California delegation to visit S. Korea on investment tour: KOTRA

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 3 (Yonhap) -- Businessmen and lawmakers from California will
visit South Korea this month to hold talks on potential investments, a state-run
trade promotion office here said Saturday.
The delegation led by California Senator Leland Yee plans to use South Korea's
KTX bullet train to tour factories and laboratories and hold discussions with
local businessmen, the San Francisco office of the Korea Trade-Investment
Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said.
Senior executives of four major companies will meet executives of Hyundai Rotem
Co., which makes high-speed trains, and engage in talks with representatives of
biotech laboratories run by Samsung, Seoul National University and Yonsei
University while on their fact-finding mission.
They will also tour Songdo bio-cluster and other high-tech industrial and
research facilities.
The visit comes as companies around the world are trying to win California's
bullet train project that aims to ease the state's serious traffic congestion
problem.
Seoul currently operates the KTX, whose key technologies were imported from
France. South Korean companies have since made progress in making indigenous
trains and operating systems and have been aggressively marketing their products
abroad.
KOTRA officials, in addition, said that tie-ups with California in the biotech
industry can benefit South Korea since the size of the market in the state
increased to US$4.3 billion in 2007 from $3.2 billion the year before.
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