SEOUL, KOREA - KOTRA (Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency) has opened a website, ‘Korea and China IT Gateway’ (www.kosinoit.org) to provide a medium to exchange information and outset business for the IT sector of both countries.
According to KOTRA, South Korea’s export US 116.8 billion dollars in 2010, and a large faction of that total was the TFT-LCD Semiconductor and the IT sector, which was recorded at US 39 billion dollars (33% of the whole). Hence, the establishment of ‘Korea and China IT Gateway’ was to form a full-scale exchange channel to harvest the full potential of the export/import of between South Korea and China, and further expand the knowledge of both countries’ IT sectors.
With the launch of KOTRA’s Korea and China IT Gateway (www.kosinoit.org) this site is looking to benefit IT sector industries of both countries by being a highway to exchange industry intelligence, and being a medium to construct business channels. ‘Korea and China IT Gateway’ is sectioned into: IT Information Center, Data of Major Corporations, Cyber IT Plaza and Business Plaza and the website is accessible in both Korean and Chinese.
‘IT Information Center’ provides real-time updates of Korea and China’s IT Industry policies and their current business information. The core contents uploaded to the IT Information Center are provided by each country’s best IT sector Medias. China’s best IT media group CCID will consistently supply information from six of their IT mediums to the IT Information Center. ‘Database of Korea and China IT Industries’ stretches across ten sectors of the each countries IT industries and it hopes to provide a medium to exchange business. ‘The Cyber IT Plaza’ contains about thirty small and medium enterprises looking to carry forward in a business with Chinese Industries. Among the companies that are listed, their product(s) and technology(-ies) are introduced and marketed through Baidu, which is the major search engine of China. Furthermore, ‘The Cyber IT Plaza’ also contains ‘Beijing IT Support Center’ in order to support Korea’s IT businesses that are trying to enter a China’s successful IT market. Not only does the ‘Beijing IT Support Center’ provides facilities installation and homepage installation but it furthers their assistance by providing marketing support, information and consultations and IT networking to add to its services.
Ki-hoon Woo, Director of Foreign Marketing for KOTRA stated, “Instead of Korea and China IT Gateway being merely a website that provides information, we hope that with the collaboration of IT industries from both countries, and with the reinforcement of exceptional contents consistently, we desire this gateway to be a medium of both China and South Korea IT Industry’s business ground.”
KOTRA has been established in 1962 and is dedicated to creating new export markets and to increase South Korea’s trade value. As the world economy is becoming more unstable, KOTRA provides a global business establishment and export support to the backbone of the Korean economy, the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Its role has been critical in supporting Korean companies expand overseas, and it operates as a ‘Global Business Platform’ to help Korean companies expand to a bigger market.