Chungju, Ohsong, and Ohchang were conditionally designated as a Free Economic Zone(FEZ) by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy’s FEZ committee on February 4th. Chungbuk province has made efforts to install the FEZ for 6 years since they started to research the development of it.
   FEZ will consist of 3 business parts: Bio Valley, which will be promoting new medicine industry and the medical appliances industry; Aero-polis, which is an aerial complex involving a shopping mall, warehouses and maintenance; and Eco-polis, which will be promoting the recuperation industry and the industry of environment-friendly automobile parts. Chungbuk is aiming to complete its construction by investing 1.9 trillion won by 2020. Analysts estimated that this project will make about 22,000 new jobs and the economic impact will be about 4.2 trillion won.
   Lee Gi-woong(School of Business), a Chungju resident said, “FEZ is a good chance to foster Chungbuk’s underdeveloped economy and balanced national development. I hope that this designation of FEZ will increase population growth  and job creation.”
   However, it is not going as smoothly as expected after designating the FEZ in Chungbuk because Chungbuk was conditionally allowed to install Aero-polis owing to a limitation of total emission volume of water pollution. Most of all, FEZ itself cannot guarantee development of the designated region. There have been 6 FEZs before Chungbuk, but the outcomes were not as good as expected. And only a few overseas enterprises moved there. This result indicates that it is necessary to give them incentives, such as  tax reduction and deregulation to attract investment by overseas enterprises.
   About designating Chungbuk’s FEZ, Lee Ho-sik(Professor of Korea National University of Transportation) said, “Although it is a weak point that Chungbuk is located in an inland area, we can stress that Chungju is located in the center of Korea, so it can be a strong point that Chungju can be a network connecting In-cheon with Busan on land.” Regarding the question about continuous development of Chungnuk’s FEZ, he said, “Now, the FEZ project hardly takes any support from the administration. The success of FEZ depends on private investment and foreign investment. Therefore, it may become a bubble unless Chungbuk exerts every effort.”

By Kang Ill-gu
ig33@cbnu.ac.kr