President Yoon Visits Skills Olympics Training Site: "We Will Build a Nation Overflowing with Technical Talent"

Encouragement for Athletes Participating in the Skills Olympics at Incheon Global Skilled Technology Promotion Institute
President's Pre-Competition Encouragement for Athletes is the First in 30 Years

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Ki-min Lee] President Yoon Seok-yeol stated on the 14th that society should prioritize skilled technicians and pledged to "create a country overflowing with technical talent."

On the morning of the same day, President Yoon visited the Incheon Global Skilled Technology Promotion Institute to personally tour the training sites preparing for the 2022 WorldSkills Competition and encouraged the athletes. This marks the first time in over 30 years that a president has met and encouraged WorldSkills competitors before the event.

The WorldSkills Competition is held every two years, where young technicians under the age of 22 (under 25 for some categories) from various countries compete in a total of 61 categories, ranging from traditional fields such as welding and furniture making to IT fields like cybersecurity and cloud computing.

This year, South Korea is participating with 51 athletes in 46 categories. The competition, originally scheduled to be held in Shanghai, China last year, was canceled due to COVID-19 and will now be hosted in a distributed manner across 15 countries including South Korea and Switzerland.

President Yoon first visited training rooms for furniture making, mobile app development, and optoelectronics in sequence. While observing the athletes' training, he carefully inspected the training environment, encouraged the athletes, and instructed officials to provide meticulous support to ensure the athletes face no inconveniences.

He highly praised the young technicians who chose to pursue excellence in their skills instead of continuing their academic studies at a young age and urged them to do their best as representatives of the Republic of Korea in this WorldSkills Competition.

Following this, a dialogue session was held with the national team athletes. Corporate representatives who have actively recruited promising WorldSkills talents and sponsored their participation in the competition also attended the event.

At this gathering, President Yoon emphasized that the driving force behind South Korea’s development and the key to future leaps all lie in technology, stating, "I will do my best to create a country overflowing with technical talent. Society must prioritize skilled technicians."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.