World Expo 2012 for Yeosu in Korea

The Bureau de International Expositions has announced that the Korean coastal city of Yeosu has been selected as the host for the 2012 World Expo.

The success for Yeosu in the face of strong competition from Morocco and Poland has come after a lengthy campaign led by Mong-Koo Chung, Honorary Chairman of the Yeosu Bidding Committee. Mr Chung is the Chairman of the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group.

Kia, and its sister company Hyundai, has strongly supported the bid by Yeosu and the announcement is the culmination of a long campaign to bring the World Expo to Korea. Hyundai-Kia is committed to sustainable development of the automobile in line with Yeosu’s “Living Ocean” theme and currently devotes a large part of its Research and Development budget, amounting to eight per cent of revenues, to environmental research.

Kia and Hyundai have the world’s only dedicated environmental R&D facility in Mabook – on the southern outskirts of Seoul – where hybrid, bio-fuel and fuel-cell technology is being developed for commercial application. Mabook also carries out research on environmentally-friendly end-of-life technologies and on reducing the impact of the automobile production process. The facility itself utilises sustainable technologies in its operation.

Yeosu is a little known area of Korea on the south coast and boasts some of the world’s finest wildlife and natural features. The Yeosu Korea Expo bid focuses on the importance of the ocean and the coast to the future environment and the way humankind must ensure technological development can work with the natural world. Given the critical attention on global warming this is set to be an event of major importance.