Yantai, a coastal city of Shandong province has kept close business ties with South Korea. The volume of export and import between the two ports from January to July has reached to $6.51 billion, which is up by 8.6 percent over the same period last year.

South Korea has become Yantai's biggest trading partner and source of investment and tourist activities in recent years.

During the first seven months in 2015, 1,420 import and export enterprises in Yantai had established businesses with South Korea and six of them achieved a trade volume of over $100 million each. However, LG Display emerged as the biggest trader and receivd a trade volume of $2.39 billion.

Yantai has signed strategic cooperation agreements with many South Korea-based enterprises, like Doosan Infracore, Samsung Securities Co, CJ and Hanwha Group. Four branches of LG Group in Yantai are focussing on the production, research and marketing of display screen, camera and the complete machine. LG Display plans to occupy one third of the global phone screen market after the implementation of the third phase of its project.

The China-South Korea Industrial Park in Yantai is also under construction. It is expected to be a hotspot for the modern service industry, advanced manufacturing and modern logistics. Also, inside the big park, some small industrial parks such as the China-South Korean new-energy auto industrial park, a smart industrial park, a cultural industrial park as well as a health industrial park will be developed.

The free trade pact signed between China and South Korea on June 1 has become a driving force for cooperation between Yantai and South Korea. As part of the agreement, over 90 percent of goods traded between them will be tariff-free, thereby accounting for more than 85 percent of bilateral trade value. Yantai will provide a more convenient customs clearance system to make the city a distributing center for South Korean goods.

Edited by Shahnawaz Akhtar