Invest KOREA

Foreign direct investment (FDI) surged to a record high of USD 16.26 billion in 2012, up 18.9 percent from USD 13.67 billion a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE). By country, FDI pledged by the U.S. investors in 2012 jumped 55 percent on-year to USD 3.7 billion with that from Japan also increasing 98 percent to USD 4.5 billion. New investment from China also rose a whopping 107 percent to USD 4 billion, while that from the EU declined 47 percent to USD 2.7 billion. The amount that actually arrived here in 2012 increased 57.8 percent to USD 108 billion from the previous year's USD 6.58 billion.

Such an increase seemed attributable to the following developments: a growing confidence of foreign investors in the Korean economy following the effectuation of Korea-EU free trade agreement and a spate of sovereign rating upgrades by global credit appraisers; massive inflow of investment from Japanese parts and material companies and Chinese tour industries; improving investment environments favorable to foreign-invested companies and expanding investment attraction activities tailored to the needs of foreign investors.

The FDI will help create over 100,000 new jobs over the next three years, enhance the competitiveness of Korea's material industry whose value chain considered to need improvement and lastly enable the Korean economy to gain momentum with the inflow of new investment, breaking its 10-year deadlock.

This year's FDI is forecast to slightly dwindle to about USD 15 billion in new pledges and the amount that arrived will reach USD 8 billion. The MKE will pump up efforts to create quality jobs and entice FDI, major driving force of the economy, along with attracting large-scale projects early this year.

<FDI on a year basis>

Source: MKE (Jan. 4, 2013)