Collection
Export Promotion and the Korean Economy
History of Export Goods
Beginning with dried fish and coal, Korean export goods expanded into automobiles and semiconductors, and now further into the state-of-the-art fields of the 4th Industrial Revolution such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, etc. Such changes show the improvement of the Korean economic status in the world.
Korea’s Status based on the Korean Pavilions at Expos
Expositions are largely classified into the following three types: professional expos, general expos, and universal expos. Referred to as expo or world fair, the universal expo showcases and compares the achievements human civilizations have ever made under a selected theme, helping to share knowledge and technology humans have ever made and to articulate the future vision. That’s why the universal expo plays the same role in the economy and culture as the Olympics. Held every five years, the universal expo is regarded as one of the world’s three major international events together with the Olympics and the World Cup. It enjoys a large number of audience and attendees. For example, the Expo 2010 Shanghai attracted as many as more than 70 million audience and attendees. KOTRA has participated in the expo with the Korean Pavilion ever since its foundation in order to promote Korea and its goods to the world.
History of Creating New Markets
In the early 1960s, KOTRA took a look at both domestic and overseas markets. As it had few overseas networks in the early 1960s, its investigation was virtually the so-called desk research relying on the data taken from Japan, the U.S. and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT).
We live in the Internet-based Information Age which determines information power and its quality by who and how many different information sources one possesses, not by what kind of information one possesses. So, the KOTRA’s research efforts are different from those by other researchers or agencies in that it delivers information by adding on-site information obtained from its active overseas organizational networks to objective information taken from the Internet.
History of Korea’s Trade Promotion
Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency(KOTRA) has published its history every ten years since its foundation. KOTRA goes along with Korean economic development. It has taken the lead in each and every course of Korea’s advancement into a trade power in the world. Its history accounts are designed to share the KOTRA’s story of its challenges and explorations in global trade.