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SEOUL (AFP) - On Monday, South Korea's leading Samsung Group unveiled a $29 billion New Millennium program to transform the sprawling conglomerate into a digital-based business.
At a business conference, group boss Lee Kun-Hee envisioned the expansion plan at the weekend in the United States, Samsung said in a statement. Lee has been undergoing treatment for lung cancer in the United States since early December.
Lee urged his group, the second largest in South Korea, to raise some 32 trillion won ($29 billion) by 2005 for investment in semiconductors, cell telephones, digital television and liquid crystal displays.
The new investment plan will help Samsung transform its core business into digital technology and retain its global leadership in microchip production, it said. "The conference marked a watershed in the group's business mood, which has been down because of the chairman's health problems," read the statement.
Samsung's plan comes as top South Korean conglomerates are shifting gears to join IMT-2000, a next-generation wireless telecommunication system that will provide greater access to the global market. South Korea will license IMT-2000 operators before the end of the year. Industry watchers believe the new system will reshape the country's industrial picture.
The Samsung Group's financial status has improved remarkably in the past two years due to brisk performance by its flagship Samsung Electronics Co., which posted a record profit of three trillion won last year. Samsung Electronics, one of the world's largest producers of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips, targets sales of $9.3 billion this year.
Lee, 58, who is undergoing chemotherapy at a cancer center in Houston, Texas, plans to return home in March, the group said, denying rumors that his cancer was incurable
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