Korea University IBRE (Institute for Business Research and Education, Director Jongseok Bae) opened its first business seminar series (The IBRE Business Insight Series) on November 21st (Thu), at LG-POSCO Building.

The IBRE Business Insight Series is a project that presents new perspectives on education and research to the members in various kinds of business schools and will be carried out every semester with topics covering economic outlook and industrial analysis. Chung Kyu-chul, a researcher at KDI (The Korea Development Institute), was the first series speaker.

Chung came up with the topic “Economic Outlook 2020”, providing a broad range of explanation about the current standpoint of South Korean macroeconomy and its midterm goals to pursue. He spoke at the seminar: "Since the last financial crisis, the U.S., China and other emerging Asian economies have led the recovery of global economy, but uncertainties such as the U.S.-China trade dispute still persists, and industrial output, trade volume are shrinking. Therefore, people argue that the global economy is slowing down." If these uncertainties are too high, companies tend to delay investment and this would be reflected in the Korean economy as well," he said, adding in detail the impact of the U.S.-China trade dispute, the no-deal Brexit and Japan's export regulations on the global economy. "China's growth paradigm is changing, and its impact on the Korean economy is growing due to the impact of China's falling domestic demand," was told by the researcher.

Then he explained the current state and outlook of the Korean economy based on the recent pace of the global economy. The researcher said, "The government is leading the growth by increasing fiscal spending to stabilize the economic downturn caused by sluggish exports and investment in the private sector and a drop in the portion of manufacturing production." In addition, he showed his analysis in specific issues of the Korean economy, including sluggish investment in semiconductors and continued low prices. "There is a room for a limited improvement in domestic demand and exports, but there will be a difference from expected levels," he said. "The economic growth forecast has been revised down as demand at home and abroad continues to shrink." As counter measures, he emphasized the need to review the monetary policy management system and the need to seek growth engines for the service industry.

After the lecture, the Q&A session has followed with an inquiry “What would be the finest solution for Korea in managing the trade relationship with China?” Chung answered, “"The process of cooperating in the production phase is getting smaller, and instead the Chinese domestic market is getting bigger, and the Chinese government is also trying to reduce investment and increase consumption". "Considering these changes, we need a strategy to directly target the Chinese domestic market."

IBRE Business Insight Series will be provided with three seminars, once on a week on Thursday, through offline. The upcoming seminar is on November 28th (Thu) and December 5th (Thu) .