S. Korea to donate $1.5 million to World Bank's job program

SEOUL, May 10 (Yonhap) -- South Korea has agreed to donate US$1.5 million to the
World Bank by 2012 to help create jobs in developing countries, becoming a donor
state in the labor sector for the first time, government officials in Seoul said
Sunday.
The planned donation will mean South Korea's status shift from that of a borrower
to a donor partner with the World Bank, which helped finance the South Korean
employment sector until the late 1990s, said officials of the Labor Ministry.
Under the donation agreement with the World Bank, formally known as the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), South Korea will
participate in various future donor meetings, they said.
South Korea received $33.88 million in loans from the IBRD until the mid-1990s to
build job training centers across the country. Hit by the Asian financial crisis
in 1998, it received 7 billion won in structural adjustment loans, part of which
went to efforts to boost employment.
"By becoming a donor with the IBRD, which has been dominated by European
countries, our country opened new horizons for its international cooperation in
the field of labor," Lee Seong-gi, a ministry official handling international
cooperation, said.
The IBRD's multi-donor trust fund, established with the participation of Germany,
Austria and Norway, began operations last year. The trust fund, including the
$1.5 million expected from South Korea, amounts to about $5 million.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)