Busan Metropolitan City succeeded in winning a project run by the state to build a new-type research reactor for exports on July 30 this year.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology selected the city of Busan as the most suitable region for the KRW 250 billion research reactor project among nine other provincial governments.
"Under the decision, the city of Busan will build a 20MW-class research reactor, which can produce radioactive isotope for medical and industrial use. Also, it will carry out various projects including isotope production and setting up research facilities on a 130,000 square meter lot in Gijang-gun, Busan by 2015," said a top official of the metropolitan city.
Hur Nam-sik, the mayor of Busan Metropolitan City stated, "The project will bring about employment inducement effects for 3,633 workers and economic ripple effects of KRW 1.83 trillion. Also, it will have effects of securing more than 150 top-class researchers in the region."
"Along with this, the city of Busan will attract radioactive isotope-related large companies to the region, activate regional R&D projects and improve the city's competitiveness through enhancement of productivity of regional companies."
He said, "Through this project, Busan will be developed into Northeast Asia's advanced science cluster of medical service and nuclear energy."
Construction of u-IT Green City
"The city of Busan plans to develop Gangseo, an international industrial logistics city, into a state-of-the-art green u-City," Mayor Hur said.
"As the city's core project, we plan to develop Gangseo city into an environment-friendly industrial estate suitable for the era of low carbon and green growth," he said.
Related to this, the city of Busan already mapped out the Green u-City strategic plan in March of this year and decided to cooperate with Cisco Systems, the world's top enterprise in terms of environment-friendly city networking field, for the project during the 2011-2019 period.
Under the ambitious project, the city will realize the world's best green living index, build video city for the first time in the world by constructing smart buildings equipped with advanced video technology, and introduce the smart energy management system that controls carbon emissions through supply of renewable energy and recycling of energy resources.
"Ultimately, we will build an on-green city integration control system that will help business activities by recognition of fingerprint and voice as well as sensor recognition," said Hur.
Mobile App Development Support Center
In the modern knowledge information society, one-man creative companies, which can offer various and prompt services, is emerging as an alternative for new employment creation, rather than existing employment creation based on mass production system.
"Accordingly, the city of Busan plans to provide citizens with mobile application development environment to support such one-man creative enterprises. For instance, we will offer hardware and software for development of such mobile applications as cloud computing-based iPhones, Android, Windows Mobile and Bada. Along with this, we will construct a homepage for the app development center, educational center and community PR," said Hur.
As a means of solving youths' unemployment problem and activating business activities, the mayor said, "The city will build a process to actively foster one-man creative enterprises, prepare a window for promotion of the city's policy to pull down unemployment rate of youths, and organize forums and seminars for various application developments."
Noting that people's use of smart phones is expanding at a rapid pace in keeping with the beginning of wireless Internet service and iPhone supply, Hur said that the city is moving to build a "mobile portal site" and a "smart office."
"Under the plan, the city will build 'mobile web,' which can cover all kinds of smart phones, offer the city's information through integrated DB-based homepage, and build a mobile service system to provide information related to traffic, transportation, culture and tourism news," he said.
"In other words, we aim to provide citizens with the city's administration information without time and space constraints, enable citizens to get such information through smartphones under the wireless Internet environment, and encourage citizens to actively participate in the city's administrative activity," said the mayor.
Smart Office to be Built by February 2011
Mayor Hur said that the city of Busan will build an ubiquitous business environment called "smart office" by February 2011, where public servants can deal with internal administration business anytime and anywhere.
"Along with this, the city will build the 3D video research center to systematically foster the domestic 3D industry," said Hur.
Commenting that the development of advanced technology and the securing of initiative for standardization are the most urgent tasks to predominate the world's 3D market, Mayor Hur said, "We will construct the 3D video research center at the Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency for operation later this year. The center will spend about KRW 2 billion annually for research and development projects for 3D stereoscopic images and construction of relevant networks."
He explained that the demand for manpower is surging within the 3D contents production, but professional manpower in the field is insufficient these days. In response to this, Hur stated, "The city projects to build the 3D screen production educational center in the latter half of this year is to foster more professional 3D experts under the central government's financial support.
"At the same time, we are planning to create the '3D CG contents hub of East Asia' in the city of Busan for the long-term basis. We will develop the Busan Centum cultural industry promotion district into the 3D CG hub center by adding 3D production to the video work facilities," he said.
Touching on the recent global industrial trend of convergence, the mayor said that Busan is the most suitable place for the new industry's converging manufacturing and IT industries.
"Busan and nearby regions are the center location for automobiles, shipbuilding and machinery industries. Accordingly, we will actively foster new convergence industries by combining such industries and advanced IT," he added.
