쌍용건설

Kim Suk-joon, chairman of Ssangyong Engineering and Construction, led a group of his company executives to Tokyo between April 19 and 22 to take a first-hand look at how Japan""s capital city developed its own urban area. It is unusual for Kim and all department heads and executives of Ssangyong to travel for a business benchmark.

Tokyo, which had been in slump since the bubble burst in the early 1990s, is drawing global attention these days as it successfully carried out a series of large-scale urban development projects such as Ropponki Hills, Tokyo Midtown and Omotesando Hills.

Ropponki Hills, among other things, has become one of the most popular tourist destinations for Tokyo. The city government has invested 270 billion yen for the past 17 years to build apartments, gallerys, hotels, parks and shopping malls, which attracts 100,000 to 150,000 tourists a day.

Designed by world""s renowned architect Tadao Ando, Omotesando Hills has turned into one of major shopping malls in Tokyo from , a dilapidated apartment village built in 1927.

Meanwhile, Kim and his delegation met with their counterparts of Maeda Corp. and reached an agreement to strengthen bilateral business cooperation.

They also had a chance to meet with many urban development experts in Japan. Kim had an interview with a renowned construction newspaper and invited its chief editor to a seminar in which he exchanged opinions on how to benchmark Tokyo""s urban development success.

The Tokyo visit comes as Kim has been showing a strong will that large construction companies should come forward in urban development projects, forsaking years of such business practices as subcontracting.

Ssangyong plans to pursue Ropponki Hills-style urban development projects not just in overseas markets but also in and around the Seoul metropolitan area of South Korea.