South Korean President Park Geun-hye was to meet with Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal on Wednesday on the second and last day of her visit to the oil-rich kingdom, Park's office said.
The meeting is set to take place at 3 p.m., Park's office said, without giving any further details.
Alwaleed, chairman of Kingdom Holding Co. is known as the Saudi Warren Buffett and is No. 34 on Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest men for 2015 with net worth $23 billion.
The meeting came a day after Park held summit talks with Saudi Arabia's newly enthroned King Salman.
A key centerpiece of the summit is a memorandum of understanding calling for a joint partnership on a nuclear reactor developed by South Korea for export to water-scarce countries, including the Middle East.
South Korea said the MOU could help its companies win a US$2 billion project to build two mid-size commercial reactors in Saudi Arabia if the desert kingdom decides to build the reactors after a preliminary review set to end by 2018.
The move comes as Saudi Arabia pushes to develop nuclear reactors to meet its growing energy needs. The kingdom plans to install up to 18 nuclear reactors by 2040.
South Korea -- which relies on 23 nuclear reactors for one-third of its energy needs -- has emerged as a new export powerhouse of nuclear power plants in recent years.
In 2009, a South Korean consortium won a $20.4 billion project to build four light water nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates by 2020 in South Korea's first export of nuclear reactors.
Also Wednesday, Park was to meet with Hashim Yamani, head of Saudi Arabia's renewable energy agency KA CARE, according to Park's office.
Park also plans to meet with business leaders of South Korea and Saudi Arabia, and Korean residents in the kingdom.
Later in the day, Park will fly to the United Arab Emirates, the third stop on her four-nation swing that will take her to Qatar.
Earlier this week, she visited Kuwait and met with its emir and sought his interest and assistance to ensure that South Korean companies can participate in industrial and infrastructure projects in the oil-rich country.
Park's Mideast tour comes as oil-rich regional countries are seeking to diversify their economic portfolios ahead of the inevitable advent of a post-oil era. (Yonhap)
