Are ‘Samsung plant,’ ‘Apple branch’ empty promises?
Ahead of Wednesday’s local elections, candidates are making their last-minute plea for votes, with some of them talking big to take advantage of big name companies and their huge investment plans unveiled recently.Politicians offering populist pledges is nothing new during election campaigns, but this year their rhetoric appears to have gained some weight as they come along with a series of new investment plans, worth a combined 1,000 trillion won ($800 billion), announced by the nation’s top conglomerates over the past week.Amid people’s heightened interest in where the massive spending will go, candidates who are competing for 17 metropolitan mayors and provincial governors and hundred others of lower-level council seats are issuing promises that are closely linked to new growth drivers of big businesses.The most frequently cited names are Samsung and SK, the nation’s No.
2 conglomerates that plan to invest 450 trillion won and 247 trillion won, respectively, over the next five years with their renewed emphasis on chips.Their costly, sophisticated chip-manufacturing plants, in particular, are coveted facilities that create hundreds of jobs and other ripple effects in the local economy.Gyeonggi Province’s governor candidate Kim Eun-hye of the ruling People Power Party who is the front-runner has said she would host a “big chip company” by creating a 400,000- to 500,000-square-meter industrial complex in the northern part of the province.“Currently, we are carrying out a feasibility study on several candidate areas and about 110 trillion won will be poured into the project,” she said last week in a press conference.“Upon my inauguration, a task force will be set up to execute the plans right away.
By hosting a big company in the northern part of the province along with the existing LG Display in Paju, I’ll make people there feel the change immediately.”Even though she didn’t specify names, it was obvious she was referring to Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, the wor