Vice Minister Park Jin-gyu of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) gives a commemorative speech at a a ceremony to celebrate the 34th Textile Day at Korea Textile Center in Samseong-dong, Seoul, on Nov. 11.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) and Korea Federation of Textile Industries (KOFOTI) jointly hosted a ceremony to celebrate the 34th Textile Day. About 500 people attended the event at the Textile Center in Samseong-dong, Seoul on Nov. 11.

Among those on hand at the event were MOTIE Vice Minister Park Jin-gyu, KOFOTI Chairman Lee Sang-woon, and textile organization chairmen, textile company CEOs, and award winners.

Textile Day was created in celebration of the textiles becoming the first one of the nation’s industries to achieve exports worth $10 billion on Nov. 11, 1967. This year’s anniversary event was its 34th rendition.

Fifty-six people and organizations were honored with orders and government prizes in recognition of their contribution to the development of the textile industry.

Chairman Lee Sang-woon of the Korea Federation of Textile Industries (KOFOTI) speaks at the 34th Textile Day anniversary ceremony.

Chairman Lee Byung-geol of Parkland was presented with the Order of Industrial Service Merit, Gold Tower in recognition for his contribution to strengthening the international standing of the industry and improving competiveness by building a sustainable management foundation based on management expertise he has accumulated in his 47-year career with the textile and fashion field.

He has been lauded for his contribution to creating goo jobs through win-win cooperation such as using of homegrown materials from about 260 Korean cooperative companies.

Among the award winners were five MOTIE minister’s prizes and two KOFOTI chairman’s prizes from Toray Advanced Materials Korea and Toray Chemical.

In his commemorative speech, MOTIE Vice Minister Park said he praised those in the textile & fashion industry for their dedication for the development of the industry into a national industrial sector with greater downstream and upstream effects by currently employing 280,000 people.

He called for making the textile-fashion industry a strong sector in face of a crisis by coping with changes through innovation, saying that the industry was heavily buffeted by hardships such as the global economic recession, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a side event, textile organizations held a ceremony to sign an agreement to contribute to a special guarantee program for shared growth. They also announced strategies to flesh out the textile & fashion industry’s Korea New Deal, calling for investing a combined 1.4 trillion by 2026 and creating 36,000 jobs.

MOTIE Vice Minister Park Jin-gyu and KOFOTI Charman Lee Sang-woon pose with award winners, honored in recognition of their contribution to the development of the textile industry at the 34th Textile Day anniversary ceremony. (Photos: MOTIE)