On the 14th (local time), KOTRA and the Global Offset and Countertrade Association (GOCA) hosted a joint presentation at the Washington D.C St. Regis Hotel, which was attended by 59 aerospace defense industries including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon.
The attendance of some of the largest aerospace defense industries in the U.S attended a presentation hosted by Korean defense industries and was a surprise. The reason the big industries gathered at the presentation was to listen to an explanation about Korea's revised law of defense industry concerning offset trade.
Offset trade is when a foreign logistics company that has exported more than 10million dollars worth of goods to Korea has to import 50% of its worth of exports from Korea.
Until now, the offset trade only applied to technology transfer, co-production, and munitions, but starting from April, the limit expanded to include civilian goods produced by foreign investors and small and medium industries.
Jung Dong-soo, the head of Invest Korea, who hosted the presentation this day said, "Due to the revision of the offset trade system, I expect a great increase in investments from the field of aerospace. Since foreign investors have been given access to the field of aerospace, we can look forward to great development in core technology and the opening of civilian goods into the market will bring much industrial development to the Korean market."
