The rapidly rising yen will be used to cover a chronic trade imbalance with Japan.
The Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) invited the CEOs of the Korean companies with the highest exports to Japan to hold a session in Seoul Palace Hotel, Banpo-dong, on the 28th. They discussed their strategies for expanding their exports to Japan.
The government and the industry planned to select a hundred small and medium enterprises in order to intensively support their marketing, production funds and export financing. Also, they decided to invite Japan’s big retailers to open new markets for selling Korean-made domestic goods in June and December.
Uproar against melamine-containing Chinese foods enabled Korean companies to increase their share of Japan’s agricultural, marine products, and foods markets last year. Also the government is aware of the main field that puts Korea into a trade deficit against Japan - parts and materials - and will work to change that by building production facilities, especially for those parts which are damaged by supply shortage. Korea will also hold an exports exhibition to increase the parts and materials being used by Japanese companies.
The government intends to give corporations which export to Japan first trade claim insurance, foreign marketing insurance and export insurance for games, knowledge services, and other products such as agro-fisheries products, which they hope will become a pillar of exports to the neighbor.
Meanwhile, the government set a policy to use Korean companies in Japan as specialty companies for trade with Japan. This policy can help small and medium enterprises which have a hard time to export to Japan because of technological barriers or for the lack of networks.
According to the MKE, last year Japanese imports were up 8.4 percent to 61 billion dollars as auto and steel imports increased, but Korean dependence on Japanese imports was down from 15.8% in 2007 to 14.0%.
The dependence on Japanese imports had decreased from 24.4% in 2007 to 23.3% last year in the parts and materials field which caused the most deficit in trade with Japan.
The MKE announced: “We predicted that the yen would go high for a while, so we think it is a good chance to advance into the Japanese market. Therefore we will use all our resources to expand further into the Japanese market.”
