Prime Minister Chung Hong-won urged the National Assembly to pass the 14 pending motions aimed at boosting the economy as soon as possible during his visit to several parliamentary committees in Yeouido, Seoul, on Wednesday.
Among the 14 motions are one for activating the cruise businesses, expansion of port and marina facilities, and revamping medical services. The bill for the cruise tour segment was initiated by President Park Geun-hye.
The bill on state-led promotion of the cruise industry features tax relief for cruise tour operators, state support for increasing the workforce and establishment of a lobby for operators. A core focus of the bill is to allow Korean-owned vessels, to have casinos for foreign tourists.
Local cruise liner Harmony Cruise, with a 1,000-passenger capacity, launched in 2012, but went bankrupt at the end of last year, allegedly due to its failure to get a license for onboard casinos.
An official of the Prime Minister’s Office stressed that the profitability of a cruise line heavily depended on income from the operations of an onboard casino. “As an example, about 30 to 40 percent of total sales of a cruise ship in Malaysia come from its onboard gambling business,” he said.
According to government officials, President Park’s attention to building the country’s tourism sector is reminiscent of the efforts of her late father ― former President Park Chung-hee ― who had planned to raise tourism as one of the country’s strategic industries by conjuring up support measures to go hand-in-hand with the nation’s export industry.
The Park administration reiterated the urgent need to activate the prospective cruise industry, which is also among her campaign pledges.
Prime Minister Chung met with chairmen of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee and the Strategy and Finance Committee of the Assembly and some other key lawmakers from the ruling and opposition parties.
Chung also asked the political leaders to push forward discussions on promoting the tourism industry.
The incumbent government hopes to attract some 16 million foreign tourists by 2017 and raise the yearly tourism revenue to $24 billion. The number of those who work in Korea’s tourism industry was expected to rise to 1 million by 2017, the ministry also said. Last year, the number of jobs in the industry was 850,000.
