Smart City

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Smart Cities in Korea

The Korean government has prioritized smart city pilot projects in Sejong and Busan. Focus areas of the green field developments are water management and robotics in Busan; smart mobility and artificial intelligence (AI) in Sejong. Under the umbrella of the fourth industrial revolution technologies the Korean government will be investing 3.7 trillion won ($3.29 billion) jointly with the private sector through 2021.

The development of smart cities is not new in Korea. Perhaps one of the world’s most famous smart city projects is Songdo, located in Incheon’s free economic zone. The city of Seoul has been implemented various projects in the area of urban re-development, mobility and e-government. Recently Seoul Metropolitan Government has established the Smart City Department in order to better coordinate the city’s cross-cutting initiatives with various specialized departments and agencies.

The Korean government’s smart city platform has proved to be a crucial tool to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. In our KGCCI Smart City Talk we discussed how smart city technologies can be utilized to share emergency information, support social distancing, testing and contact tracing.

The Korean New Deal is currently the possibly biggest government-led investment plan designed to help the economy recover from the COVID-19 crisis. Government and private investments of 121.2 billion EUR will be injected. The core pillars of the ambitious project - the Digital New Deal and the Green New Deal – are overlapping with several smart city focus areas so it will be very likely that companies which offer smart city solutions will be also benefitting from the Korean New Deal.

Smart City Talks

KGCCI’s Smart City Talks features a series of events focusing on smart city areas such as sustainable mobility, innovative ICT and digitalization initiatives, smart buildings and infrastructure. The series highlights innovative smart city solutions and provides a platform for decision makers and practitioners to exchange knowledge and experience on the latest trends of smart cities.

For example, our Smart City Talk: Future Mobility focused on smart mobility solutions in Korean cities. Together with the city’s mobility master planner we took a closer look at Sejong’s Smart Mobility Strategy and learned about intelligent transport systems, autonomous vehicles and much more.