South Korea is pushing to participate in infrastructure projects in Malaysia, South Korea’s presidential office said Wednesday.

South Korea expressed its wish to secure projects during a summit between President Park Geun-hye and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, according to Park’s office.

Malaysia plans to select a successful bidder in the coming years for a $13 billion project to build a high-speed railway that stretches some 400 kilometers between Malaysia and Singapore.

South Korean companies are competing against their rivals in Spain, Italy, China and Japan.

South Korean builders bagged a combined $16 billion worth of new orders in Malaysia between 2008 and 2014.

During the summit, the two sides also agreed to push for South Korean firms’ participation in the construction of a nuclear power plant and a petrochemical complex in the Southeast Asian nation, the office said.

“The two countries, since establishing special ties under Malaysia’s Look East Policy in the early 1980s, have developed and grown into important cooperation partners in various fields,” Park said during the meeting, referring to a Malaysian policy aimed at learning from the economic development experiences of South Korea and Japan.

Najib said he believes South Korea and Malaysia will be able to expand their ties to diverse sectors based on their solid economic relations.

Park and Najib also agreed on a set of guidelines and a list of pilot projects to be carried out under the Malaysian government’s recent proposal for a second Look East Policy, which calls for expanding bilateral economic cooperation to areas such as industry, health and medical treatment, advanced technology and biotechnology.

Asian countries have emerged as an important market for South Korean builders in recent years as local companies seek to diversify their businesses away from oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, the largest market for South Korean builders for decades.

Najib is in South Korea for a special summit to be hosted by Park for leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in South Korea’s second-largest city of Busan later this week.

ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.

Trade volume between South Korea and Malaysia stood at $19.6 billion last year, according to South Korean data. (Yonhap)