[Reporter`s View] Bitter Comment Of Small-Medium Business

``The Small and Medium business is dying due to the lack of the infra investment by the large business. My friends ridicules me, `Are you still operating the manufacturing industry?``` (Chairperson of HeungJin Machinery Co. Ltd. Lee Chang-Ho)

``The manufacturing industry may be compared with the infantry of the Army. The Army cannot win the war with a weak infantry, even when the army is well equipped with high tech weapons. It is worried about the outcome of the mal-treatments with the manufacturing industry.`` (Chairperson of Hansung Industrial Co. Ltd. Ji Sung-Han)

In a restaurant of Gumi city, Kyongbuk, July 6, 60 CEOs of the cooperative business of the Daewoo Electronics were complaining the recent neglecting trend of the manufacturing industry after the meeting for the early completion of work-out.

The complains have continued on. ``The order has reduced 40 percent.`` ``It`s very hard to balance the budget because of the dumping race.`` ``We cannot compete with China due to the current ten times higher wages than China.``

Chung Sae-Neung, CEO of Hanryuk Electronics Co. Ltd in the Guro Industrial Complex, said that ``the statistic increase of the newly founded business is not always positive. The owners of land about 3000 pyong close their company to build apartment-type factories for rent or sales. Thanks to the moved-in venture industries, the number of the companies has increased. However, the number of employees, which once reached up to 70 thousand, now decreased to the half of it. Who is the victims of the lost jobs?``

Mr. Chung added that, ``Recently a Japanese joint corporation suggested to move the manufacturing facilities to China, where the wage is low and the employee and management relationship is relatively stable. I have failed to find a reason to oppose this.``

They also criticized the inflexible administration of the government, which is in fact bounded to the regulation while propagandizing the deregulation. A CEO who has his factory in China said that ``a few years ago, I planned to introduce new machines to the factory after moving the old ones to the factories in China. However, the government was imposing a heavy tax on it. Then I established the new machine in the factories in China.``

The bitter comments of the CEOs of the small and medium industries were much more appealing than the refined logics of the high officials and the Ph.D.s in economy.

Park Won-Jae parkwj@donga.com