Invest KOREA

According to Yonhap News,

By Kang Yoon-seung

SEOUL, Nov. 6 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's industry ministry said Wednesday it will allocate 150 billion won (US$130 million) through 2020 to build test beds to beef up the competitiveness of its materials, parts and equipment industries in the face of the growing protectionism from around the globe.

"For newly developed technologies to be utilized for the actual production of goods, there need to be test beds where researchers can carry out tests to evaluate and verify them," Industry Minister Sun Yun-mo said.

Under the policy, South Korea's 15 public industrial organizations will set up test beds for six major industries: chips, displays, automobiles, electronics, metals and chemicals.

The areas have been considered some of the primary victims of the growing protectionism around the globe.

South Korea has been facing uncertainties in its supply of materials, parts and equipment for its mainstay tech industry after Japan tightened its control on exports of three key industrial materials to Asia's fourth-largest economy in July, citing security issues.

Japan's export restriction is widely seen as a retaliation against a Seoul court's ruling last year that ordered Japanese firms to compensate victims of their wartime forced labor, during Japan's 1910-1945 brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

To cope with uncertainties, South Korea earlier vowed to allocate 2.1 trillion won next year to lend support to the material, parts and equipment industries.

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Source: Yonhap News (Nov 6, 2019)