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South Korea Construction
Construction has been an important South Korean export
industry since the early 1960s and remains a critical source of
foreign currency and "invisible" export earnings. By 1981
overseas construction projects, most of them in the Middle East,
accounted for 60 percent of the work undertaken by South Korean
construction companies. Contracts that year were valued at
US$13.7 billion. In 1988, however, overseas construction
contracts totaled only US$1.6 billion (orders from the Middle
East were US$1.2 billion), a 1 percent increase over the previous
year, while new orders for domestic construction projects totaled
US$13.8 billion, an 8.8 percent increase over 1987. The result
was that South Korean construction companies concentrated on the
rapidly growing domestic market in the late 1980s. By 1989 there
were signs of a revival of the overseas construction market--the
Dong Ah Construction Company signed a US$5.3 billion contract
with Libya for the second phase of Libya's Great Man-Made River
Project, which, when all five phases were completed, was
projected to cost US$27 billion. South Korean construction
companies signed over US$7 billion of overseas contracts in 1989.
Data as of June 1990
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