• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.22-30
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• 2014

This study undertakes a comparative analysis of the correlation between the condition of the domestic construction market and the expansion of overseas projects within construction companies, based on the vector error correction model. The analysis results verified that, in the post-IMF crisis period, domestic construction companies took on more overseas projects only when the residential construction market slowed down. Compared to the pre-crisis period, construction companies grew more responsive to the condition of the domestic market for residential construction, and they took on more overseas construction projects when the domestic market slumped. This is because the business portfolios of Korean construction companies' render them highly vulnerable to the condition of the residential construction market. When the domestic residential market slows down, the business condition of construction companies quickly takes a turn for the worse, and to cope with this, they turn to overseas projects to compensate for the slowing of the domestic market. As the analysis shows, expanding overseas construction projects as a way to turn around business condition amid a slow residential construction market actually undermines the management of the companies even further. In other words, shifting business focus toward an overseas market during a hard time might be useful for securing cash flow, but might not help to restore profitability. Thus, construction companies need to carefully manage their level of business diversification to ensure strategic flexibility.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2012.11a
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• pp.143-145
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• 2012

Overseas construction industry has performed the leading role in the economic development. In this study, effect of international oil prices, GDP and price index, on the regional international construction contract amount is compared and analyzed. Overseas construction market received a devastating effect due to the 1997's economic crisis. However, the market has remained stable since 1998, and since 2005, the trend has been a surge in new orders.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2007.03a
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• pp.318-326
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• 2007

This research aims to investigate into Official Development Assistance (ODA), which may be regarded as assistance or aid to increase competitiveness in the overseas construction field through presenting, in the initial step of construction projects, schemes to secure financial resources to those who place orders. In this research, the present author analyzes ODA of advanced countries and S.Korea and distributes and collects questionnaires to experts in related fields in order to investigate into the current state and problems of overseas construction and ODA.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.97-100
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• 2015

Analysis of construction tender documents in overseas projects is a very important issue from a risk management point of view. Unfortunately, majority of construction firms are biased by winning contracts without in-depth analysis of tender documents. As a result, many contractors have incurred loss in overseas projects. Although a lot of risk analysis techniques have been introduced, most of them focus project's external unexpected risks such as country conditions and owner's financial standing. However, because those external risks are difficult to control and take preemptive action, we need to concentrate on project inherent risks. Based on this premise, this paper proposes a project-oriented risk mining approach which could detect and extract project risk factors automatically before they are materialized and assess them. This study presents a methodology regarding how to extract potential risks which exist in owner's project requirements and project tender documents using state of the art data analysis method such as text mining, data mining, and information visualization. The project-oriented risk mining approach is expected to effectively reflect project characteristics to the project risk management and could provide construction firms with valuable business intelligence.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2019.11a
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• pp.195-196
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to analyze the scale of overseas design orders in Korea, China and Japan by region and type of work, and to draw implications. As a result of analyzing the overseas design sales market of Korea, China and Japan, all three countries have the highest percentage of overseas sales in the Asian market, and the overseas design sales are the highest in power generation, chemical plant and transportation sectors. In addition to the Middle East and Asian markets, Japan and China have also diversified their strategies to diversify their markets by taking orders in various regions such as Europe, Africa and the United States. In particular, China is promoting the "New Silk Road Project" (One belt, One road), linking land and sea to a total of 25 countries and actively supporting aid projects in Africa and Asia, have. In addition, Japan has been actively supporting the government's expansion of ODA projects to expand overseas market entry. Therefore, it is necessary for Korea to increase its market share through diversification of overseas design market and diversification of industrial type, and to participate in overseas design market by expanding customized R&D investment.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.325-344
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• 2009

Korean overseas construction contracts reached 40 billion dollars in 2008. In this paper, the economic factors of "the record high growth since 1980's 'overseas construction boom' is investigated. Firstly, most of the contracts were made in the Middle East OPEC countries which made large scale construction investments with the increasing oil revenues... Secondly. large portion of the contracts is heavy industrial plants, in which Korean construction firms have enjoyed comparative advantages. Thirdly, Korean construction firms have been forced to pay attention to the overseas markets, due to the domestic slump of the construction industry.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.389-396
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• 2005

Despite very good reputation that Korean construction industrial firms had enjoyed until early 1990's in overseas markets, their participation abroad drastically declined after the delivery of two(2) million unit-housing project in the early 1990's and the foreign currency crisis that took place in the late 1990's. The revival of booming construction industry in domestic market is far beyond the expectation due to the long recession of the construction economy and government's severe restriction against real estate development. Under such crucial circumstances, the construction industrial firms' strategy to survive is the more active business promotion in overseas markets. However, the Korean construction industrial firms have to abandon the labor intensive strategy, through that they have enjoyed until the early 1990's, and turn to management oriented strategy which may be a new prosperous horizon and a new challenge as well, because the labor cost of newly developing countries is much more competitive. The aim of this study is to suggest how to cope with current market situations through a chronological survey based on the cost data prevailed during four decades from the 1960's until the 1990's in overseas markets.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.1237-1243
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• 2005

International construction projects are exposed to various and complicated risk factors stemming from different political, economical, social, and cultural backgrounds, which make contractors entering into international construction to experience severe losses. It implies that overseas markets do not necessarily secure the high return, which is typically expected to in the high risky attempts. Accordingly, contractors need to evaluate various risk factors faced with overseas construction projects that can possibly aggravate the profitability. This paper aims at establishing a valid groundwork for further research on developing the integrated risk management model. For this end, it analyzes the long-term trend of profitability on total of 3,487 projects performed by Korean global contractors in world-wide construction markets during the last four decades. Then, it investigates the possible factors/causes of bad profit that have affected the profitability significantly through the structured surveys of 90 real overseas projects based on the project-specific information and experiences of Korean contractors in overseas markets. Furthermore, it analyzes relative importance of these factors/causes and identifies the important features expected for the risk management of international construction projects. Finally, vital distinctions between success and failure projects and lessons learned to improve profitability are then distilled.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.375-384
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• 2018

Due to the downturn in the local construction business, entry into the overseas markets has been regarded as one of the core tasks of the building sector and the government. Thus, entry into overseas markets, not only by large and middle-standing enterprises, but also by small and medium sized enterprises, has recently become a major construction policy. Therefore, this study identified and evaluated overseas construction support policies in the field of construction engineering, ranked them as the policies for developing market development funds, fostering and educating expert workers, and supporting the provision of information on winning orders. Through these policy assessment results, the study proposed improvement measures from the government and from the business side. As for the government viewpoint, a measure of providing information suited to engineers in design companies, project manager (PM), construction manager (CM), a measure of producing skillful workers through the expansion of education support policies, and the promotion of specialized overseas workforce in the construction engineering sector were proposed. In the construction engineering industry, this study suggested measures for securing global expert manpower, sharing performance of overseas construction market development project, strengthening construction project management capacity, and strengthening risk management.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.50
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• pp.215-250
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• 2011

Korean won overseas construction projects worth 71.6 billion US Dollars in 2010, which exceeded that of 2009 by 45.6%. An overseas construction project is a transaction of large scale, long term project, many parties participating, deferred payment, and of high-technology. It contributes to foreign currency earning, and also leads the nation's export restructuring work towards high value-added one. There are various kinds of risks towards the relevant parties respectively, which are key elements in successfully performing the overseas construction project. There are completion risk, financing risk, operating risk, revenue risk etc, in an employer's place. A contractor may be confronted with payment risk, issuance risk of performance bond, financing risk, performance risk of sub-contractors, and exchange rate risk. In lenders place there are repayment risk, completion risk, and political risk in the host country. In order to mitigate risks, the parties shall take relevant measures or require relevant securities. A contractor needs to evaluate the credibility of an employer in respect of payment risk, and can also request export insurance cover by the Korea Trade Insurance Corporation(the former 'Korea Export Insurance Corporation"). An employer can require a contractor to provide performance bond in respect of completion risk, and employ a well-known first class bank as a mandated arranger to arrange financing with regard to completion risk. Lenders needs to evaluate the credibility of an employer and accomplish feasibility study of the project. Lenders can request insurance cover from export credit agency. Once the parties assess the respective risks and obtain relevant securities, the project will be successfully completed. The success of the project will be sure to bring the parties involved enormous profits and another opportunity to participate in overseas construction project afterwards.