'Korean' to become equivalent with Premium Quality On September 10, The 6th ASEM 2006 Summit Meeting is to be held in Helsinki, Finland, in which Korean President Roh Moo-hyun will attend along with many key personalities in the government. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Energy (MOCIE) will hold Korea's World-Class Products Exhibition in Helsinki, the capital city of Finland. Na Do-sung, director general for trade and investment promotion of MOCIE, who is in charge of the World-Class Products Exhibition. Director General Na Do-sung has said, "For quite a long time it has been known that Japanese technology has been considered to be the world's best, but now Korea has caught up with Japan in some fields. Samsung Electronics has already surpassed Sony of Japan, and LG Electronics and Hyundai Motors are rapidly spreading their brand names all over the world. Now we are conducting the strategy of Korean Premium. In fact, 50% of our exports come from these first-rate companies' products. This means that Korea is in a position to supply worldclass products to the global market." Themed gardens of electronic delights The world-class products exhibition is composed of 7 themeoriented product halls with 30 companies participating. Most of them are IT-related products. The MOCIE, in cooperation with the Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency, or KOTRA, is hosting this event. The Korean products exhibition is the first to be held in Finland since the formation of diplomatic relations between the two nations. Of particular note, this exhibition is characterized by theme-oriented halls such as Ubiquitous Future House Hall, WiBro Hall, DMB Hall, and RFID Hall, which are showing off the advanced applications of Korea's IT technology. Finland is also a country well-known for its world-class IT technology. Korea is good at applying IT technology to daily life. Therefore, this event can be a good opportunity to build a symbiotic, complementary relationship between Korea and Finland. The overview of Korea's world-class products exhibition is as follows. Taking no.1 place in global market share, 78 items at a time In an interview asking about the competitiveness of Korean world-class items and about the market responses to those best products, Na Do-sung, Director General for trade and investment of MOCIE, said that the Korean government had started to select "world-class items," and had supported those product categories from the year 2001 in an effort to upgrade and diversify export items and also to expand an export growth engine. Those chosen items are required to undergo a qualification test every year. According to the results of the qualification test at the end of 2005, in the year of 2001, Korean items ranked No. 1 in 59 product categories, but as of the end of 2004, the number has increased by 19 items to 78 items. Meanwhile, at the time of first selection, 161 items ranked in the top 5 in the global market share, but the number has since increased to 192. The market share increase usually takes place in electric and electronic products including semiconductors, LCDs, passenger cars, and transportation machinery including LNG carriers. This means that Korean-made electric and electronic products and transportation machinery are gaining popularity in the world market. Government stepping up supporting measures In order to globalize the selected items, the Korean government continues to step up supporting measures ranging from technology and design development, to financing, manpower education, overseas marketing and PR. The selected items have an advantage in their candidacy for industrial R&D projects, which aim to help those item producers in terms of technology, design development and manpower support. The government is also expanding credit loans and credit guarantees to provide support for these products. In addition, MOCIE gives a helping hand for to companies participating in overseas exhibitions, while supporting their overseas marketing by way of foreign mass media. National brand management center to be established In 2005, KOTRA made a survey on the national brand image which has shown that the brand name of Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors are relatively well known. As a stepped-up effort, MOCIE is trying to find out what kind of products are impressing the buyers in the global market, what sort of brand each company is managing, how well they are managing their brands, and how their brands have influence on their product competitiveness. For this purpose the MOCIE is planning to establish a national brand management center so that it can conduct a survey of the brand images on a national level. This research and collected data will be used in revitalizing and upgrading the product images and brand name. Currently, in terms of price competitiveness, China is clearly surpassing Korea. For this reason, Korea has to focus on premium marketing, while putting an emphasis on enhancing product quality. This is the way to get ahead of China. Korea has to create an image of supplying premium products. In this regard, what matters is the global standard. The global standard goes to the product categories that dominate the world market, and that rank No. 1 in the global market share. This problem is closely related to marketing strategy. World-class IT image becomes world-class Korean image Furthermore, the Korean government is trying to combine the global image of Korean IT products with other best items, so that the global image of IT products may be spread over the other premium products. To this end, MOCIE has recently introduced the world-class products logo. By using the worldclass products expositions, the top image items such as IT products, home appliances, and automobiles will jointly be displayed together with other premium products, so that the best image will be spread to other items.