Word: seoul
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Coping with Competition But that doesn't mean Hong Kong's future as Asia's preeminent financial center is assured. Singapore in recent years has boosted its banking sector. Shanghai is booming. And even Seoul aspires to be a financial hub. Faced with these long-term competitive threats, Hong Kong's leaders are laying the groundwork for even closer links with China. In August, a local think tank with ties to the city's top political leadership released a proposal for increasing economic integration with Shenzhen, the Chinese boomtown located next to Hong Kong. A mere fishing village when...
...that's nothing compared with the overtures Seoul has been playing for its Northern cousins. The centerpiece of commercial ties between the two countries remains the Kaesong industrial zone. Opened in 2003, the district is now home to 65 South Korean-run factories employing 20,000 North Koreans. Lee Im Dong, general manager of the Kaesong Industrial Council, says hundreds of other companies plan to set up plants there when a second phase opens in early 2010. A rush is anticipated in part because, at the October summit between Roh and Kim, the North agreed to key improvements...
...industry for its rich mineral deposits. Danchon reflects the somber reality - but also the potential - of doing business in North Korea. The transportation infrastructure in the region is dilapidated, the power supply unreliable. But some companies are willing to take the risk. Four years ago, Wonjin Worldwide Corp., a Seoul-based mining company, formed a joint venture to mine and smelt Danchon's graphite, a heat-resistant material used in steelmaking and other industrial applications. The first shipment of 200 tons of graphite arrived in the South's port of Inchon in mid-December, and despite the problems...
...infusions geared toward improving transportation links between the North and South, adding to the $700 million the South has already spent on North Korea infrastructure projects over the past eight years. The projects are starting to bear fruit. On Dec. 11 a regular rail-freight service was inaugurated between Seoul and Kaesong, punching a symbolic hole in the heavily fortified DMZ that divides the countries. Work is also underway to repair a rail line linking Kaesong with the North Korean city of Sinuiju on the Chinese border - promising to give South Korean companies an overland transport route to the booming...
...needed to bring North Korea into the global economy - assuming, that is, that Kim Jong Il wants to join. Skeptics note that Kim has played this game before, feigning cooperation in return for aid, only to revert to belligerence and isolation. But the Bush Administration and experts in Seoul seem to believe things will be different this time. One of the South's foremost North Korea watchers, Koh Yu Hwan of Seoul's Dongguk University, says Kim has "already decided that grand bargain" - nukes for economic aid - "is in his interest." Koh, who met recently with the head...