– A total of $305.5 million from five businesses, not including talks about investment plan amounting to $305 million 

Gyeonggi Province’s delegation for attraction of U.S. hi-tech businesses returned home, having completed the seven-day schedule. Despite the tight schedule, the delegation posted more fruitful results than in the past in terms of both size and contents. 

The results include the signing of investment agreements worth $40.5 million in total with BT businesses, i.e. MST and BioHeart, LOIs worth $210 million in total with two semiconductor businesses, as well as talks about investment plan amounting to $305 million. These investing businesses are all leading ones in their specialty areas and it is expected that the investment agreements made with them this time will accelerate the transfer of high-end technologies, thus contributing to development of local businesses. 

The provincial office has recently taken a series of steps for attraction of R&D centers of businesses with high added value, such as information technology and bio science. Efforts for attraction of R&D centers are in line with the worldwide trend to help local businesses make development through technological transfer, though they bring about less employment effects than attraction of production facilities. 

It appears that the provincial office has been successful in attracting foreign investing businesses in so short a time, as it has strong commitment to helping the problems they are faced with as foreign-based businesses and provided sites for them as in foreign business industrial complexes, in addition to providing all possible administrative service. Even now, the provincial office continues to develop foreign business industrial complexes in Hwaseong, Paju and Pyeongtaek, in addition to making spaces for global R&D centers in Pangyo and Suwon. 

Governor Sohn Hak-kyu made special lectures at CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), New York and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, California. The lectures are regarded as a proper step taken in connection with the need for local administrative units to maximize their capabilities through diverse human exchanges and PR with their counterparts in foreign countries amid the trend toward globalization.