A bird’s eye view of the Abdullah Smart City in Kuwait, the first smart city exported by Korea Land and Housing Corp.(LH)

President Park Sang-woo of Korea Land and Housing Corp. (Photos: LH)

Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH) won the “A Prize” at the 2017 State-run Enterprise Evaluation, while its CEO walked off with the Excellence Award, the company said recently.
LH said its efforts to reform its structure and management since 2009 have paid off, putting the company in an enviable position for solving debt, implementing policy-related projects, protecting assets owned by the people, and taking care of public projects to realize the corporate social values to solve various issues in a harmonious manner.

LH has been able to take care of its 29 trillion won corporate debt in the past four years while logging the largest net profit in the past couple of years to create a sound base for its operation, the company said.
The company also built a housing welfare platform utilizing 1 million houses for leasing while deepening its concerns for the residential housing welfare platform for both children and senior citizens to safeguard their stable daily livelihoods.

In addition, LH has also been helping youths to make their careers in business take off by offering its support for them to set up venture business firms thru its Youth Social Venture and LH Hope Commercial Streets.

LH has also been for the realization of the Korean-type smart cities in the age of the 4th Industrial Revolution while extending its support to the construction firms to go overseas for businesses by exporting the new cities to foreign countries in particular Kuwait.
In the meantime, LH created some 265,000 new jobs thru the LH Good Job Plan to help youths to find jobs.

Last year, the company turned 1,263 part-time employees to regular employees, the biggest move among the state-run companies, and plans to help 1,680 part-time and temporary employees to become regular employees this year. Korea will lead construction of a smart city in Kuwait, which will be three times bigger than Bundang in Gyeonggi Province, one of Seoul's major satellite cities.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said Aug. 20 that the Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH) signed a contract with Kuwait's housing and welfare ministry to manage the master plan of building South Saad Al-Abdullah New City in the Middle East country.
A Korean consortium, comprised of a group of Korean urban architects, will undertake the project.

During a Korea-Kuwait summit in 2015 the latter proposed that Seoul create the new city plan for the country. It highly evaluated Korea's experience in developing new mega-cities. Korea's land ministry, which was looking for opportunities to advance overseas, also actively engaged in the deal.
The South Saad Al-Abdullah New City project will provide homes for at least 25,000 households.

"Using our experience in new city development, we will contribute to enhance housing welfare for the Kuwaiti people as well as help Korean firms advance into the Middle East. We hope the city will be the pride of both Kuwait and Korea when completed," said LH CEO Park Sang-woo.
LH dispatched specialists in new city development to examine the site and start design work, drawing up a master plan to construct a futuristic city connected with smart devices.

South Saad Al-Abdullah New City is one of nine new cities that Kuwait plans to build. Located 30 kilometers to the west of Kuwait City, the area of land to be used is 64.4 square kilometers. When a Kuwait man gets married, the government provides a home for the new couple. Around 110,000 are waiting to get homes in Kuwait, but the annual supply of homes stands at a mere 1,800, on average.
After analyzing the feasibility of the master plan, which will take two years to complete, the Korean consortium will set up a special purpose vehicle jointly with Kuwait. Construction will begin in 2019.