As a former minister of science and technology, who played a major role in fostering the development of the IT industry in South Korea, and the current head of the e-trade promotion committee at the Korean International Trade Association (KITA), Seo Jung Uck is preeminently qualified to explain the industry's remarkable achievements in his country. He also has a knack for making the explanation easy to understand: "To change your community, you have to abruptly change your way of thinking." Addressing a luncheon forum audience at The Korea Society, Seo illustrated his point by relaying his experiences in the 1980s when he was part of a team charged with expanding South Korea's telephone network.

Read more: IT Industry Development and E-Commerce in South Korea

Officials from the Busan Port Authority (BPA) were making their first foray into North America when they spoke to business leaders from the shipping, logistics and finance industries at the Waldor Astoria Hotel in New York, and the message they brought was just as fresh. Busan-already Asia's fifth largest port by volume and the second largest city in Korea-is undergoing a surge of new development, and American investors can ride the rising tide by getting in now on the newly created Busan-Jinhae Free Economic Zone (BJFEZ).

Read more: Busan North American Investment Forum

The "trickle down" theory might be economically dubious, but there's something to it where inter-Korean dialog and cooperation are concerned. Addressing an audience of law school students and Korea experts at Columbia University, Ahn Sang-Soo, mayor of Incheon, outlined his unique efforts to use local administration to reach out to North Korea. Until recently, he noted, policies governing rapprochement with the North were initiated exclusively by the central government in Seoul. But following a visit by a DPRK delegation to Incheon in 2004, Ahn set the wheels in motion for engagement efforts initiated the level of local government.

Read more: The Incheon-Kaesong Joint Development Zone

A two-day forum copresented by Woori Investment Bank, Institutional Investor magazine and The Korea Society connected leaders from top Korean conglomerates and American financial experts with interested investors. The gilded Art Deco inlays and marble floors at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel spoke to the wealth of old New York, but those who gathered in these storied premises for the forum were firmly focused on the profits to be made in Seoul.

Read more: The Korea Investment Forum