The government of Korea recently announced their plans to transform Sejong City, a rural place 150 kilometres from Seoul into an “International Science and Business Belt.” Their motive is to draw at least 17 trillion won of new investments in the next two decades. According to the government officials, the objective of turning this rural city into a sophisticated production and research base will be funded by large groups of insurance and financial organizations. Reputable known companies like “Samsung Group,” “Hanwa Group,” “Woongjin Group” and “Lotte Group” are expected to join towards the funding of a combined 4.4 trillion won towards the manufacturing and research facilities of the city. On the other hand, the country’s biggest business company Samsung shows great interest towards the investment in the “green energy and health care” sector which includes medical instruments, light emitting-diodes, solar cells and rechargeable batteries. This planned project will be backed up by all the affiliates of Samsung including Samsung Electronics, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung SDI and Samsung LED. A total investment of 2050 billion won by the year 2015 has been planned towards this project. According to Kim Soon-taek, Vice chairman of Samsung‘s new business team said that their company has closely monitored new business areas from the time a new business group was initialized by them in December 2007 and they chose green energy and health care as a part of their next generation business objectives.

Samsung Electronics CEO Choi Gee-sung had made pledge last year towards the development of health, environment and life care along being two of the major businesses Samsung would plan to focus along with infotainment in the next 10 years. Samsung Electronics, the flagship unit of Samsung Group, is currently the worlds leading manufacturer of memory chips, LCD TV’s and liquid crystal panels. It’s also the number 2 producer of handsets. Samsung Group currently plans to spend around 1.1 trillion won towards solar cells, rechargeable batteries and LED’s, while they would reserve around 330 billion won towards investments for latest medical instruments. Samsung’s investment may create around 15,800 jobs. The other two companies joining in the project is “Hanwha Group” and “Woongjin Group.” Hanwha Group has investments interests towards solar cell and defence businesses and plans to inviest around 1.3 trillion won by 2020. Including Hanwha chemicals , four other affiliates from their group plans to join them in the investment project towards the city. Hanwha group estimates a requirement of 3,000 jobs out of this. Woongjin Group has plans to invest towards solar ingots and wafers by 2020. A total of 900 billion has been reserved for this project. Lotte Group would be investing around 100 billion won towards the development of a research center in food biotechnology. The expected date of completion of this project is by 2020 and an estimated 1000 jobs are expected out of this project.

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