President Park Geun-hye and her Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni launched South Korea's aid program for Uganda on Monday in the latest sign of Seoul’s commitment to boosting development cooperation in Africa.
  
South Korea -- which has become the first former aid recipient to join the ranks of official donors in a half century -- has been sharing its development experience with many developing countries.
  
Park and Museveni attended the ceremony to kick off the program, called “Korea Aid”in Mpigi, a town in central Uganda.
  
The "Korea Aid”program is designed to provide mobile health care and nutritional support to local people in medically underserved regions by using 10 vehicles, including ambulances. The program also allows local people to experience South Korean culture.
  
Nine South Korean doctors and nurses will join hands with 10 Ugandan counterparts to provide basic medical services to about 150 local people near Mpigi, according to South Korean officials.
  
South Korea said it plans to provide the Korea Aid program for Ugandans once or twice a month.
  
In Mpigi, Park and Museveni also met with several dozen village leaders across Uganda in an opening ceremony of facilities meant to train local people on agriculture and Seoul's "Saemaul Undong" or new community movement.
  
The rural development program, initiated by Park's father, then-President Park Chung-hee in the 1970s, is credited with helping modernize the then-rural South Korean economy.
  
"As a close friend of Uganda and a partner of Saemaul Undong, South Korea will always be on that path with Uganda," Park said in the opening ceremony.
  
Park left for Kenya, the third stop on her swing through Africa, later in the day after wrapping up her state visit to Uganda -- the first since South Korea and Uganda established diplomatic relations in 1963. The trip already took her to Ethiopia. (Yonhap)