More than 700,000 South Korean people are running some 30,000 companies across China, making it the top destination for investment from the Republic of Korea, according to a recent business forum.

European countries and the United States were the main investment targets of ROK entrepreneurs in the early 1990s, but Asian countries, particularly China, have become ROK's business focus over the past decade, said Zhang Wenkui, director of the enterprise research institute of the Development Research Center of the State Council, at the forum.

ROK companies invested more than 8 billion US dollars around the world in 2004, including 6 billion US dollars in China. China has attracted more than 35 billion US dollars in capital from ROK enterprises, statistics from Chinese and Korean businessmen forum show.

The 5-billion-US dollar investment in China in 2006 has earned nearly 30 billion US dollars to Samsung Electronics, almost half of the company's global business income, Zhang said.

ROK firms are doing businesses in financial, food and restaurant, logistics, telecommunication, and other sectors in China, rather than in the manufacturing industry. They are also moving toward the inland region from booming coastal areas.

Zhang said ROK companies have bright development prospects.