There is a place called Sangdong (Upper East) in Yeongwol-gun, Gangwon-do. The Sangdong mine in this country, which was devastated by the June 25 war, was a tyrant. The tungsten reserves in the post-Sangdong mine were the world's best with a single mine, accounting for 10% of the world's production. The top exporting company in Korea was a Korean public corporation called Korea Junsuk. President Park Chung-hee appointed POSCO Park Tae-joon as president of Daehan Kohsan, and POSCO has established it by receiving investment funds from the Japanese government and treasury.
The reason why the forgotten martial arts mine is reconsidered is that international tungsten prices are going high. International tungsten prices have skyrocketed 50 percent in the last two months, Bloomberg reported.
This metal with the element symbol 'W' is a Swedish word meaning sten (sten) and is called a stonewall in Korea. It has the highest melting point among the metals and it is widely used for cutting tools, materials of electric and electronic products, and weapons. It is one of rare metals.
The problem is that one country monopolizes this tungsten supply. China accounts for 80% of the world's tungsten supply. Tungsten is an important raw material for the Western economy and defense, and if China restricts its supply, the related industry will be seriously damaged.
The European Union defines tungsten as a "critical" commodity, and the UK puts it on the list of "high-risk materials". In June, the Chinese authorities set quotas for the Demand Countries and informed them that they would limit their supply to those countries that do not have quotas or exceed quotas. Tungsten supply is controlled by the Chinese government, and experts predict that global supply shortages will intensify next year.
In the past, China has taken economic retaliation against Japan, which banned the export of rare earths in 2010 due to a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Archipelago. Therefore, if international demand for tungsten expands, the Chinese government can not exclude the possibility of regulating tungsten exports to unfavorable countries, especially Korea, which is at a disadvantage due to the Sad issue.
 |
| / graphic = Kim Song Hyun reporter |
Let's go back to Sangdong mine again.
In the early 1970s when Mt. Seok had accounted for 60% of Korea's exports, there were 23,000 residents in Sangdong-eup. The puppy was also a snowy mining town that was so buzzing that he had borrowed 10,000 won bills.
The fall of Sangdong mine was due to the dumping of Chinese tungsten. It was abolished in April 1993 because it can not meet profitability anymore. It is now synonymous with the abandoned mine, which has been neglected. The population also dropped to 1,000.
However, in the Sangdong area, there is still burial mound in the ground. Precision drilling results released by Wodrop, an international mining exploration agency several years ago, show that Sungdong mine has a total reserves of more than 103 million tons. The quality was analyzed with a high quality of 0.45% on average. This is the scale that can be mined over the next 100 years. There is a noble resource buried in the ground that can sustain more than one million tons each year.
In the meantime, there is a problem with our resource policy.
According to the privatization policy in 1994, the company was sold to a group company, Later, the IMC Group of Israel took over and changed its name to TaeguTec. The IMC Group is a company invested by Warren Buffett of the United States, known worldwide as an investor.
The Korean government abandoned it, but global investors knew the value of Korean mine. Taekyung Taekyung was named as the grandchild of Berkshire Hathaway, a Warren Buffett company.
Subsequently, TaeguTec's rights to develop the Sangdong mine were transferred to Canada's Woulfe Mining Corp. in 2006, and Wolf Mining was acquired by Almonty Industries Inc. The Sangdong mine development right is now owned by a Canadian company called Almonty.
There is no mineral policy in Korea. Every time the regime changes, it has been used as a means of finding corruption in the previous regime and has been transformed. But the policy of minerals is an important policy that has caused imperialism itself and has been the source of war between nations.
Now, there is a talk about the development of Sangdong mine. This is because it is advantageous to utilize the buried resources in the domestic market in the face of rising international prices and economic wars with China.
But then what? The development right of the Sangdong mine, which I ignored, has been passed over to foreign countries.
I do not want to bother to talk about recreating the mineral policy again. Look away. If the Lee Myung - bak administration fails to regain bribes, it will be the ignorance of ignoring the minerals policy. We returned to the other country to secure mineral resources, and sold our land. Who do you blame? We missed what we had because of the short accidents that only urgent elected officials overheard in their tenure.
Kim In-young reporter inkim@opinionnews.co.kr <Copyright Owners © Opinion News, reprint and redistribution prohibited>