientific exchanges, etc. Although the exchange between the two universities has been affected by the epidemic in the past three years, the two sides have been able to overcome many difficulties and continue to promote collaborations and achieve fruitful results. It is hoped that both sides would continue to work together to promote the development of higher education in medicine in the two countries, and to train more outstanding personnel with international perspectives in medicine and pharmacy.

Jung Sungtaek said that this was his third visit to WMU and during each of his visits, he could see new achievements and progress of WMU. He was very impressed by the rapid development of WMU in recent years. WMU is one of the closest international partners of CNU, and the two universities have always maintained a friendly relationship. CNU enjoys excellent resources and advantages in research innovation and translation, and has ranked the first for research funding among all national universities in Korea. In the future, it is hoped that both sides can jointly promote mutual learning and development of superior disciplines, and make positive contributions to higher education, research innovation and high-level training.

Subsequently, two universities discussed the joint doctoral programs in Pharmacy, joint education program in biomedicine, collaboration in cosmetology and plastic surgery, etc., and reached a preliminary consensus.

Chonnam National University, founded in 1952, is located in Gwangju, South Korea, and is ranked 435th in the 2023 CWUR World University Rankings and 11th in South Korea. WMU and CNU started collaboration in 2007, and in 2019, the joint doctoral program in pharmacy between the two universities was approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education, which is the first Sino-foreign cooperative program at the doctoral level in China.