President Lee Jae Myung’s chief of staff on Thursday said he delivered a personal letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and met with top Canadian officials during his trip to support Korea’s bid to win a submarine contract.
Lee’s chief of staff, Kang Hoon-sik, is currently in Canada as a special envoy for strategic economic cooperation to support a Korean consortium’s bid for Canada’s submarine project estimated at 60 trillion won ($41.4 billion). The Korean consortium led by Hanwha Ocean and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries was shortlisted for the contract along with Germany's ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.
In a Facebook post, Kang said that he met with Carney and other senior officials, including Minister of Defense David McGuinty and Minister of Finance and National Revenue Francois-Philippe Champagne.
In the meetings, Kang said that the Canadian officials expressed a strong resolve to use the submarine project as a “turning point to fundamentally change the country’s industrial and security policies.”
“For Korea, this submarine project is an opportunity for a great leap for (Korea’s) defense industry. If successful, it will be the largest ever (project) in the West, and it will enable (Korea) to enter the NATO market in earnest,” Kang wrote.
Continuing from the previous administration, the defense industry is one of the key areas Seoul hopes to bolster, with the aim of making the country one of the world’s top four defense exporters by 2027.
Kang also revealed that Canada's Minister of State for Defense Procurement Stephen Fuhr is set to visit South Korea next week to inspect a South Korean naval submarine.
cheesuk@heraldcorp.com
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