LG Chem reaffirmed its partnership with the Kazakhstan government involving its ongoing projects in the Central Asia nation, holding a joint event in Seoul on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit on Sunday.

The two sides celebrated the book launch of the Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s biography in the Korean language at a hotel in downtown Seoul, hoping to gain from the president’s “can-do spirit.”

“When I met President Nazarbayev in Korea in 2010, he suggested we should build a petrochemical company in Kazakhstan and make it the best in the world. President Nazarbayev has never failed to give his best personal backing since,” said LG Chem vice chairman Kim Bahn-suk in a congratulatory speech.

“I could not help but be very impressed with the president’s ‘can-do spirit. We will operate the most competitive petrochemical complex on the basis of that spirit.”

The biography, written by Jonathan Aitken, looks back on the president’s life as a young steel worker who oversaw close to, or greater than, 10 percent yearly GDP growth for most of the 21st century.

Kazakhstan is rich in gas, oil and other natural resources.

Nazarbayev was reelected in 1999, 2005 and last year, receiving 95 percent of the vote.

“I wrote the biography simply to tell the story of a political leader and individual personality who was unknown to the Western world,” said Aitken, a politician-turned-writer who has written 14 books mostly focusing on well-known figures in Western culture.

“My purpose, which has been quite successful, was to make a wider audience know him. I’m very pleased that this book has now been translated into Korean and several other languages.”

Participants of Sunday’s event included Kairat Umarov, deputy minister of foreign affairs of Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan Ambassador to Korea Dulat Bakishev, Kim Jae-shin, deputy minister for political affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Moon Jae-do, vice minister of international affairs at the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, and Ambassador Lee Yun-ho.

The event took place as LG Chem and state firm Kazakhstan Petrochemical Industries plan to go forward with building a petrochemical complex in Atyrau.

A total of $4.2 billion in investment will be injected into the complex, which is the biggest project since Kazakhstan announced its independence in 1991. It will include an 800,000-ton ethylene unit and another 800,000-ton unit for polyethylene, according to LG Chem officials.

With the petrochemical complex being dubbed one of the few projects by a foreign firm fully supported by the Kazakhstan government, LG chairman Koo Bon-moo has discussed various cooperative measures with President Nazarbayev since Koo first visited Kazakhstan as Korea’s business representative in 2004.

By Cho Ji-hyun
(sharon@heraldcorp.com)