A  ceremony to celebrate the 2012 International Contractors Day took place on Nov. 13 at the Construction Hall in southern Seoul hosted by the International Contractors Association of Korea and Korea Association of Plant Information and Technology with hundreds of executives of construction firms and people from the related industries led by Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik attending.

 Chairman Choi Jae-duck of ICAK said in his commemorative speech, that Korean builders clinched over $47 billion in overseas construction projects so far this year, raising hopes that Korea might be able to overcome the economic crisis precipitated by the European debt crisis and we are sure that total overseas projects  won by the Korean builders by the end of this year would surpass those secured in the previous year even $700 billion as initially projected by the government and the industry at the beginning of this year if all things go well as expected.

 The ICAK chairman said he would like to thank every one in the industry who did his best so that the construction industry would be able to go that far in winning the construction projects overseas this year and those in the government and the National Assembly who did not spare their efforts to help the industry to win the overseas projects as much as possible this year.

 Since 2007, the Korean builders won $50 billion in annual average the overseas construction projects, at an eye-popping growth rate. They are every where in the world, providing water to the dry places and building roads in the places where there are no roads and also built houses at the homeless areas. They have also built high-rise buildings and all kinds of factories, not just as a builder, but as exporter of IT, technology, manpower and culture to all over the world.

During the ceremony, many government medals and citations were awarded to those executives and others in the overseas construction sector for their contributions to the industry including President Kim Ho-young of Keangnam Enterprise who won the Industrial Merit Gold Medal, Vice President Kim Dae-ho of POSCO Construction who won the Industrial Merit Silver Medal and Executive Managing Director Koh Kang of Hanwha Construction who won the Industrial Merit Bronze Medal, among others. Special medals and citations were presented posthumously to the seven officials and engineers who died in a helicopter crash in Peru last year while flying to a project site in the Latin American nation.

 The gold medal winner President Kim is a veteran of 38 years in the construction industry with over 30 years overseas 14 of them to win various construction projects in such various countries and regions as Asia, the Middle East and North America to lead Korea’s overseas construction companies. He entered Hyundai Construction to start his career in the industry and assigned to work at the company’s highway construction project in Indonesia in 1973,his jobs took him to many countries in the world since then including Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Teheran, New York, Los Angeles as he moved up in positions. He was promoted to the headquarters manager in charge of overseas projects for Hyundai Construction in May, 2000,, getting many overseas projects for the company, including many plant construction projects.