According to Yonhap News,

(SEJONG=Yonhap News) The South Korean government announced plans Wednesday to transform the country's aging industrial complexes into advanced, attractive workplaces, especially for the younger working generation.

To this end, the government and private companies will together raise a total of 1.2 trillion won (US$1.16 billion) to create an "industrial complex innovation fund" that will be used to improve working and living conditions at industrial complexes, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

The measures are meant to enhance the competitiveness of the zones being renewed 50 years after the country began building its first industrial complex in what is now Guro-dong in southwestern Seoul.

"Industrial complexes have played and continue to play a great role in terms of employment and exports, but now is the time for us to transform them into an advanced base for a creative economy," Hwang Kyu-yeon, head of the ministry's international innovation bureau, told a press briefing.

Currently, South Korea operates 1,003 industrial complexes, including 41 run by the state, throughout the country, housing a total of 80,547 businesses.

The companies at the complexes accounted for 46.5 percent of the country's overall employment and 80.7 percent of exports in 2012, the ministry said.

However, the complexes may quickly lose their competitiveness, "especially when young and middle-aged workers remain reluctant to get jobs" there, Hwang said.

In a survey conducted by the ministry in 2012, nearly two thirds of college students polled said they did not want to work at such places.

Apparently due to difficulties in finding workers, 23.5 percent of companies surveyed in the 2012 poll said they were considering moving out of the complexes or relocating to other countries.

The ministry said the government will build smart and environmentally-friendly workplaces that use advanced information technology, such as smartphone-operated production and energy management systems.

The ministry said IT-based operation of facilities would help improve the companies' productivity by up to 25 percent while reducing the defect rate of their products by 20 percent.

Installing a factory energy management system may help them cut their energy use by up to 10 percent, it added.

To help attract young and skilled workers to the industrial complexes, the government will build 10,000 new housing units that will be leased to the employees at preferential rates.

The ministry said the government will have spent over 40 billion won in the 2013-2014 period building new day care centers and kindergartens at industrial complexes to improve the living conditions of its industrial employees.

bdk@yna.co.kr

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