On April 1, SK Pharma (CEO: Sung-soo Kim) announced the execution of an agreement on exclusive domestic sales rights for the antibiotic drug ?AIDA? with Chinese pharmaceutical company Zhejiang Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. ?AIDA? is a new drug developed by the Jiangsu Microbiology Research Center, a Chinese national pharmaceutical research institute. According to the company, the drug?s toxicity effects on the kidney and ear after long-term administration is greatly reduced compared to other aminoglycoside antibiotics. The Jiangsu Microbiology Research Center currently possesses patent rights over ?AIDA? in China, and also filed patent applications in 12 other countries including the UK, US, Japan and Russia. Zhejiang Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. has been endowed with marketing rights for the new drug from the Jiangsu Center. SK Pharma is planning to launch this drug in the coming year after obtaining approval from the Korea Food and Drug Administration. Current domestic markets for this kind of drug stand at approximately 65 billion won (in the year 2002), and the company expects that sales amounts will reach more than 12 billion won in 2004 when the promotional activity for this drug is matured.A company representative remarked, ?This year, we will further expand our global marketing, which was actively conducted last year in the EU, Australia and so on,? and went to say that ?we are also planning to strengthen our marketing activity in China, a large new market.?