Busan Seeks Win-Win Strategy with Foreign IT Firms
Busan Seeks Win-Win Strategy with Foreign IT Firms
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  • 승인 2007.08.13 13:24
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Busan seeks a win-win strategy with overseas IT companies, a top official of Busan Metropolitan City said.

In an interview with the Korea IT Times, Hur Nam-sik, mayor of Busan Metropolitan City, said that Busan city has been pushing ahead with a variety of projects for exchanges and cooperation between Busan-based companies and overseas enterprises.

"Among the projects are the establishment of joint ventures that combine technology and funds, joint development of international projects and agent business for sales of product," said Hur.

"To this end, Busan city has been holding international IT exhibitions every year, such as IT EXPO Busan," the Busan city mayor said.

At the same time, Busan plans to attract overseas trainees in the IT industry to the city and actively foster them as overseas local networks of Busan-based IT companies on a long-term basis, he said.

"By doing so, overseas trainees will greatly contribute to enhancing bilateral cooperation between Busan-based companies and overseas IT enterprises in the future," said the top city official.

Recently, Busan has succeeded in attracting the AVEVA Research Center of Britain to the city. AVEVA is a world famous software development company related to shipbuilding.

"The British research center is expected to greatly contribute to activating development of the regional IT industry and exchange with overseas IT companies," he said.

The world's IT market has been globalized owing to the development of networks. Exchanges of technology, personnel and materials have been made actively.

"As for regional IT companies that possess high technology but face difficulties owing to limited demands in the domestic IT market, exploration of new markets and expansion of sales networks through close cooperation with overseas IT companies is very important and urgent," said Hur.

The Busan city mayor said that the city boasts of its high competitiveness in the oceanic IT fields such as shipbuilding and harbor design and the manufacturing IT fields linked with existing off-line industries. In particular, Busan-based IT companies are recently improving their technology in the ubiquitous sector through active propulsion of the U-City project.

"By making the best use of such regional characteristics, Busan city is making allout efforts to expand chances for exchanges between regional companies and overseas IT companies and offer more business opportunities through introduction of overseas companies to Busan," Hur said.

He said that there are many difficulties to developing regional IT industry as most personnel and material infrastructure related to IT industry are concentrated in the metropolitan area.

"However, a global harbor and international airport, which become the potential market of an IT industry, are in Busan and large companies as Hyundai Motor, Daewoo Shipbuilding, Samsung SDI and LG Electronics are located in neighboring economic blocs.

"In addition, Busan hosted large-scale international events such as ITU Telecom Asia and the APEC Summit successfully and is now actively propelling the U-City Busan Project. Accordingly, I think, Busan is equipped with great potential to prompt IT industry grow up at a rapid pace," said Hur.

To actively foster the IT industry, a future-oriented growth engine, Busan city has designated the industry as one of the four core strategic industries, while pushing for various development projects in hardware, software and manpower nurturing sectors, he said.

Since 2005, Busan city has been holding a global-level IT exhibition named IT EXPO Busan for the development of the regional IT industry, greatly contributing to heralding Busan's famous products and high technology to the world, attracting overseas buyers to the city and expanding investment exchanges with foreign companies through the display of advanced domestic and foreign IT products.

Noting that IT EXPO Busan is a very important exhibition for Busan city to develop into an IT-centered city in Southeast Asia, he said: "We will exert best efforts to attract large domestic and foreign companies and make the EXPO a successful international event."

As the portion of existing manufacturing industries which led the development of regional industry moves out of the region, Busan city is restructuring the industrial structure in such a way as to focus on new growth engine industries in order to keep global competitiveness.

"In particular, the IT field is closely related to future-oriented growth engine industries. As a result, our city is going all-out to actively foster IT industry, which will lead the future-oriented growth engine industries," said Hur.

Busan has a strong industrial foundation for harbor logistics, shipbuildingn, automobiles, machinery parts, video and convention sectors. It also has many merits, including the production of about 10,000 IT experts every year from 19 universities.

Based on this infrastructure, Busan city will activate regional IT industry through its U-City Busan project and create an optimum environment for regional IT industry through attraction of the best IT enterprises and research centers to the city and construction of IT clusters. In short, Busan city will build infrastructure for city growth and enhance city competition globally, he said.

Along with this, Busan city will select next-generation logistics, U-automobile, IT-NT fusion parts and digital video sectors as regionally specialized IT fields and actively foster them, said the mayor.

To effectively push for these policies, Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency, which has played a pivotal role for development of regional IT industry, will build a cooperation system among industrial, academic and research circles.

The following are excerpts from an interview with Hur Nam-sik, mayor of Busan Metropolitan City. --Ed.

Q: Would you introduce Busan city's policies to support IT EXPO Busan for growth in terms of both quantity and quality

A: Busan city upgraded the Busan Venture Plaza/Computer and Software Exhibition to an IT professional exhibition IT EXPO Busan in 2005 and has been exerting all-out efforts to expand the event in volume.

From now on, we will also improve the quality level of IT EXPO Busan to develop it into IT-centered city in Northeast Asia. To achieve this, we will make best efforts to attract large companies and professional buyers both at home and abroad.

Related to this, Busan city and Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency will make concerted efforts to attract large domestic and foreign companies and buyers to the 2007 IT EXPO Busan to be held at BEXCO in the city from September 12 to 15.

Q: Would you explain about the trend of IT industry in Busan and cooperative relations between companies in Busan and Seoul

A: Busan city has been focusing its energy on technology development and commercialization for activating regionally specialized IT and software industries, along with propulsion of the U-City Busan Project.

In line with this, Busan-based IT companies are seeking technology exchanges and cooperation with ubiquitous related high-tech firms in the metropolitan area, while pursuing formation of consortium for joint marketing with them.

Actually, technology cooperation and exchanges between Busanbased companies and high-tech firms in the metropolitan area have been increasing in the next-generation logistics IT, shipbuilding and ocean IT, U-automobile, IT-NT fusion parts and digital video sectors.

Q: Would you introduce the scale of participation in the 2007 IT EXPO Busan and contents of the exhibition

A: We are now preparing the 2007 IT EXPO Busan to provide enterprises with good opportunities to expand business, explore new markets and herald the future image of U-City Busan.

About 200 companies armed with professional solutions in the ubiquitous, information and communication sectors will participate in the event with setup of 500 booths introducing new IT technologies.

Major items to be displayed at the event include information infrastructure- based equipment, home network-related solutions, ubiquitousrelated solutions, digital content-related solutions, and Internet application solutions.


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