President Park Geun-hye visited a major industrial complex in the southern city of Gumi on Wednesday in her latest move to call for efforts to foster new industries and reinvigorate the local economy.

Her provincial tour to Gumi, where she has a strong following, came amid flagging public support. Park's approval rating fell to a record low of 26 percent in a survey released Friday by the local pollster Gallup Korea.

Park first met with officials and employees at an industrial-academic convergence district within the Gumi National Industrial Complex, located 261 kilometers southeast of Seoul, to offer her encouragement. In particular, she visited KAIDEA, a 3-D printer developer, and VM e-Korea, an electric bicycle manufacturer, in the district.

Formed in 2014, the district is now home to some 50 research institutes and four universities, and has emerged as a key model for industrial-academic collaboration, which the Park government has been pushing to expand to help create jobs, find new growth engines and revitalize the economy.

Over the last three years, some 19 industrial-academic collaborative projects have been carried out in the sprawling district with scores of students having participated in these projects. Of these students, some 77 have landed jobs within the Gumi industrial complex.

The president, then, toured the smart factory of Mooryong Co., a high-tech firm specializing in the surface treatment of auto parts and mobile phones cases.

Her government, in cooperation with local businesses, has been striving to introduce automated smart factories to enhance the quality of products, cut production costs, and streamline and speed up the manufacturing process.

Mooryong is one of the leading companies in the introduction of smart factories. It has invested 14.1 billion won ($12.5 million) over the last six years to refurbish its manufacturing facilities and make them fully automated.

In Gumi, Park also attended the ground-breaking ceremony for a factory of Toray Advanced Materials Korea Inc., an affiliate of Japan's Toray Industries Inc., which specializes in the production of chemical materials.

During the ceremony, Park stressed the importance of developing the materials industry to respond more actively to the fourth industrial revolution -- the fast-paced transformation linked to the fusion of various cutting-edge technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence.

The ceremony was attended by some 500 people, including Akihiro Nikkaku, the president of the Japanese firm, workers and top officials from the local governments of North Gyeongsang Province and Gumi City.

Toray currently runs a dozen factories in South Korea, and has invested 3.7 trillion won into the Asian country.

 After the groundbreaking ceremony, Park visited a traditional market in the city to meet with vendors and citizens.

There, she expressed her goal of increasing support for traditional markets whose sales have been waning in the face of large-scale discount stores. (Yonhap)