South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service and the Seoul city government held an investor relations conference in Hong Kong to attract foreign investment and expand global network amid high hope for inter-Korean détente.

“The Korean equity market has grappled with valuation discount for years but the so-called Korea discount would soon be turned into Korea premium promising bigger opportunity and better future, given the country’s efforts to bring permanent peace on the Korean peninsula and end North Korea’s diplomatic and economic isolation,” Yoo Kwang-yeol, FSS First Senior Deputy Governor, pitched at the IR conference in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Some 80 financial experts from Hong Kong’s finance industry attended the event.

Yoo’s comment comes after geopolitical risk in the Korean peninsula has been significantly eased following a series of high-profile meetings between North Korean regime leader Kimg Jong-un and his counterparts in South Korea, the U.S., China and Russia on ways to bring peace on the peninsula including rewarding Pyongyang with economic development in return for denuclearization.

When the North Korean market opens up, there will exist vast investment opportunities for infrastructure development in the North in the short term and Eurasia in the long term from the possible creation of a new economic bloc in Northeast Asia, said Yoo.

Yoo’s pitch for investment in the Korean market was backed by Asia Pacific head of global investment firms Natixis and Frost & Sullivan who presented analyses on future investment chances in the Korean market.

Separately on the same day, the Seoul Metropolitan Government signed a memorandum of understanding with Frost & Sullivan to cooperate on helping Korean fintech startups raise investment and expand out to overseas.

Many global finance players are paying close attention to changes in Korea’s financial landscape, said a Seoul government official. “The city government will make the utmost effort to attract more global investment into Korea.”

By Kim Dong-eun and Cho Jeehyun

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]