KCCI's Financial Seminar
KCCI invites IFC head Chin as main speaker at the event

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a seminar led by Chin Byung-hwa, president of the International Finance Center under the theme of "The Present Situation of the International Financial Market and Ways to Cope with It,"on August 18.
Chin said the economic growth in the first-half has been active, but it will improve in the second half in a sound manner. He said South Korea should keep its attention on the fact that the Japanese economy has been recovering on the strength of its domestic economic rebound, while the Chinese economy has been growing despite measures to cool it off due to overheating.
The U.S. dollar has been strengthening in recent months due to the soundness of the U.S. economy and increases in interest rates. But the U.S. dollar will grow weak in mid-to-long-term perspective because the U.S. dollar transferred to overseas due to its current account deficit will return to the U.S. in smaller amounts with low quality. He said there is concern for the outflow of U.S. dollar out of Korea due to disparity of interest rates between the U.S. and Korea, but there are two kinds of interest rates, one depends on policies and the other based on market and Korea's market interest rate is still higher than that in the U.S., preventing the outflow of the U.S. dollar from Korea.
Even if 400 trillion won in idle funds in the country would not be domestically invested but invested overseas, it would not hurt the economy as it will stabilize the foreign exchange rates.

KCCI's Breakfast Briefing on N.Korea

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry(KCCI) South-North Economic Cooperation Committee hosted breakfast meeting at Millennium Seoul Hilton, downtown Seoul on Aug. 23 with former Unification Minister Chung Se-hyun as the main speaker. Chung's speech was entitled, "North Korea's Change and the Roadmap for Reform and Liberalization." He said most of socialist countries kick-off reform first in the economic sector due to economic difficulties, but it extended eventually to other sectors including social, politics and military sectors.

North Korea is in the middle of social reform, already changing its economic sector. He said North Korea has yet to reform its political and military sectors, but it is expected to reform its political sector after completing reforming its economic and social sectors.
Changes follow liberalization and reform and in the case of North Korea, the success rates would be high because it only borrowed successful cases from China and Vietnam, discarding the unsuccessful cases. It borrowed much from China and therefore it has similar reform models with those of China, but it has not publicly unveiled reform progresses, unlike China. North Korea used the recess period of the six-party nuclear talks for readjustment period for its reform efforts carried out internally. North Korea has been changing even during the six-party talks and South Korean firms should take note of the fact and cope with it, he concluded.

WTO and International Trade

The Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a briefing session for business leaders with Huh Bom-do, assistant minister for Commerce, Industry and Energy Ministry, as main speaker at Lotte Hotel in downtown Seoul on August 23. The government official said the wall between export and domestic industries and trade walls have been eliminated since the World Trade Organization came into being about 10 years ago. Korean industries have to be a step ahead of others in internationalizing efforts as they lack natural resources and unless they want to fall behind. He pointed out three factors that SMEs will have to deal with to survive, including technology, production and R&D.

He said technology requires information, manpower, and R&D, production needs good location, plant construction, raw material, machinery equipment and design, among others, and marketing should have product brand recognition, and confidence, among others.
The assistant MOCIE minister said for small firms, marketing would be the biggest problems to tackle and CEOs should be very familiar with the Internet, obtaining know-how of knowledge-management, adding that the consumer tastes change so fast that CEOs should personally meet with them to fathom those changes. He said national competitive power would be strengthened with the fostering of flexible and dynamic SMEs, which is the only way to achieve the age of $20,000 in per capita national income as early as possible.

Busan's APEC Chamber of Commerce

The Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry has decided to put all of its resources behind for preparation for the APEC Chamber of Commerce Conference scheduled in Busan Oct.12-15. BCCI held a meeting on August 23 with just 50 days to go for APEC Chamber of Commerce Conference led by its chairman Song Jeong-kyu, along with officials of Metropolitan Busan and Busan City Council, to open the situation room for preparation of APEC ACC to signal that they are ready for organizing the event without a hitch.
BCCI expanded the ACC Preparation Team by appointing its vice chairman Lee Young to head the team and naming its secretary-general, Hong Soon-kil, head of the situation room. They also organized three teams to be in charge of planning and publicity, external cooperation, and economic exchange.
In the meantime, BCCI held a meeting on August 18 to decide to set up a team to prepare for APEC ACC comprised of 8 members and establish a situation room under it. They also decided that a member company BCCI would take charge of caring for each country represented in the conference.

2012 Yeosu World Expo

The Yeosu Chamber of Commerce and Industry invited Rep. Chung Ui-hwa, chairman of Grand National Party Regional Development Committee, to its meeting designed to spur the atmosphere for attracting the 2012 World Expo to Yeosu, South Jeolla Province on July 21. Rep. Lee Jong-hyun, deputy spokesman for the party, said Rep. Chung has decided to make the invitation effort to become a nationwide campaign by having various government organizations including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Ministry of Construction and Transportation, and others, to pool their resources together to bring the global event to Yeosu in 2012. The legislator also decided to establish a special committee in the National Assembly to attract the global event as much as he could along with fellow legislators including Reps. Kim Song-gon and Chu Seung-yong through a cooperative system. nw

Former Unification Minister Chung Se-hyun.

Assistant MOCIE Minister Huh Bum-do.

Yeosu New Port