Lee urges crisis-hit conglomerates to speed up restructuring

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By Yoo Cheong-mo
SEOUL, Dec. 26 (Yonhap) -- President Lee Myung-bak on Friday urged domestic
industrial conglomerates to voluntarily carry out sweeping restructuring measures
in return for state financial support and to survive the current global economic
crisis.
Lee said after briefings on the government's key industrial policies for 2009 by
relevant ministries that "preemptive, sweeping and voluntary" restructuring would
be necessary for private conglomerates to secure global competitiveness in their
respective fields.
The president also said his government would shift the focus of its industrial
policies away from the promotion of conglomerates' growth and towards the market
in a bid to better support their restructuring efforts and competitiveness.
"The government is willing to selectively extend its assistance to some
industries. Prior to that, however, large conglomerates have to make efforts to
restructure themselves," said Lee at the meeting attended by top officials of the
Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC).
"Private enterprises will surely struggle with business difficulties. Large
conglomerates should take this as an opportunity to upgrade their international
competitiveness through a preemptive, sweeping and voluntary restructuring," he
said, stressing closer private-government cooperation would be needed to overcome
the crisis.
Lee again forecast that the nation's real economy is expected to bottom out
during the first or second quarter of next year.
The president's remarks came as local construction, shipbuilding and auto
companies are seeking massive government bailout funds and measures to weather
the deepening global business slump.
In this regard, ministry officials said that the government will consider
providing emergency liquidity, including low-interest research and development
funds, to ailing local automakers and put small and medium-sized shipbuilders
under life-or-death restructuring. The government will also seek its role in the
restructuring of local petrochemical companies hit hard by a downturn in global
demand.
"The government's industrial bailout will be indirectly pushed through creditor
banks. Any direct liquidity support from state coffers won't be under
consideration," said a ministry official.
"Korea's semiconductor, display and cellphone producers have also been hit by the
global slump but would be excluded from the state-organized bailout program, as
they are still deemed capable of tiding over the crisis by themselves," said the
official.
In the communications sector, meanwhile, Lee instructed the KCC to take measures
to accelerate the fusion of information, communication and broadcasting
industries. He stressed the moves should be prompted by economic, not political,
considerations.
"The broadcasting and communications industries are capable of creating new job
opportunities and are spearheading a new technological fusion. In this sense, the
fusion should be approached through economic rather than political logic," said
Lee.
"The broadcasting-communication fusion will also offer a new growth locomotive
for the Korean economy. The introduction of advanced IPTV (Internet protocol
television) technologies will be helpful to such an effort," said the president.
Lee apparently signaled his strong support for the ruling Grand National Party's
bills to allow large conglomerates and newspapers to acquire controlling stakes
in the nation's major network broadcasters and remove program content barriers
between on-air and IPTV broadcasters.
But the bills have been fiercely criticized by liberal opposition parties and
unionized media workers as the Lee government's "secret" plot to control network
broadcasters through pro-government conservative newspapers and conglomerates.
The main opposition Democratic Party's lawmakers forcibly seized the National
Assembly's plenary session hall Friday morning in their bid to block any
parliamentary voting on the media reform and other controversial bills, while
members of the National Union of Media Workers, which represents unions of some
120 television and radio stations, walked out in protest.
ycm@yna.co.kr
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