1. A combined 710 one-on-one consultations were held between chiefs of the Republic of Korea’s 146 overseas diplomatic missions and the representatives from about 260 Korean companies in Seoul on March 17 to seek ways to support bids of Korean companies to expand their presence in overseas markets.

2. The “meeting with businesspeople” event, co-hosted by the Foreign Ministry and five business groups on the sidelines of the meeting of the chiefs of the ROK’s overseas diplomatic missions, has grown in visibility among Korean companies and thereby been drawing increasingly keen attention and positive responses from them. The 2016 event drew a balanced participation from large and small- and medium-sized companies, with the former comprising 26% and the latter 65% of the participants. The sectors represented in the event and the content of the consultations are becoming increasingly diversified.

3. At this year’s event, in particular, Korean companies expressed keen interest in new, promising markets, including Iran whose sanctions had recently been lifted; China, which is becoming a market with new opportunities attributable to the entry into force of the Republic of Korea-China FTA; India and Vietnam, which are seeing stable economic growths; and Myanmar, which, under the first-ever civilian government, is increasingly interested in attracting investment.

4. At the “luncheon with the heads of five business groups,” which was co-hosted by the Foreign Ministry and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry on the day of the “meeting with businesspeople” event, about 400 people, including the mission chiefs and the heads of five business groups, affirmed their commitment to the restoration of the ROK’s economic vitality and discussed ways to work together to that end.

5. The Foreign Ministry will take follow-up measures to the “meeting with businesspeople” event by assigning each case of consultation a code number and creating a database of all the cases. It also plans to thoroughly manage the progress in the implementation of the measures, including by notifying relevant companies of the progress.


* unofficial translation