South Korea will provide support worth more than 2 trillion won (US$1.6 billion) each year to strengthen the competitiveness of key industrial materials, parts and equipment, the finance minister said Friday.

Hong Nam-ki also said South Korea will push for a stable supply of the industrial materials, parts and equipment.

The move is the latest in a series of South Korea's efforts to reduce South Korea's heavy reliance on Japan in the key industrial sector amid Japan's export curbs.

In July, Tokyo imposed tighter regulations on exports to Seoul of three materials -- resist, etching gas and fluorinated polyimide -- that are critical for the production of semiconductors and flexible displays.

Japan later removed South Korea from its "whitelist" of trusted trading partners in retaliation against last year's South Korean Supreme Court rulings ordering Japanese firms to compensate South Korean victims of forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. (Yonhap)

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