By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
South Korea seeks to revive the textile industry, once one of its main export industries, with new growth engines based on high-tech products such as medical fabrics, according to industry and government sources Tuesday.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MOCIE), the country exported textile goods worth $13.5 billion (roughly 12.6 trillion won) in 2007, up 2.3 percent from the previous year.
It marked the first upturn in seven years since 2000, when annual exports of textile products reached a peak of $18.9 billion before a gradual decrease thereafter to $13.2 billion in 2006.
After the Korean War (1950-53), South Korea remained a poor country that exported wigs and cheap clothes until the 1960s. In 2006, or just in four decades, it became the 11th country in the world to break the record of $300 billion in exports.
But the textile industry, which represented the country in the era of rapid economic development in the 1970s and 1980s, gave way to the information-technology (IT), automobile and other high-tech industries in tandem with economic growth.
Amid cutthroat competition with other emerging economies such as China, South Korea’s textile industry was hit hard by the liberalization of textile trade in 2005, which further lessened the room for exports.
However, the situation reversed itself last year. Exports rose 2.3 percent from 2006, as oversupply and price-cutting competition were brought to an end. Textile firms also tried to expand production of high-value added goods and fortify overseas marketing.
Government officials predicted that such a trend would continue this year to mark an increase of exports for the second consecutive year. ``We expect exports of textile goods will rise 1.6 percent from last year to $13.8 billion,’’ a MOCIE official said.
He added that, despite some unfavorable factors such as high crude oil prices and the rapid growth of the Chinese textile industry, there are also favorable factors such as the envisioned implementation of the free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States.
The inter-Korean economic project in the Gaeseong Industrial Complex would also help the South Korean textile industry see a larger chance for development and exports, other officials said.
Business leaders, who held a meeting with MOCIE officials Tuesday, asked for an early ratification of the South Korea-U.S. FTA, activation of inter-Korean economic cooperation and expansion of government support for the textile industry.
A participant said that the government and the business circle agreed to make joint efforts to develop technologies to advance into the future textile markets with high-tech products, such as ``smart textiles,’’ ``medical textiles’’ and ``nano-composite textiles.’’
``Our textile industry needs to explore new growth engines through convergence with IT, BT (bio-technology) and NT (nanotechnology),’’ said Choi Pyeong-rak, who heads the MOCIE’s office of key manufacturing industries.