Invest KOREA

South Korea will focus its policy capacity on supporting the content industry with an aim to turn it into the country's next-generation export driver, the finance minister said Thursday.

"I believe that things have become mature enough for the content (industry) to emerge as our next-generation export industry," Finance Minister Hyun Oh-seok said during a meeting with other policymakers.

"Now is the time for us to muster our policy capacity to grow the content industry and turn it into one of the major pillars for our economic growth," he added.

Touching on trade-related issues, Hyun also said that it is necessary for the government to review the damage that industries have sustained due to free trade deals Korea has signed with many countries.

He noted that the government needs to figure out better ways to compensate for such damage and protect domestic industries as it seeks to have more free trade deals going forward.

The remarks come after South Korea and China reached an agreement last week on the modality or basic guidelines for their negotiations on a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA).

Based on its review and assessment of existing compensation and supporting efforts related to FTAs, he said that the government will push to draw up additional measures to better protect domestic industries from new market environments to be created by more free trade deals.


Source Text

Source: Yonhap News (Sep. 12, 2013)